The Hysterical Fangirl

 

The choices made by women are often scrutinized twice as much as men’s and more often than not their choices receive baseless ‘criticism’ that are more rooted in sexism and misogyny than an objective observation.

The standard is male. Women can think as men, act as men and understand men but to men it is very difficult to understand women. To most men, a woman still remains an object of mystery. Since, they do not understand women they try to fill the blank called women with what they think a woman is. In other words, a woman is unknown as a woman but is known as a caricature of a woman to most men.

This is precisely the reason why female authors can write male characters but male authors struggle to write female characters.

One stereotype I would like to address is the stereotype of a hysterical fangirl. People are fans to various things such as movies, music, sports etc., and sometimes they are fans of a particular celebrity or a player.

Fandoms are made up of men and women but the adjectives attributed to them is quite different.

Sports fans – made up predominantly of men – are ‘passionate’ while the fans of pop artists – made up predominantly of women – are ‘hysterical’ Whether it is the Beatles or Taylor Swift or BTS an artist with a large female following is often discredited.

This is because mainstream media – consisting of men – have a strong internal bias against the credibility of a woman’s choice. If women love someone or something then that is mediocre and not good. Women have shallow tastes therefore anything that attracts women is something that is not meant for men.

This phenomenon is called ‘the male flight’ where men leave behind something because women flock towards it. A good example would be the colour pink. In the 1920s pink was advertised as a ‘masculine’ colour however, as more and more women were given clothes in pink eventually the colour became a colour of ‘femininity’ in the 1940s. Today, the colour pink is viewed with derision and disdain because of it’s feminine status.

The opposite of male flight is called Mentrification. The term Mentrification was coined by a Twitter user called @obstinatecondolement. Mentrification is a process in which men appropriate and overwrite the achievement of women as their own.

Two examples can be given for Mentrification: Beatles and Computers. During the early years of their career, Beatles had a fandom made up predominantly of women and girls. Various newspapers and articles had denounced and criticised the Beatles because of this. The women were mocked for their ‘shallow musical taste’

When Beatles started gathered more following from men, the media started taking them seriously. Today, Beatles is considered as one of the biggest bands but it is often overlooked that their talents were identified first by women. Their fandom does not have ‘hysterical women’ but is made up of ‘musical enthusiasts’

The computer, in the early stages, was handled by women. The first programmer was a woman named Ada Lovelace. ‘Computer girls’ is a popular term used to describe the women who worked in the field of computer science. But as computers were developed, they were seen as machines ‘too complex for a woman’.

Today, the word computer science is almost synonymous with the word ‘man’

All of the above mentioned people; Beatles, Taylor Swift, BTS, Ada Lovelace are all great people who are very talented in their respective fields yet the way they are perceived and are judged still has a connection to which sex they fall under and which sex follows them the most.