Earlier this week, a member of world-famous band One Direction left the band for “personal reasons” (some people are hesitant to believe this, but nonetheless). One Direction is famous among preteen and teen girls – as a former teenage fangirl myself, I can understand how important a band can be to someone.
When the news broke, fans took to social media to express how upset they were. Many trends (trending topics) on Twitter related to the news; in fact, a majority of the trending topics in the US were about Zayn Malik. People were grieving. Buzzfeed published an article showing some examples. I tweeted my sympathies and continued on with my life. It wasn’t until I saw the reactions to said article that I had to speak out.
The degrading of women in our society isn’t news. However, the degrading of teen girls is something that’s so mainstream it’s seen as “funny” and “harmless” – simply scroll through the popular app of Vine and you’ll come across many examples of people mocking teen girls using phrases such as “I can’t”, “literally”, “o.m.g.”, and so on. Demonizing teen girls has become normal practice for people nowadays, for both adults and other teens. How is this unfair?
For starters, it’s a double standard. When a sports team breaks up or loses a player, endless social media posts of sympathy are created for fans of the sports team. When the same thing happens with a band with a primarily teen girl fan following, the fans receive nothing of the sort – they’re told to “get over it”, “grow up”, and “stop obsessing over boy bands”.. as though adults don’t do the same with sports teams.
What’s unfair about this is that it’s not just in the One Direction fandom. Growing up, I used to be a huge fan of many things of the sort. My obsessive nature mirrored that of dedicated sports fans, yet when I revealed that I was an avid fan of such things, I was mocked by both adults and other teens alike. Why are we pitting against teens in such a way?
What’s unique about a band like One Direction is that they’re so popular that they touch a lot of people. What’s prominent in teen girl fan followings is that many people use bands such as One Direction (or perhaps a movie or a television show) as a form of escapism from whatever mental issues (which is surprisingly common among teens nowadays) or other situations in their life that prompts such temporary escapism. Therefore, we should understand when they’re upset when something threatens their safe place. Instead of telling them to get over it and find something else, we should be supporting them and helping them overcome it. What we barely feel about the issue, they feel in every part of their lives.
(On an additional note, Zayn was also a Muslim man who spoke about his Muslim orgins and became famous in a society primarily dominated by white people – therefore, he was also an amazing role model for many young people.)
We demonize teen girls because they’re outspoken and they’re easy targets. If we are to fix society, we must start with seemingly simple issues such as this. As someone who’s been in a situation similar to this before, I understand what it’s like to feel the way these young girls are feeling, and I believe that, as a society, we should be supporting them rather than demonizing them.
Start at hope. If you see someone who is upset over the departure of Zayn, comfort them. Let them know that they’re allowed to be upset and their feelings are valid. Young girls are taught from a young age by society to keep their feelings to themselves. Through the social issue I outlined in this article, they’re taught to keep their fandoms and what they enjoy to themselves or face mockery. And that needs to change.
– T Lopes
this is how a dream comes true; 