Throughout music history, there have always been fangirls. From the early roots of Jazz to the music we have today in the 21st century, fangirls have been around. Even the author of this article you are reading, yes me, am a major fangirl, but you know what? This kind of life that I live has not only inspired me to find what I want to do with my college degree but it is also a part of my quirky personality. I will tell you this, I am not one of those over the top, obnoxious fans who go out of their way to find where celebrities live, or stalk their every move or even crash their family weddings. It just does not say good things about you if you are one of those fans. Those kinds of fangirls give the rest of us a really bad name, and it is very frustrating living a life being blamed for things that the majority of us do. It only takes one person to ruin something and give it a bad name.

I have been a fangirl for as long as I can remember. It has always been apart of my life ever since I found out what music was. I grew up on R&B music with a mixture of the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and NSYNC. I remember in my room I had a massive poster of young Britney Spears from her Baby One More Time era. Time went on and I went to fangirl over other kinds of music and artists, like Justin Bieber and Twilight. I went through those phases for probably way too long but it's what I loved to do. I loved researching facts and knowing what they were up to, or looking up fun facts about their lives. To me looking these things up and following them on twitter made me feel closer to their personality. More time passed and the era of One Direction came. I am 20 years old almost 21, and I am still so in love with One Direction. I have two tattoos for them, one for the band as a whole and the other for Harry Styles, a former member of the band.

All that said, I am beyond frustrated and annoyed with the way people like me are being treated. Ever since One Direction started getting bigger I noticed I was being treated differently by my friends and people who didn't like One Direction. I pretty much get treated as if I have no brain cells and that I will never amount to anything successful because I love this band so much. I get treated differently because I am a woman who pretty much worships this band and appeared to people who are outside of this fandom that isn't something good.

I just really do not understand why it is okay for males to obsess, get loud and rowdy over sports like football or hockey, yet when I get excited about a new single One Direction put out, it's seen as "crazy" "insane" "psychotic" and we are downgraded to the term "crazy teenage girls". We get told this band is for "5-year-old girls" when the demographic is 16 to around 23-year-old individuals. As fangirls, we get told all we do is lust over the males we come to love and obsess over meaning all we want to do is have sex with them or have a romantic relationship with them. Verified accounts on twitter praise One Direction all the time and they get positive attention because they are verified and well we don't because we're just "teenage girls". We are seen as unintelligent because apparently, all we speak about is how much we want to date Harry Styles or to find where Liam Payne keeps his socks in his room or whatever the case may be. Apparently loving someone so much results in people telling us that we have nothing better to do or that it is not important, that we need to grow up. Being a fangirl for some reason is looked at as if it's a crime, and that we are not allowed to be excited about a band. It is as if you are not allowed to like things females like because what females like is not credible. Interesting right? Well, that is the life you are given, pure sexism, great right? One last thing, You cannot, ever in a million years judge a band or artist based on the fans. If the fans are mostly girls that DOES NOT mean they are a bad band. That is totally unfair.

You wouldn't think these kinds of things add up, but they do and it gets very frustrating trying to defend yourself when we live in a society where being a fangirl is looked down upon. Honestly, if you really want to think about it, if there were no fangirls in the world, these artists would not only become chart toppers, they would not have the massive amounts of money they have now, their songs would not be streaming at the rates that they do, they would not be having concerts or selling tickets and they would not be making any money from their merchandise. I cannot tell you how much money I have invested in merch and concert tickets, I will just say it has been a lot because I love these people I've seen.

I have One Direction tattoos because they came around when I was going through a very hard time in my life. They remind me that I can get through the hard times and remember that in the end, everything will be alright. I am currently going through a very rough time in my life and seeing my 'Girl Almighty' and my 'Everything will be alright' tattoo inspires me to wake up every morning, go to class and create art and just really enjoy what I am doing with my life. So I really encourage you to think about the next time you make fun or degrade people who are huge fans of people in the music industry. They save lives, they have saved mine.