First of all, teen fangirls, I want to let you know that this is coming from a place of deep deep love. Please don’t take any of this as criticism. I write this to you now because I was you, I’ve been through it all and I know exactly what it’s like. Now I’m twenty, a little too busy and a little past the major ‘fangirl’ thing. I promise I still get just as excited about new releases from my favourites, I still cry to all those songs- I’m just unaware of all the day to day dramas and intricacies that come with the whole package, my money goes on bills not merch, and I don’t tirelessly promote what I love online.
Now there’s the more protective mama bear side of me too. I see teen fangirls online treading the exact same cyber footsteps I did and making all the mistakes I did too. I’ve never felt more protective of teen fangirls than when the Manchester attack occurred at the Ariana Grande concert in 2017, it felt more close to home than anything before, and not only because that was one of my home venues. It felt so close because of the young people that were there, frantically tweeting the aftermath, and the twitters of those that lost their lives, felt so familiar, tweets mirroring my own from a few years previous.
I want to tell you that you should never be made to feel embarrassed for the things you like. Please, please go on loving things with the unbridled joy and passion you feel, it’s one of the best things you can feel. The people that might make fun or belittle it either have no idea how amazing that all feels or they once did but don’t have anything that makes them feel that way anymore- either way it’s very sad for them. As long as you’re not hurting anyone, such as obsessing so much that you harm or invade the privacy of the thing you’re obsessing about or hurt yourself by committing so much time to being a fangirl that you neglect family, friends or studies etc.
Really, you are. You completely drive the market on what’s popular and what succeeds. You have an absolutely massive impact on the lives of writers/producers/celebrities and allow them to have amazing careers. From sales of the thing itself, free promotion online, merch, views- all of that. With this power, as always, comes great responsibility. Is what you’re promoting good for the world, do you think? Does your favourite champion morality? Does you’re show give good representation to marginalised groups? Whats the message? Your potential and your power to craft what’s popular really can help change the world.
You might feel like you’re not because you’re just making teen fangirls content right? Wrong. Making fan videos? You’re learning to edit! Writing fanfiction? That’s creative writing practice right there! Promoting online? You’re learning social media marketing first hand! So what if you’re using something else as a building block whilst you’re learning? I’m not saying you can put these things on your CV but you sure are learning a lot whilst you’re having your fun.
No matter how much time you’ve put into loving something, tirelessly promoting or making theories about. At the end of the day you don’t have any creative control. Don’t like it? Rewrite it. That’s why fanfiction exists for a start. And then use that and write a story for your own characters and pretty soon you’ll have your own novel/screenplay/poem that you DO own.
No one interest is better than any other kind, as long as it’s not hurting anyone, everyone has different interests! You’re no different for liking one type of music or one tv show. Books aren’t better than makeup. I know it can be hard when you’re interests aren’t super popular among your peers, or if you’re made to feel like an outsider for them. It’s easy to convince yourself that you’re so much better than people who like X because you like X, but it’s not that simple. If people are mean to you, that’s what makes them bad people, not what they like or don’t. It’s hard not to get a superiority complex as a defence mechanism, we’ve all been there. As you grow up and leave school you have more and more choice about who you get to spend your time with and you’ll find more and more amazing people with similar and different interests to you who you love.
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