When we hear the word “fangirl” we often picture an unstable, overly emotional, hysterical and delirious teenage girl, wearing her favorite band’s t-shirt and bursting with enthusiastic admiration for the band, on the verge of exploding with tears or screams.
We do not often picture a smart, sophisticated, balanced, rational, selective consumer of music when we think of a young female fan. “Fangirling” is not considered a dignified thing to do. We rarely ever use “fangirl” in a positive context.
As Cassie Whitt writes for Alternative Press, “Fangirls are accused of the unspoken crime of being young, female and excited about the art they like—a “crime” people never seem to take the time to realize is very silly. Being young is awesome. Being a girl is awesome. Being passionate about something is awesome. What’s the problem?”
It’s sexism (it’s everywhere). Women are already stereotyped as emotional and irrational. Younger women even more so.Male fans do not face the same stigma. Male fans of even the same age are seen as more level-headed and valuable fans. Male fans indicate what’s “good” and what’s “cool”. While teenage girls are just experiencing silly, substance-less, fleeting obsession.
People think that something isn’t good until it is certified as good by males. The flip side of this is that women, particularly young women, aren’t thought to be good critics of music. Some think they just don’t have good taste or that they don’t really know much about or even care about music. There’s the argument that they only care about how the band members look, making them out to be less than “real fans”.
In an article for A.V. Club, Annie Zaleski writes that teenage girls, “aren’t given enough credit for being savvy culture consumers. The possibility that they could appreciate and want to hear music with substance (and not just blindly worship the cute guy or the perky pop star) often isn’t even considered.”
Therefore, people seem to think that female fans lend artists less credibility than their male counterparts. Bands are considered to be less mature, less successful, less talented, or less “real” if their fan base is primarily female, and largely in the 12 to 20-year-old demographic. Artists aspire to have an older and more male fan base – not for the sake of reaching a larger audience, but as way of achieving success.
Alexandra Pollard, a music reviewer for the Guardian, writes that we live “in a culture in which teenage girls are seen as the lowest common denominator of music fan. A culture in which older men are the bastions of good taste, the brave protectors of real music – while young women’s enthusiasm is dismissed as a sort of mass hysteria, blocking their ability to discern good from bad.”
So a band isn’t considered successful or a “real band” until it has a certain number of male fans. Once a band is widely successful, people seem to discount the fact that said band started off with a fan base containing a majority of teenage girls, while having a predominantly young and female fan base becomes almost an insult, an accusation hurled at bands in order to undermine them.
Either way, female fans are erased. They’re either written off as not genuine or valuable fans or forgotten about. Females can’t be “real fans”. Having a female audience is, to some, the same as not having an audience at all.
Pollard states, “To look out into a crowd, or into your Twitter mentions, and immediately discount the approval of young women, is a foolish thing to do. Don’t bite the hand that feeds.”
And it’s a hand that feeds well. There is no dedication like that of a teenage girl to her favorite band (just ask my friends and family). The amount of money, time and energy that a “fangirl” puts into loving and listening to a band is something artists should want from their fans – something they should hope for, work towards and be grateful for. Bands who start off with a primarily teenage female fan base have fangirls to thank for bolstering their success and launching their careers.
Whitt writes, “A fangirl’s devotion is the precise kind of fervor that can't be taught. It's the thing that puts them at the front row of shows now, and later in life, will put them anywhere else, doing anything they want to do. Being able to believe in something with unbridled love is so special and beautiful.”
Pollard writes, “Their judgments are just as legitimate, their enthusiasm just as credible, even if their screams are a little louder.”
A teenage girl is just as valuable a fan as anyone else. In fact, even more so.
