Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University
What do Bebe Rexha, Katy Perry, Meghan Trainor and Rita Ora all have in common? They’re all trapped in the “Khia Asylum”.
The Khia Asylum (pronounced “kye-ah”) is a metaphorical space carved out for famous music artists – primarily women – who have lost their so-called public “relevance”. The name references American one-hit wonder Khia, known for her 2002 track, My Neck, My Back (Lick It).
On one hand, the Khia Asylum falls into the category of post-modern digital playfulness: its associated content is highly ironic, cynical and at times brain rot adjacent.
On the other hand, it’s a gendered pejorative that mirrors the historical pathologising of women who, in one way or another, don’t meet society’s impossible expectations of them.
While male artists enjoy more freedom to fail, or spend time away from the limelight, their female counterparts are dubbed “flops” for doing the same.Once someone has entered the “asylum”, escape is usually only possible through significant commercial success, or a dazzling re-brand.
A symptom of toxic fan culture
The Khia Asylum phenomenon is said to have emerged out of “Stan Twitter” (now X) in 2024.
This is an organised subculture made up of a range of fandoms, including Beyonce’s Beehive, the BTS Army, and extreme wings of the Swifties and Beleibers. The term “Stan” – inspired by Eminem’s song of the same name – signifies extreme fandom and devotion.
Despite these origins, however, the Khia Asylum has taken on new life on TikTok as part of “floptok”. Members of floptok are said to live on the (also metaphorical) island of Floptropica, where the Khia Asylum is located, and where “flops” are satirically celebrated.
The floptok community ultimately decides who is placed in the asylum, but there are some general guiding principles. Mainly, an eligible artist should be someone the general public is aware of, but simply doesn’t care about.
Bebe Rexha is an oft-cited example. Rexha achieved a considerable fame around 2015 to 2018, for songs such as Me, Myself & I, I’m A Mess and Meant to Be. But she has since dropped out of the mainstream, and most people are now indifferent to her next career move.
Where are all the men?
The Khia Asylum itself is overwhelmingly gendered, both in its origins and its focus on female artists. It reflects the cruel nature of the online attention economy, in which women disproportionately face the threat of irrelevance.
While the asylum does have a “male wing”, it functions differently. The male members of the asylum, which include Gotye and B.o.B., aren’t scrutinised to the same extent.
Moreover, the career slumps of artists such as Justin Timberlake and Justin Beiber could easily be topics of conversation on floptok, but rarely are. Bieber’s recent Coachella set came after a four-year break from touring, yet he wasn’t dubbed a flop.
Meanwhile, Mariah Carey – who has won six Grammys and sold more than 200 million albums – is cyclically in the Khia Asylum. According to Floptok Wiki:
She is also a Flop goddess with celestial abilities and divine singing power […] She is known to bless everyone from November to December 26th with Christmas joy until she goes back into hibernation.
The ‘hysterical’ woman trope
The Khia Asylum by its very name latches onto a longstanding institutional practice of associating women with mental instability.
As far back as Ancient Greece, men have pointed to the female body as the source of irrational and unstable behaviour.
Hippocrates, “the father of medicine”, helped spread the theory of the “wandering womb”. This claimed the uterus could detach itself and wander around a woman’s body, causing various medical afflictions, and “hysteria” – a false diagnosis characterised by symptoms such as anxiety, fainting, depression and strong emotions.
French theorist and historian Michel Foucault (1926–84) identified a shift in how madness was perceived in the mid-17th century, during a period he called the “Great Confinement”. While previously treated as a quirk, madness was being redefined as a social problem that needed to be removed from “sane” society. This led to the birth of asylums.
Foucault also explains how, in the 18th and 19th centuries, it became common to view the female body as highly sexual, and therefore fragile. This fragility could cause a range of symptoms that typified hysteria – but really just represented behaviours that men found undesirable. It became the norm to institutionalise women with hysteria.
Foucault saw the “hysterization” of women as a means to control the female body through medical study. Similarly, the Khia Asylum can be seen as a means to control female artists through social critique.
Escaping the asylum
Escape from the asylum is possible; some artists such as Madonna and Dolly Parton have pardons.
Several artists currently in the asylum have releases coming up this year, with the floptok community framing these as “parole hearings”. A single song might be sufficient for escape, such as Sabrina Carpenter’s 2024 breakout track Espresso.
Zara Larsson recently claimed her freedom on the back of her 2025 album Midnight Sun.
Another notable escapee is Charlie XCX, whose 2024 album Brat made her “the moment” of pop culture.
Some artists in the asylum, such as Bebe Rexha, have leaned into the label. But doing so has only kept her trapped. It seems the more you want out, the more floptok thinks you deserve to be there.
– ref. Sending women to the ‘Khia Asylum’ is music’s latest cruel trend. But it reflects an old historical bias – https://theconversation.com/sending-women-to-the-khia-asylum-is-musics-latest-cruel-trend-but-it-reflects-an-old-historical-bias-281331
