Being a die-hard fangirl is undoubtedly my main personality trait. The English-Irish pop boyband global sensation popularly known as One Direction sparked my fangirl frenzy into what have now become normalcies for my 20-year-old self to spend restless nights joining concert live streams eagerly waiting to find out if I correctly guessed what suit color Harry Styles would be wearing for his show during Love On Tour, surrender my battery life to Twitter and Instagram fan page notifications because God forbid I ever miss out on updates regarding Niall Horan’s whereabouts and start an entire small business dedicated to designing stickers and apparel inspired by the One Direction boys, only to invest all my earnings from it on their official merchandise instead… ironic? I’m fully aware.
Now, these efforts might sound a bit absurd to your average Joe (not Jonas), who most likely doesn’t have a framed poster of fetus Harry Styles hung up above their toilet, but to me… the album releases, the award shows, the world tours and even the concert tees, they mean everything. Truth is, I’d be lying to you if I were to say when I was younger I didn’t try my hardest to shelter this huge part of who I was, constantly having to defend my belittled interests to any boy in my classroom who even dared to slander One Direction’s discography. Growing up, I had always been partially ashamed of the artists I liked, the music I listened to, the movies I watched, and even the books I read because as a teenage girl, your opinions on anything that could potentially be any good are quite literally insignificant. Twilight? “Forget about it.” Harry Potter? “Nerd alert!” One Direction? “You only like them because you think they’re hot!” I mean yeah, I do credit them as the instigators for my sexual awakening, but this was nowhere near the sole reason as to why I admired and cared for them so much.
It wasn’t until I fully matured I was able to comprehend how misogyny and sexism were the two defining factors fueling the negative connotation surrounding fangirls. Often stigmatized as hysterical, desperate, emotional, shallow, unintelligent and basically any other synonym for “crazy” currently residing in the Oxford dictionary to date, fangirls have endured years of unnecessary scrutiny and have been dismissed of their happiness because personal interests can often only be validated as important based around what is acceptable for men in society.
Why have we allowed people to paint this picture of a young female screaming with excitement over her favorite music artist as something so outrageous? Is it not the same exact thing men do when their favorite NFL team makes a touchdown? You’re telling me we’ve stooped so low for it to become socially acceptable for grown men to break out in riots after the team they had been rooting for was defeated, but frowned upon when innocent teenage girls decide to camp out overnight just to secure a spot on the barricade at a concert they had been waiting years for? I’ll be the first to admit I have (and call me a lunatic if you’d like Kevin, but I bet Tom Brady hasn’t high-fived you as Harry Styles did me).
Being a fangirl isn’t for the faint of heart, as our passions are too often met with shame. We are regularly expected to someday grow out of our interests labeled “phases,” and when we don’t it’s almost concerning to some. Our long-term loyalty and devotion become newly regarded as obsessive. “Aren’t you a little too old to still be listening to One Direction?” Boy, I’ve been asked this question an alarming amount of times meanwhile out there are 50-year-old men with lairs decked out in ridiculously expensive sports memorabilia that go completely unnoticed.
Female-dominated fanbases are almost never taken seriously. It’s almost as though men think the only way possible for women to be remotely interested in something is if it involves an attractive man, otherwise the scheme must be completely manufactured because successful female artists like Taylor Swift don’t even write their own songs! Right? False. She does. Anyone who is largely supported by girls simply cannot have real success. These double-standards are widely used to undermine the success of artists with predominantly female fanbases, and so they end up having to suffer from the repercussions of how society views their fans… hence why One Direction got booed by the crowd at the 2013 VMAs after their song “Best Song Ever” beat out artists like Daft Punk and Robin Thicke for “Best Song of the Summer.” I can’t express enough how much One Direction’s music label exploited them, nor how hard they worked for their success, just for a bunch of fellow artists to chime in on degrading their win because society never saw them as talented enough to be deserving of any award of the sort.
Oh, and if you’re wondering what it’s like to be a girl in a male-dominated fanbase… it’s the most exhausting and never-ending endeavor to prove ourselves as certified fans. We can’t just enjoy watching Marvel movies and call ourselves fans. We have to have read all the comic books, know every single superhero, and be able to chronologically date the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline. I can bet you every single man sitting in the movie theater room prior to watching Spider-Man: No Way Home questioned my mom and I’s validity as “real” Marvel fans because they’d innately assume we just don’t know, care or understand enough to be watching it the day it premiered. Almost as if my mom literally didn’t wait in a virtual queue for hours to make sure she secured opening day tickets for my family and me. Imagine always feeling the need to justify something you love. Yeah, it squashes the fun out of everything, and us fangirls know the feeling all too well (no pun intended).
Microaggressions like these inflicted upon vulnerable teenage girls could be detrimental to their self-esteem. By continuously disparaging girls, you’re telling them that their interests are unimportant, ultimately breaking down their character too. In an interview with Rolling Stone, the beloved Harry Styles even commented upon the subject in an effort to defend his fans:
“How can you say young girls don’t get it? They’re our future. Our future doctors, lawyers, mothers, presidents, they kind of keep the world going.”
It’s an undeniably remarkable thing to be a part of such a diverse, loving and loyal community. Unapologetically immersing yourself in the things that make you happiest in life should carry no shame along with it. If I’ve learned anything from being a fellow fangirl, it’s that life becomes so much more blissful when you finally begin to embrace all who you are. I think it’s time we stop destroying people’s happiness and learn to celebrate it instead. Celebrating love, passion, joy and excitement… that’s what we fangirls do.
