No one is more meticulous, more dedicated and more engaged than fangirls. From Beliebers, to Directioners, to Swifies, fangirls have 100 times more capability and dedication to lead enormous amounts of people in harmony than rich CEO men.

Fangirls (can be of any gender; “stans” is another term) is defined as a noun by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a girl or woman who is an extremely or overly enthusiastic fan of someone or something,” or as a verb: “to exhibit fandom often to an excessive degree: to behave like an extremely devoted or overly excited fangirl.”

Although Merriam-Webster defines fangirl as “a girl or woman,” fangirls are not subjected to a single gender. It is, however, common to associate the term fangirl with girls or women.

Traditionally, fangirls have been excessively made fun of by today’s society and viewed as borderline psychopathic, obsessive teenage girls who have self-esteem issues (sounds brutal, but it’s true).

Fangirls have overly supported all the popular artists of the past and the present. How do you think Elvis Presley got so famous?

Lucy Blakiston, founder of Shit You Should Care About, wrote “Why are young women screaming at a One Direction concert seen as hysterical but grown men screaming at their inanimate TVs, rioting and causing millions of dollars of damage, seen as part of being a sports fan?”

Why do we view fangirls as brainless followers? What about sports fans? Remember when it was advised not to go out on the streets after the 2022 Super Bowl in case fans got angry? Yeah.

If you like something a lot, you are essentially a fangirl.

What about the people who spend their entire master’s program on Shakespeare? Fangirls. Dedicating your life to finding Cleopatra’s tomb? Fangirl. Knowing the lyrics to every single Beatles song? Fangirl.

The love and dedication held for other people’s career, art or life’s work is being a fan of said person, which is the same thing as being a fangirl. So, why does fangirl have such a negative connotation?

The institutionalized sexism against fangirls shows women (again, fangirls can be any gender and any age, but fangirls traditionally are thought of as a teenage girl) as having lesser intellectual interests and, of course, the misogynistic word “hysteria.”

I’m sure we’ve all seen videos of teenage girls sobbing in the front row of a One Direction concert. They’re excited and getting to experience something special to them in person – who cares?!

Society loves to belittle women’s opinions, especially teenage girls’, and constantly mock this community that has a shared interest, usually with a musical artist.

Even I, who would classify myself as a fangirl (shoutout Taylor Swift!), can recognize when fangirling surpasses a line and becomes creepy and sometimes even violent. Let us not forget the Harry Styles vomit shrine of 2014 or the intensely disturbing fanfiction written about musical groups.

On a more serious note, the murder of singer-songwriter Selena was acted out by one of her fangirls, who integrated herself into Selena’s life because of the intense obsession with her, ultimately leading to the artist’s death.

Instances like this are rare, but not uncommon. Of course, these upsetting murders of artists by their fans are more about mental health issues than being a fangirl, but it would be wrong to not recognize this.

Continuing to belittle teenage girls’ interests is feeding into the stereotype that fangirls probably have low self-esteem. How would you feel if someone was constantly making fun of your interests that you were very passionate about?

Matisse DuPont, a gender educator and consultant, wrote “This comes to a crescendo when we talk about the interests of young girls—anything they like becomes vapid, trendy, over-hyped, cringe and sappy. Masculine fandoms are figured to be historical and universal, whereas feminine fandoms are seen as nothing more than a fad.”

The truth of the matter is that society can belittle fangirls all it wants, but that will not stop the incredible community strength of the fangirls. Hypothetically, fangirls would be a great candidate to run for government – the whole collective group.

The strategic perseverance and dedication from these groups of fans are, honestly, admirable and borderline concerning, but with all considerations, fangirls have withstood the test of time. Fangirls are nowhere close to getting lost in the media abyss and will continue to propel artists, books, movies, shows and more for the rest of media time.

Macy Berendsen can be reached at macy.berendsen@stthomas.edu.