2024 was a great year for music, and pop girls dominated our cultural conversation. Slow-rise stars such as Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter broke into the mainstream, and new releases from high-profile established artists such as Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Ariana Grande also made waves. 2024 was dominated by women, and yet in online spaces there is still so much negativity towards these women and their fans. Some of it is arguably justified, but the vast majority of discourse on social media reveals that sexism is still rampant in the music industry. Unfortunately, these issues are not limited to music – sexism is a prevalent issue within entertainment as a whole.
Beyoncé’s groundbreaking record, Cowboy Carter, ignited countless conversations about the gatekeeping of country music, and the way women as well as artists of color are shut out, but there is also widespread gatekeeping in the music industry – the gatekeeping of taste. Many commenters online and music critics (many of whom can get away with surprisingly diminishing and sexist takes) who grew up listening to the Beatles and other classic rock bands feel the need to criticize the talent of modern female pop artists in mainstream media. They preach the notion that modern pop is vapid and not “real music”. Some may argue this topic is unimportant, but as a teenage girl who is a fan of pop music and is tired of this gatekeeping, I feel that it IS important.
As a full disclosure, in this article, I am by no means claiming that these artists and their fans are infallible – they are human after all and make mistakes. I simply want to spotlight some of the unfair criticism they receive. Also, I want to add that I am completely aware of the fact that female pop artists’ fans are NOT exclusively teenage girls (nor are all sports fans adult men), but the majority of teenage girls I know are involved in at least one fandom, pop music or otherwise, and teenage girls do make up a significant portion of these artists’ fanbases.
In the first part of this discussion, I will be talking about the fans. During the run of Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour, many clips on social media depicted fans (usually teenage girls or young women) melting down over their favorite songs or screaming during shows. Many of these fans were mocked for this, with commenters labeling their actions as cringey or insane. And to that I say – what’s the harm? Yes, these fans are having what seems like unnecessarily strong emotional reactions, but they aren’t hurting anyone or committing any wrongs. Being passionate about something you love is not necessarily a bad thing — as Taylor herself said during her commencement speech at NYU in 2022, “No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively… I’m a big advocate for not hiding your enthusiasm for things. It seems to me that there is a false stigma around eagerness in our culture.”
I would like to contrast how these fans are treated with another group exhibiting similar behavior: sports fans. This group of people tends to skew male instead, with a 2023 study finding that in the US nearly 3 times as many men are avid sports fans compared to women. A similar study of 2023 European sports compared the demographics of 3 of the biggest sporting events in Europe (Formula 1, the FIFA World Cup, and Six Nations Rugby). In all of these events, women made up less than 40% of the fans.
Unlike the Swifties at Eras shows, these avid sports fans go far beyond emotionally melting down – rioting after football matches, for example, is so common that there is a whole Wikipedia page for it. In August 2023, a Greek man got stabbed to death as a result of one of these riots. And he’s not the only one. Now, society at large does not condone violence related to sports. I want to emphasize that most sports fans are not this violent, but avid fans don’t get nearly as much ridicule for being passionate about their favorite teams as teenage girls do for being passionate about their favorite artists. Sports fanatics booing at games or yelling at each other in public is normalized, while adolescent girls reacting emotionally to a song they resonate with is not.
Why is it that one expression of fandom is seen as justified passion while another is scorned as ridiculous? Well, it circles back to… drumroll please… misogyny. Historically, women have been negatively stereotyped as being more emotional when compared to rational men. The word “hysteria” even takes its root from the Greek word for uterus, with the oldest recorded use of the word being in 1900 BCE. On the other hand, aggressiveness in men akin to modern day adult male sports fans has historically been celebrated as masculine and heroic. Many male heroes upheld as paragons of masculinity like Hercules were famous for their strength and assertiveness. This extends into modern day; the phrase “boys will be boys” has been used to justify rowdy or belligerent behavior for a long time up until present day. Female interests, particularly those of teenage girls, have conversely been criticized as more frivolous or less important than corresponding male interests.
All of this debate is relevant because it highlights the double standard inherent in society: teenage girls are depicted as overly emotional in comparison to grown men. In the latter part of this article coming later, I will discuss this topic in further detail.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBG50aoUwlI
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1018814/sports-fans-usa-gender/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1445189/gender-sports-competitions-europe/
