Fangirling, A History
as told by a current BTS AMI and former diehard Jobros stan
I finished reading Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It by Kaitlyn Tiffany several weeks ago. However, I hesitated posting about it or even recommending it to friends. It was overwhelming figuring out how to condense my feelings into a simple review of a book that I feel I could have written parts of myself. When I first heard about this book, it was around the same time I started all of *this* and I thought to myself “welp…never mind then, somebody already wrote a book about it so I guess I should pack it up and go home.” I am…delulu and embarrassed to admit it, but that is honestly what I thought. Then I discovered that Tiffany was 1. a white woman and 2. a One Direction fan, so phew! Not all is lost because I still have a thing or two to add to the conversation! Love that for me.
Much like the full title suggests, Kaitlyn Tiffany, a staff writer at The Atlantic and proud Directioner, guides readers into the vast world of boy bands and internet stan culture. With her insider knowledge of One Direction, Tiffany maps out how one British boy band changed the landscape of social media and an entire online subculture thanks to a fandom more powerful than any others that came before it.
Elvis, Frank Sinatra, The Beatles and many others all have enthusiastic young women from every generation to thank for their commercial success. As much as a lot of old, sexist losers like to take credit for it, WE drive the culture and it is thanks to US that your faves ever made it big. This is hardly news, but straight men have a history of never taking anybody that is not a straight man seriously and shaming us for displaying our love and passion for anything they did not tell us about first. In Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis, there is a scene in which an audience of young women witness Elvis’s wiggling hips for the first time and their reactions are nothing short of orgasmic. Obviously, Baz added his trademark dramatization to the scene, but I can say with authority that it most likely played out similarly in real life. Keep in mind that these women (sadly not so different from the women/queer/trans/non-binary folks of today) were taught to suppress their sexual desires and therefore had no other outlet to vent these frustrations. When the situation finally presented itself in a communal space full of equally frustrated women, their emotions literally exploded out of their bodies and manifested themselves in physical ways such as screaming, crying, and fainting.
“We have had so many screaming girls. Every time we see them we’re like “They’re screaming.” And that’s it. It’s not that the image of the screaming fan isn’t true— we can all see it; it’s in the medical literature; many of us have embodied it. It’s that the screaming fan doesn’t scream for nothing, and screaming isn’t all the fan is doing. It never has been.” —Kaitlyn Tiffany in the chapter of her book aptly entitled “Screaming.”
While we are no longer seen as sexually deviant youths in hysterics in today’s society, our affinity for pop music is still mocked by fans of SeRiOuS aRtIstS (read: straight male fans who exclusively love and respect straight male musicians with guitars). Luckily, the rest of the world is slowly moving away from that sense of superiority. It is finally considered…good??? or at the very least, socially acceptable to be a girl (and in some respects, a queer, trans, or non-binary individual) who is confident in and embraces their girly, non-typical straight/male tendencies. Many guilty pleasures are no longer considered guilty anymore. BTW, misogyny is once again to blame for that term to even exist, as a guilty pleasure is usually an umbrella term for anything made by and catered to women. Neat! Now thanks to the internet, you can easily find online communities of individuals that share your same opinions if nobody in your real life will listen. These people get it and they get me. The loudest fangirls among us have zero shame in letting you know these boy bands make us happy. In this current nightmare society, sometimes a song or YouTube performance by our fave hotties is the only thing to pull us out of our latest depressing doom-scroll. Why wouldn’t we want to share that happiness with our followers?
Like only a true fangirl could do, Kaitlyn Tiffany did more than just make a case for us to be taken seriously. She made me feel ~seen~ in a way I never have before when it came to this part of my identity. I also have Meilin Lee of Turning Red to thank for that too. In an interview with Tiffany for The Cut, Naomi Elias even mentions the young protagonist of Pixar’s latest movie. Writes Elias, “Mei is a fangirl whose obsession with fictional boy band 4*Town is one of the single biggest driving forces in her life. Her determination to express her love for the band propels the movie forward and showcases how well organized, mission-driven, and relentlessly innovative fangirls can be.” I went out of my way to champion this movie because I will always recommend excellent movies made by Asian creators telling Asian stories. Is this what you white girls felt watching EVERY Disney princess movie growing up?? Must be nice. To the predominately white critics of the movie, namely men and mommy bloggers, I urge you to read this before coming at me with your takes. I also knew I had to speak up about this movie because so many other fangirls must relate to Mei too. I wanted to reminisce with each other about a formative and frankly, deliriously happy and funny aspect of our adolescence we now look back on with maybe some embarrassment, but mostly fondness. After all: “we are cringe, we are legion.”
Whether it was being a Potterhead as a child, a Jobros stan in my pivotal teen years, or a full-blown ARMY as an adult woman, I have always been about this fangirl life. I like to think I have always made my love for all things pop culture pretty well known too. Maybe that is why this newsletter feels like the perfect creative outlet for me to dump all of my loud opinions onto one platform. I honestly believe it was the reason I gained any kind of confidence as a teenager too. It was such a relief when I learned early on in life that I could simply stop pretending to care about sports teams and Bob Dylan and Quentin Tarantino just because some dudes a long time ago deemed those interests as cool and important and mine as “silly” or “nerdy” or “girly”. I know there are some friends of mine that did not have that same confidence growing up and hid their passions from their friends and parents for so long because they were embarrassed to admit to what they wanted and what they loved out loud. I see you, I hear you, and I am here to fangirl with you now! Never apologize, never surrender!
Something shifted when my fandom allegiance evolved from Potterhead to Jobros diehard as a teenager. While I felt no shame in nerding out at the midnight release of each Harry Potter book and movie because my friends were with me, the Jonas Brothers were a different story. At first, I was embarrassed to still be watching the Disney Channel in middle school in order to catch the prime Jonas Brothers content, but I got over that pretty quickly once my sister and her bestie started watching too. We could all obsess together in peace. For those curious, it was the “Year 3000” music video that caught my attention. We clocked “the cute one with curly hair” and suddenly Nick Jonas was my first bias before I even knew what that meant.
I made an important realization at this point in my life: the teasing was done by the boys in my class and even a few girls who wanted the boys to think they were cool. The same boys who geeked out with me over Harry Potter because of our shared taste in books and movies were now telling me I had bad taste in music and boy bands were sTuPiD. I was thankfully not alone and had my classmate in my corner who attended the concerts with me, my sister, and her bestie. The four of us had each other to talk to when nobody else took us seriously. The way my male peers treated me was my first distinct memory experiencing misogyny firsthand. Neat! You are never too young I guess!
The Jonas Brothers announcing their break as a band coincided with me finally dating boys. It was easy to bring out my cool, indie music-loving, concert-attending side and let only that side be known to my crushes. I was careful not to turn any of them off with any mention of my fangirl past. It is important to point out that this was the main reason I never got into One Direction. They rose to prominence right as the Jonas Brothers were slowing down and at that age, my priorities changed. I thought I only had room in my heart for ONE boy band forever and I was not interested in putting the effort into joining a new fandom all over again, only for said band to then break up for good. Any Directioners reading this, my heart goes out to you! </3
Fast forward to 2019. I am happily married and the Jonas Brothers just announced their comeback. The Jobros group chat was resurrected overnight. We kept our promise to each other to meet up no matter where we were in the world to attend the reunion concert together. BTW, my concert tally as of today is six Jobros, three Nick Jonas for those keeping score. We wore our “vintage” tour t-shirts and lost our voices screaming the lyrics throughout the all too familiar setlist. It was glorious and emotional and I wish I could easily post the video of us crying to “When You Look Me In The Eyes.” While I no longer follow Nick, Joe, or Kevin’s every move and do not really care for their latest musical endeavors, they will always hold a special place in my heart as the three boys that made me a true fangirl.
2019 was the same year I watched an episode of Saturday Night Live with Emma Stone as host and the first South Korean artists to ever perform on the series as the musical guest: a group of seven men by the name of BTS. When I watched their performances of “Mic Drop” and “Boy with Luv” I thought… “oh??? Now who are these cuties with the moves?!?” And more specifically…who is that dreamboat in the front?! Readers: it was Jeon Jung-kook and he became by bias in that moment!
For the next two years I was a casual fan, mostly because the familiar feelings of embarrassment for loving a boy band were rising back up to the surface since nobody else talked about them. And let me tell you: there is nothing less fun than stanning something that none of your other friends can’t even pretend to care about. From the bit of research I did back then, I learned they debuted as a group in 2013, debuted in America in 2017, and yet I never heard anything about them until 2019…interesting. Cut to summer of 2021: I was jobless, spending months in recovery from two surgeries and reeling from a traumatic accident involving my husband. Things were bleak. I was feeling isolated and stuck at home on my couch a LOT. One day my friend heard me casually mention that “I like BTS, I just don’t know too much about them but I want to learn!” I will forever be grateful to her for taking that to heart and broaching the subject about her BTS knowledge with me because she knew I needed a happy distraction from everything else going on in my life. A few weeks later we were at her house, pausing the “Butter” music video at this part to learn their names and the rest is history.
The deeper I dove into the world of BTS and ARMY, the more I kept thinking that their existence was a phenomenon unlike anything else I had ever seen before. Their fanbase was larger than every other band in the world. Within hours they sold out four stadium concerts in a row in two American cities within five months of each other. This was on the pre-sale date exclusively for ARMY fan club members! Sold out before they even went on sale to the general public! Your fave could never! And yet? I had exactly one IRL friend and one internet friend who expressed any interest in them ever. I saw zero mention of them from the many pop culture enthusiasts I follow. The sentiment I was picking up from laypeople and the media was feeling eerily familiar. Yes, it was feeling misogynistic, but this time with an additional layer on top: it was feeling a lot like anti-Asian hate.
We all know the racial stereotypes of Asian men and how damaging they are: you can’t tell them apart, they are too short, they are too pretty, not masculine, have small penises, etc. You know, the standard, completely false Western ideals of beauty garbage. The rhetoric behind their music was racist and untrue too: all K-pop songs sound the same. Writing off an entire genre of music originating in Asia is the same as refusing to watch Asian media because you do not want to read the subtitles. Shout out to my KING Bong Joon Ho; I will take every opportunity to rewatch his perfect acceptance speech for Parasite. Not to mention BTS started out with three rappers and their discography ranges from rap, hip-hop, EDM, trap, house, ballads, and several sub-genres of pop. K-pop is so much more than just cutesy dance-pop! But classic ego-centrist behavior: lumping anything foreign into one giant category because they are too lazy and ignorant to imagine that anything they did not create themselves could possibly have any kind of nuance. Even rewatching their American TV appearances now make me cringe. Some of your favorite celebrities and talk show hosts speak to them in infantilizing tones when they meet them. It is both gross to witness but also further proof that Kim Namjoon is the best band leader in history. Nothing but respect for MY president.
As I have previously mentioned, it was another mind-blowing realization to me when I started befriending ARMYs who were not only all women of color, but they all had identical experiences when it came to our feelings of loneliness and embarrassment for expressing love for BTS. Where were the white friends who supported my love for the Jonas Brothers for years, despite not being fans themselves? Where were my pop music-loving white friends I always discussed new music with? Where were our internet friends who followed all the BTS accounts but never reached out when we unabashedly asked if there were any ARMYs out there in our attempts to make new BTS friends? Nowhere to be seen!
I have moved past being sad about those white women not showing up for me and it is truly only thanks to this newsletter. And thank you to Kaitlyn Tiffany for writing this book. While this “review” morphed into a personal essay about my own history with fangirling, I still have more thoughts about her book. My thoughts are overwhelmingly positive, do not get me wrong! Five star book, would recommend to everyone! But it is pretty clear reading it that there are a few key differences between the fandom of a mostly white, British band vs. the K-pop fandoms dominating the internet stan subculture today. As an intelligent white woman, I am hopeful that Tiffany recognizes these differences too. From one fangirl to another, thank you for making me feel a little less crazy for caring so much about boy bands that I choose to write about them on the internet for free. Directioners everywhere owe her so much! And truthfully, all self-identifying fangirls of any band or artist should read what she has to say. Because she just gets it.
“The little indignities of being young and the big disappointments of not finding the love you want or of not becoming the person you’d hoped— these things are tempered by fandom, which is such an ugly, boring word. Fandom is an interruption; it’s as simple as enjoying something for no reason, and it’s as complicated as growing up. It should be celebrated for what it can provide in individual lives, but it should also be taken seriously for what it can do at scale— not because I like it or because being a girl is cool now, but because fans are connecting based on affinity and instinct and participating in hyperconnected networks that they built for one purpose but can use for many others…We should talk about how we went online, driven by some sort of longing, and why we stayed there, pushing that want outward, over and over, until it couldn’t be ignored.” -Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It by Kaitlyn Tiffany.
I truly love Kim Namjoon with my whole heart.
I think the hardest I’ve fangirled was HSM, and now look at me, I’m taking my nieces to Olivia Rodrigo concerts! I’ll never forget the weekend that the first High School Musical came out. I miraculously had cable and I think I watched it’s one and a half times. By Monday all the ladies at school were gushing over Zac Efron / Troy, the music, the magic, etc. It was so bonding!!! Fangirls are power. Truly.
WE ARE CRINGE, WE ARE LEGION!!! 😭💜 another mic drop of a newsletter. Can’t wait for part two. 💯💯💯