The Enduring Appeal of Effy Stonem, the ‘Skins’ Character Who Keeps On Giving

Vice says before Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness”, there was Effy Stonem. The Skins side-character-turned-protagonist became an instant pop culture icon in the late 2000s – the Patron Saint of teenage girls, typically found smoking behind the science block and communicating mostly through eye contact.

Effy is an enigma, a train-wreck, a femme fatale whose allure is inherently bound up in her own undoing; Marissa Cooper if she had a sense of humour and partied in Stokes Croft. Her magnetism comes from the conflict between how she really feels (deeply) and how she acts (as though she doesn’t feel a thing) – a façade recognisable to the audience, but very few characters in the show.

Her appearance is either prim in a school uniform, or dishevelled in fishnets; her behaviour either “cool, detached” or “screaming in the middle of a dual carriageway”; her dialogue either Kat Slater or Laura Palmer, In short: she is melodramatic and completely unrealistic, but that was the point. Effy is a characterisation of how teenage girls feel, not how they actually are.

Skins continues to occupy the teenage imagination thanks to its distinct character-driven format and the fact it was the first show to truly reflect both the volume and nature of underage partying in the UK. Drugs, sex, poverty, racism, divorce, domestic abuse, eating disorders, heartbreak – Skins came at these issues through the eyes of a teenager, with the emotional lens of an adult, taking each one seriously but respecting its audience enough to entertain rather than moralise. While pretty much every character still holds up, there’s something about Effy that continues to resonate more than most other characters.

In one early episode, Michelle asks her, “Why don’t you speak, Effy? Does nobody ask you why? It must mean something…” Even when she was the focal point of the show, Effy remained stoic, speaking less than those around her, but usually communicating more.

In retrospect, it was a genius move, laying the foundation for Effy to supersede Tony in season three as the mysterious and Machiavellian lead. It became clear very quickly that Effy wasn’t just a substitute chaos agent. She was one of the most gripping characters of the entire Skins franchise, and it seems her appeal has only snowballed since.

It’s quite funny that a character in a show targeted at British youth between the years 2007 and 2010, resonates so strongly with an international audience of teens today. 

The vast majority of teen dramas also skew conservative and wealthy. By contrast, Effy is average – a part of the thriving but recognisable English middle-class. She goes to a sixth form college, lives in an identikit terraced-house-with-bay-windows, and dresses in high street clothes.

Skins, in general, has held up because, even in its most surreal moments, it was able to communicate the distressing and exhilarating experience of being young in such a relatable way.

In that sense, Effy is a vessel for the whole spirit of Skins. Both stern and dreamy, she embodies the show’s initial catchphrase: fuck it – a blunt acceptance of circumstances which, as a young person, you’re powerless to do anything about, as well as the element of fantasy that often kicks in to convey the inarticulable. In a video analysis of Effy’s style, the narrator says “her fashion is the embodiment of the rebellion, beauty and mystery that the Skins franchise holds”.

A severely depressed and traumatised character, Effy spends most of her arc running away from her troubles by creating more immediate ones. It’s an ill-advisable but understandable act of agency; a way of coping through control rather than passivity. Instead of lashing out or doing nothing, she turns her violence inward. 

Ultimately, Skins reflected the ambient melodrama of puberty better than any other show of its time. It never needed to be realistic, and neither did Effy. She just had to reflect teenagers the way they see themselves.