Be a Fangirl
Recently, I overheard some of my students, a group of pre- and early teenage girls, talking about some of their favorite fandoms, ships, and media. They were expressing themselves as teenage girls so often do, with excitement and giggles and an impressive knowledge and fervor about their particular subject matter. A few of the boys near them, less than impressed with this display, were dismissive and a bit rude about these girls expressing their love for various TV shows, books, and movies. The words “fan girl” were thrown around in a particularly derogatory sense.
I set down my pen. This I would not abide.
“I'm a fangirl,” I told them. “I was in high school, in middle school, and I am now. I have an OTP, I'm on Tumblr and research on Reddit, and I belong to several Facebook groups devoted to the love of my favorite media.”
I don't know where we got the idea that it was lesser to be an obsessive watcher and, more important to my point, an interactor with media.
There is something particularly negligent in our understanding of creativity and development when we dismiss the love that young women in particular have for the media that speaks directly to their soul in some way, even when we don't understand it. So much of media tells young women bad things about themselves, so when they find something that they identify with, that they see themselves in or that makes them feel seen, why would we ever be dismissive of that?
Moreover, there is a massive sense that when media is used for the purpose of creation, it somehow loses its integrity and ability to be taken seriously. What I mean specifically is this: How many people roll their eyes when the topic of fan fiction is brought up? What about fan art? How many people even know what that is?
It's one thing to be an obsessive Watcher of Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, to know all the backstory and dissect all the hidden symbolism of geniuses like George RR Martin and Vince Gilligan, but heaven forbid we descend into the abyss of fan fiction.
What is it about taking our favorite characters and using them as a jumping-off point for our own creativity that threatens mainstream society on such a deep level?
We should be celebrating those shows and books and movies and Anime and graphic novels and comic books and everything else that incites us to creativity! We are in a world so often devoid of any artistic expression, especially for teens who arguably need it most of anyone in our society, that anything that brings out a desire to write or draw or paint or dance or sing has to be celebrated.
Some of my own favorite shows are not my favorites because they're good; in fact, many of them that I have loved have been decidedly not good, ie. The Vampire Diaries, but I love them for the creativity they evoked in me.
I still write vampire fiction. When I was a freshman in college, the first novel I ever finished, though I didn’t publish it, was vampire fiction. It allowed me to address my feelings and look at my world in a way that made sense to me and made sense to the portion of the population that also loved vampire fiction. It was almost like a secret code among us that all shared something deep in our souls that allowed us to connect with this storyline. Not to mention, it was a show geared directly at teenage girls, the demographic most likely to be identified as fangirls. However, the identity of fangirl should not be limited to teenage girls, or young women, or young people, or women, or any other demographic.
It's important for everyone to be able to express their love of fiction in whatever way they see fit and need to to be able to have a positive interaction with that material and the world around them.
Media is powerful for a lot of reasons. It's been powerful ever since they put things on film, since they painted the first cave paintings, and when we sang the first songs. They are things we collectively know and care about, whether that is as an entire society, like the moon landing, which we got to see through our television screens, or very niche groups like the “My Favorite Highlander” group I belong to on Facebook that is a crossover fandom of the podcast “My Favorite Murder” and the TV show Outlander. (It has over a thousand members, it's really not even that niche. I'm sure I could find something else in my life that was even more niche than that, but that's one that I check probably everyday and interact with on a fairly regular basis)
We should celebrate fandoms and never look down on them. We should be thrilled that our fellow people have found something to get excited about, especially in this wild, gray time when we don't know what our future holds.
If escaping into the lush worlds of The Lord of the Rings, the fantastical galaxies of Star Wars, or delving into the escapist reality of Riverdale, is a way that you can positively interact with the world, and maybe even create something, even if it's just for yourself, then that should be celebrated beyond belief. We cannot cut each other down for the things that bring us joy.
So be a fangirl, no matter who you are.