My dearest Family,I have a small confession to make: I still haven’t brought myself to watch the new Aileen documentary on Netflix. I’ve sat down to do it more than once, but every time my finger hovers over “play,” something in me pulls back. I’m still deeply affected by her. During the songwriting process I immersed myself so intensely in her world-her wounds, her history, her contradictions.... that revisiting it now feels almost like touching a bruise that hasn’t fully healed.
And of course, life has been relentless lately (we’re preparing something new to shoot very soon 👀), but it’s more than a packed schedule. Seeing her again, hearing her voice, reopens all the emotional weight I carried while creating the song.
Maybe you can help me move through this. Have any of you watched the documentary yet?
What troubles me most isn’t only the title Aileen: Queen of Serial Killers which already feels tasteless and performative, but the way her story is continuously framed. Aileen lived with severe mental health issues. She was a homeless, deeply traumatised, queer woman in a society that punished her existence long before she ever committed a crime. I still can’t forget that she was once asked, by another woman, whether a sex worker can even be raped. That moment alone reveals so much about the lens through which Aileen was seen. I want to be very clear: I do not condone what she did. But I absolutely condemn the way she was treated, dismissed, and dehumanised.
As a woman, her story shakes me every single time. It is a portrait of trauma, not a tale of someone who “wanted” to kill. She didn’t become a murderer until her thirties; it wasn’t driven by thrill or desire, but by a lifetime of violence, abandonment, and the loss of a childhood she never truly had.
I’m curious how you felt watching it. Did the documentary handle these layers with any responsibility? Did it acknowledge the trauma, or did it fall back into sensationalism?
Let’s talk about it together. I’ll read your comments as soon as I can, and I’ll be back towards the end of the week.With love,
-SKYND 🖤