Glorified Fangirls: Double Standards of the Entertainment Industry

Lama Abousalem

Opinions

Growing up, I bought One Direction school stationery and temporary tattoos to try on with my friends. I also collected Football World Cup sticker cards to put into my sticker album and traded the doubles I got with my cousins. As someone who identifies with both groups, I was able to see the stark difference between the treatment of “fangirls” and sports fans.

Fangirls are constantly portrayed as obsessive and unstable: they spend thousands of dollars on tickets and merchandise, create huge online communities, and show unwavering, often stubborn, support for the people they are fans of. On the other hand, sports fans, specifically male sports fans, are deemed devoted and excited: they spend thousands of dollars on tickets and merchandise, create huge online communities, and show unwavering, often stubborn, support for the people they are fans of. Sports fans will paint their faces and bodies and create elaborate costumes and signs to show adoration for their favourite teams. Sports fans also have a long history of violence in both the celebration of wins and the commemoration of losses. For example, when the Los Angeles Rams won the Superbowl this year, fans took to the streets in celebrations the LAPD described as “violent and destructive.” So why are screaming BTS fans seen as hysterical and insane, when grown men screaming at their TVs are seen as completely normal?

Fangirl communities, often called “fandoms,” give people the opportunity to build transferable soft and hard skills needed to survive both in daily life as well as professionally in a technologically advanced world. Out of fan girls—the unpaid interns of the modern entertainment industry—are carved music corporation executives, marketing agents, and even technological engineers. Miya, @32miya on TikTok, works at Universal Music Group and describes how her background as a fangirl paved the way for her current career. She writes that many fangirls already have “90% of the skills needed to enter the music industry.” For Miya, it was her fan account with over 150K followers that landed her jobs in two of “The Big Five” multinational music corporations. Even with genuine, learned skill, fangirls’ care for artists is still dismissed.

Sports fans are never made to feel ashamed of their interests (unless, of course, the team they root for is bad), and their adoration for the game and its players is not pushed to the side. They too, can develop transferable skills which allow them to pursue career paths like hosting after-match shows and becoming game analysts.

The stigma attached to being a fangirl, being described as “weird” and “addicted,” is driven by society’s inability to allow women to express themselves through the things they enjoy. This comes not only through being a fangirl but also through general, everyday interests. A young girl took to Quora and asked, “I’m 11 and ashamed of being girly (I’m a girl) why?” Even as young as eleven years old, women are made to feel “ashamed” for expressing themselves in certain ways considered abnormal by others. When women express interest in certain topics, even completely socially acceptable topics, they are still shamed for either not knowing enough or just being interested in the first place. This is also what promotes an adherence to patriarchal values, in which women behave in support of gender roles and set societal standards, as well as seek male validation of their interests. When women’s interests are made to seem unimportant, it sends the message that women themselves are unimportant too. Women who fall victim to the vicious institution known as the patriarchy become part of the group that hounds fangirls for simply displaying care and interest.

Past the exterior, there really isn’t much difference between sports fans and fangirls. At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with supporting what you care about and are interested in, whether as a fangirl, sports fan, neither, or both.