Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / SMNTY Classics: Teenyboppers

Transcript

SMNTY Classics: Teenyboppers · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff.
0:07
Speaker 1: I never told you production. I heart radio, So for
0:19
Speaker 1: this one, I know we've talked a lot before about
0:23
Speaker 1: band girls and our own bands that we were really
0:27
Speaker 1: into when we were growing up in the music that
0:29
Speaker 1: got us so excited that maybe we got made fun
0:32
Speaker 1: of for liking or mocked for liking Spice Girls in life?
0:40
Speaker 1: Were you made fun of for liking the Spice Girls?
0:43
Speaker 1: I was ashamed of it. I don't know about with him,
0:45
Speaker 1: but I definitely didn't tell people right. Oh, yeah, there
0:48
Speaker 1: were bands that I hid. I went I went so
0:51
Speaker 1: far as to like change the name when I would
0:54
Speaker 1: import them in my computer. People wouldn't know. I would
0:58
Speaker 1: try to change it so all you can see the
1:00
Speaker 1: title and you couldn't actually see the band name. Yeah, yes, yeah.
1:05
Speaker 1: And I just remember like listening in like the corner
1:08
Speaker 1: of my room, as if like someone would walk in
1:11
Speaker 1: and they know that I've been listening to Hanson or
1:14
Speaker 1: every time, whatever it was. But I've been thinking about
1:18
Speaker 1: this because lately I want to come back and revisit
1:23
Speaker 1: this topic because I'm not sure. I don't think the
1:25
Speaker 1: conversation has changed too much or hasn't like improved too
1:28
Speaker 1: much in terms of like really feeling as a society
1:31
Speaker 1: it's okay to make fun of what teenage girls like.
1:34
Speaker 1: But I also think that I'm seeing some instances of
1:38
Speaker 1: recognition of the power of fangirls. And this has been
1:44
Speaker 1: on my mind because one of my good friends Rusa,
1:47
Speaker 1: He's gonna go Seebts. Yes, she's so excited. She's going
1:52
Speaker 1: with her mom and her sister. Diverse. If you're listening, UM,
1:55
Speaker 1: I hope you have a wonderful time. Yeah, I'm excited,
1:59
Speaker 1: but like I've really excited for and I feel like
2:02
Speaker 1: we've seen the power of that fan base when it
2:05
Speaker 1: comes to politics or social movements, and also kind of
2:10
Speaker 1: an expanding of that fan base because while Marissa is
2:15
Speaker 1: a fan, it's like her mom is a big fan.
2:17
Speaker 1: And then also Savantha and I just saw Turtles and
2:22
Speaker 1: Harry Style at the end alert I think I knew.
2:27
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm pretty sure everybody knows. I didn't say
2:32
Speaker 1: how are who are why? Um? But yes, he does
2:36
Speaker 1: show up at the end, and he's been very vocal
2:37
Speaker 1: about like, we should really stop making fun of, um
2:41
Speaker 1: these young women and what they like. And then also
2:45
Speaker 1: like right now, Taylor Swift just rereleased her Red album
2:48
Speaker 1: and you've got Adele's album coming out. I just feel
2:51
Speaker 1: like and the power of the Free Brittany movement, which
2:54
Speaker 1: were her fans exactly well, partially helped in it. Did
2:59
Speaker 1: it helped in her getting released from the conservatorships? Yeah,
3:04
Speaker 1: it definitely brought attention to it. And I just think
3:08
Speaker 1: that we should come back and talk about this some more,
3:10
Speaker 1: because I know that there's still a lot of issues
3:15
Speaker 1: around it and people do still feel like what young
3:19
Speaker 1: girls like is frivolous a lot, and they feel okay
3:21
Speaker 1: making making that kind of assumption. But at the same time,
3:24
Speaker 1: I'm kind of seeing these sorts of things and then
3:27
Speaker 1: a real it feels like a cultural like opening of
3:32
Speaker 1: you know, this is popular and I like it too,
3:33
Speaker 1: and all you like it too, like we're being more
3:35
Speaker 1: open about it. I don't know, So it's just been
3:37
Speaker 1: something I did see several videos of like older generations
3:42
Speaker 1: loving BTS and I mean like grandfathers and fathers in
3:46
Speaker 1: their forties and fifties. I like b d s. I'm
3:49
Speaker 1: in my forties, So yeah, I think it's coming out.
3:50
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, maybe maybe it's cool. Yeah, yeah,
3:56
Speaker 1: which has just been fascinating. And as we've said in
3:58
Speaker 1: the past episodes, this fan base, THEES fan girls are
4:02
Speaker 1: powerful and they often are the ones that are making
4:05
Speaker 1: the star. So um, they're very they're they're very supportive
4:10
Speaker 1: until you screw them over and then not so much anymore.
4:13
Speaker 1: But just something I've been thinking about, so we thought
4:15
Speaker 1: we would bring back an episode looking into some of this,
4:19
Speaker 1: So please enjoy. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You
4:25
Speaker 1: from how Supports dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
4:33
Speaker 1: I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And our semi theme for
4:37
Speaker 1: this week on the show has been teen queens because
4:40
Speaker 1: in the last podcast we talked about Taylor Swift. Who
4:44
Speaker 1: is I mean, she's the teen queen and she is
4:46
Speaker 1: crushing the music industry in a good way. Yeah, I
4:48
Speaker 1: guess more raising it up. Anyway, I let Kristen talk
4:51
Speaker 1: although she's not a teenager anymore, so she's more the
4:54
Speaker 1: queen of teens. But now I'm getting into semantics. But
4:58
Speaker 1: today we're going to talk about teeny boppers and fan girls,
5:01
Speaker 1: specifically younger female fans of pop music, because this really
5:08
Speaker 1: stegways from Taylor Swift because she's often marginalized by her
5:13
Speaker 1: haters because she's most adored by young girls. And the
5:19
Speaker 1: attitude is, obviously, if young girls like you, you can't
5:23
Speaker 1: be that great. Yeah, because young girls don't have any
5:26
Speaker 1: real music taste at all. So, and we're not saying
5:31
Speaker 1: that that's not our opinion, right, delivering the opinion of
5:36
Speaker 1: often I don't know, music snobs. Could we call them
5:39
Speaker 1: some critics? Um? So we want, though, to kick off
5:44
Speaker 1: with an early history of music fandom, which doesn't begin
5:48
Speaker 1: with Frank Sinatra and Bobby Socks is going crazy for him.
5:53
Speaker 1: This was really fascinating. Um it goes all the way
5:57
Speaker 1: back to the nineteenth century when blick music performances and
6:01
Speaker 1: the development of musical stars really emerged. And this is
6:06
Speaker 1: coming from an indispensable paper that we found by Daniel
6:10
Speaker 1: Cavici called Loving Music Listeners, Entertainers and the Origins of
6:15
Speaker 1: Music Fandom in nineteenth century America. Yeah, this gave some
6:20
Speaker 1: fascinating perspective because I honestly, really well, not that I
6:26
Speaker 1: think about fans and fan girls and teeny boppers all
6:29
Speaker 1: that much, but I totally just thought, Yeah, Beatles, Yeah,
6:32
Speaker 1: that's where Elvis, that's where it goes back to but yeah,
6:35
Speaker 1: all the way back to the early to mid nineteenth century,
6:41
Speaker 1: we get music snobs. So one early music lover talking
6:47
Speaker 1: about the influence that music can have on you was
6:50
Speaker 1: twenty four year old opera fan Lucy Lowell of the
6:54
Speaker 1: Massachusetts Lolls, who wrote in eighty four, I suppose it
6:59
Speaker 1: can't be for a person to go to things that
7:02
Speaker 1: excite her so that she can't fix her mind on
7:04
Speaker 1: anything for days afterwards, which sounds similar to the kind
7:09
Speaker 1: of adoring fan girling bestowed upon Taylor Swift, one Direction, etcetera.
7:15
Speaker 1: Although I have a feeling that people probably weren't tearing
7:18
Speaker 1: their hair out and crying hysterically at the opera, but
7:22
Speaker 1: it's a similar kind of thing of just being fixated
7:24
Speaker 1: on these musical performances. Yeah, so in the eighteen twenties,
7:28
Speaker 1: this is when we first get the slang word star,
7:32
Speaker 1: which emerges in the theater talking about the well, you know, stars,
7:37
Speaker 1: stars with stars of the theater. The stars were born
7:40
Speaker 1: in the twenties, Caroline, that's right. And then we see
7:44
Speaker 1: the evolution of music consumption in the mid to late
7:48
Speaker 1: nineteenth century because there were more and more public spaces
7:51
Speaker 1: actually built just for music that facilitated the commercial growth
7:56
Speaker 1: of this kind of entertainment. You get more concert halls,
8:00
Speaker 1: plessure gardens, museum stages, and taverns and taverns people have
8:05
Speaker 1: always played in bars. Can we bring back pleasure gardens though,
8:09
Speaker 1: because those are places I would like to go as
8:11
Speaker 1: often as possible to have a little quartet playing. Yeah,
8:14
Speaker 1: where is where is my local pleasure garden? I don't know,
8:18
Speaker 1: but don't google that. It sounds like that could get
8:20
Speaker 1: you some bad results. It's just a David Busters these days.
8:24
Speaker 1: But in the eight fifties, though, this is when professional
8:27
Speaker 1: virtuosos began touring nationally, which really helped transform public musical
8:32
Speaker 1: performances into more commercial entertainment and also made it more
8:37
Speaker 1: of a social ritual. You go out and you see
8:40
Speaker 1: the star who's coming through town. You go to the
8:43
Speaker 1: pleasure garden to see the virtuoso. And this is when
8:47
Speaker 1: we really get our early music lovers. So maybe not
8:51
Speaker 1: as fanatic to use that important term as a beatlemaniac,
8:56
Speaker 1: or as a Taylor Swift or One Direction fan, but
8:58
Speaker 1: people who are still forming because of these new technologies,
9:02
Speaker 1: because of these new social rituals, they're able to form
9:07
Speaker 1: connections with these entertainers, and they really do their best
9:12
Speaker 1: to not only consume the new musical culture as much
9:14
Speaker 1: as possible, but to also make it their own, for instance,
9:18
Speaker 1: doing things like studying where the best place to sit
9:22
Speaker 1: in a theater or a concert hall is. And I
9:25
Speaker 1: mean that just strikes me so much as like this
9:28
Speaker 1: must just be human nature, because you know, you have
9:31
Speaker 1: music nerds, you know, and I'm not disparaging music nerds,
9:34
Speaker 1: but you have music nerds basically who will do just that,
9:37
Speaker 1: who will learn all they can about a band or
9:39
Speaker 1: a group or an artist and do everything they can
9:41
Speaker 1: not only to connect with that artist, but also to
9:44
Speaker 1: find the best way to consume that product. Yeah, and
9:48
Speaker 1: with that background, in the early eighteen fifties, the first
9:53
Speaker 1: big music stars were born, and most notably we have
9:58
Speaker 1: in the US at least so we is opera singer
10:01
Speaker 1: Jenny Lynne, whose US tour was a phenomenon. I mean
10:06
Speaker 1: this was partially due to P. T. Barnum's marketing prowess,
10:10
Speaker 1: because I mean, long before she set foot in the
10:14
Speaker 1: United States to do this tour, he you know, basically
10:18
Speaker 1: did all of this pr campaigning. Being like Jenny Lynde
10:21
Speaker 1: is coming and it will change your life. And people
10:25
Speaker 1: went bananas for her. Yeah, and what's funny, I mean
10:29
Speaker 1: to show you how bananas they went. Um. I knew
10:32
Speaker 1: the name Jenny Lynde, but I didn't know why. And
10:35
Speaker 1: so when Kristen and I were talking about this, I
10:37
Speaker 1: looked up, like, Okay, why do I know Jenny lynn
10:39
Speaker 1: from being a furniture company? And I googled it. No,
10:43
Speaker 1: Jenny Lyne was not a furniture company. There is a
10:45
Speaker 1: very specific style of bed called the Jenny lind bed.
10:47
Speaker 1: It's one of those school beds. If you have any
10:50
Speaker 1: antiques or no anyone antiques, you've probably seen the style
10:52
Speaker 1: of bed. My family has them. She was so popular
10:57
Speaker 1: that she was one of the first entertainers of that however,
11:00
Speaker 1: to have things named for her like a bed. But also,
11:03
Speaker 1: I mean there were Jenny Lynde gloves, There were There
11:06
Speaker 1: was all sorts of consumer products around at the time
11:09
Speaker 1: that were named after her or dedicated to her, because
11:12
Speaker 1: that's how much people loved, adored and wanted a piece
11:16
Speaker 1: of her. Wasn't there even a Jenny lend tobacco? Oh? Yeah,
11:19
Speaker 1: you know you've made it when you've got your own tobacco.
11:22
Speaker 1: It's kind of like how you know, every pop star
11:25
Speaker 1: has her own perfume, right, But fans were so wild
11:30
Speaker 1: for her that they called it Lindmania. And fans went
11:34
Speaker 1: so wild for her that they even called this Lyndmania.
11:38
Speaker 1: And there was one excerpt from a newspaper I forget
11:41
Speaker 1: which one it was, of the journalist essentially being like,
11:45
Speaker 1: sell all of your possessions if you have to. You
11:48
Speaker 1: have to get a ticket to go see Jenny Lynde,
11:50
Speaker 1: and descriptions of these concerts where people would I mean,
11:54
Speaker 1: it was almost like a mob, a crazed mob, just
11:58
Speaker 1: clamoring to see her. You can get injured at a
12:01
Speaker 1: Jenny Lynde concert in the eighteen fifties because I mean,
12:05
Speaker 1: if people want to see her, they will trample you
12:07
Speaker 1: to get a better look at her. Victorians be tripping,
12:10
Speaker 1: that's right, well, and that's happening in the United States. Meanwhile,
12:14
Speaker 1: in Europe we have pianist and composer Franz List who
12:18
Speaker 1: incites lista mania, which, if that sounds familiar, is probably
12:21
Speaker 1: because of that Phoenix song. List of Mania, which is
12:24
Speaker 1: now going to be in my head for the rest
12:26
Speaker 1: of the day. But List was the first performer to
12:30
Speaker 1: walk out on stage one to take his seat at
12:33
Speaker 1: the piano bench to do kind of the dramatic entrance,
12:36
Speaker 1: and he also positioned the piano to allow the audience
12:39
Speaker 1: to see his face, so you know, the piano has
12:42
Speaker 1: turned to its side rather than him sitting behind the piano.
12:47
Speaker 1: And boy did the ladies go wild for List? I know,
12:51
Speaker 1: I love this. Stephen Huff, who's a world renowned concert pianist,
12:54
Speaker 1: said that we hear about women throwing their clothes onto
12:57
Speaker 1: the stage and taking his cigar butts and placing them
13:00
Speaker 1: in their cleavages, which sounds a little dangerous. First of all,
13:03
Speaker 1: that's plural, and I love that cleavages. Watch out for cleavages,
13:07
Speaker 1: burns from cigar butts discarded. Also, I wonder where these
13:12
Speaker 1: cigar boats are coming from, because now I'm just imagining
13:15
Speaker 1: Lists playing while smoking a cigar without any hands, frantically smoking, yeah,
13:20
Speaker 1: just puffing on it. Um. So clearly, this kind of
13:25
Speaker 1: I mean, clearly, this kind of fanaticism long predates Beatlemania.
13:29
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Well, so we have to then talk about
13:33
Speaker 1: not friends List specific mania or Lynn Mania, but music
13:37
Speaker 1: omania in general, which was first described as such in
13:41
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirties and eventually fell out of use by
13:44
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. The physicians had known since medieval times
13:48
Speaker 1: that music could end up having a really profound effect
13:50
Speaker 1: on you physically and psychologically. It can make you feel happy,
13:53
Speaker 1: you're sad, or whatever melancholy, But during this period in
13:57
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, there was an actual doctor diagnosis to
14:01
Speaker 1: find as a variety of monomania, in which the passion
14:05
Speaker 1: for music is carried to such an extent as to
14:07
Speaker 1: derange the intellectual faculties, which sounds a lot like how
14:13
Speaker 1: fan girls are described one direction ers crying at the
14:17
Speaker 1: sign of Harry Styles. It sounds a lot like these
14:20
Speaker 1: early descriptions of music a mania, which really was not
14:23
Speaker 1: gendered at all at the time, although there was certainly
14:27
Speaker 1: a backlash to music a mania, which is reminiscent of
14:32
Speaker 1: the modern day marginalization of teeny boppers and fan girls,
14:36
Speaker 1: because apparently there were calls for more classical appreciation of music,
14:42
Speaker 1: because fans were quote too invested in the wrong ways
14:46
Speaker 1: and for the wrong reasons, and so music snobs of
14:50
Speaker 1: the day would differentiate between the ordinary fan, who lacked
14:54
Speaker 1: appropriate education and taste who. I mean, it sounds a
14:58
Speaker 1: lot like, you know, the records or a clerk stereotype
15:01
Speaker 1: of like, even if you like a certain album, they'll
15:03
Speaker 1: still give you the stain guy because you probably just
15:05
Speaker 1: don't know enough about how it was made or how
15:07
Speaker 1: to appropriately listen to it. Um. But then they also
15:10
Speaker 1: had the musician and the refined fan, the fan who
15:14
Speaker 1: really understood the music to a degree to which they
15:18
Speaker 1: could appropriately and with a level head listen to it, right.
15:22
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure those are the people who are
15:25
Speaker 1: picking the right seat in the concert hall to hear
15:27
Speaker 1: the music best, and they're not going wild over they're
15:30
Speaker 1: probably not too a motive. I was like, no, that's
15:33
Speaker 1: the wonderful June. Wonderful June. Yeah. I mean, there were
15:37
Speaker 1: even music snobs who looked down on music fans, which
15:41
Speaker 1: honestly wasn't a term until a little bit later, like
15:44
Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century, but look down on fans
15:46
Speaker 1: who would listen to the record or the performance too
15:51
Speaker 1: much and then get sick of it. They were like, obviously,
15:54
Speaker 1: you're not a good enough consumer of this classical, beautiful
15:59
Speaker 1: music if you're going to listen to it all the
16:00
Speaker 1: time until you get sick of it. I am just
16:02
Speaker 1: going to listen to it the once or the twice
16:04
Speaker 1: and really appreciate it. And of course, this development of
16:08
Speaker 1: music fandom, particularly as we move into the early twentieth century,
16:12
Speaker 1: is also facilitated by technological advances that allows you to
16:16
Speaker 1: not only consume music in live venues, to go to
16:20
Speaker 1: the pleasure garden and see the virtuoso of your choice,
16:23
Speaker 1: but also listen to recordings of the virtuoso or of
16:27
Speaker 1: Jenny Lynde at home. And there's also sheet music being produced,
16:31
Speaker 1: and also you do have more of the performances being
16:34
Speaker 1: turned into this kind of entertainment industry. And then in
16:38
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties and thirties, this is when the first
16:41
Speaker 1: fan clubs emerged. So we're really getting serious about our
16:45
Speaker 1: fandom post World War One. Yeah, we're coming together. I mean,
16:48
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine how different it would have been to
16:51
Speaker 1: be in a fan club in the nineteen thirties as
16:53
Speaker 1: opposed to twenty fifteen, when you have the Internet. Back
16:59
Speaker 1: then you had to be really freaking committed to communicating
17:02
Speaker 1: with your fellow fans and consuming all of these you know, products,
17:05
Speaker 1: whether it's cheap music or the records themselves or whatever. Yeah,
17:08
Speaker 1: and you probably don't even need fan clubs today because
17:11
Speaker 1: Tumbler is pretty much just a giant fan club. Right,
17:15
Speaker 1: different things, But once you get into mid century, in
17:18
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, you have the even more monetization of music,
17:24
Speaker 1: particularly with the development of pop music. And when we
17:30
Speaker 1: have pop music and bubblegum pop in particular come of about,
17:34
Speaker 1: and these record labels really getting savvy about targeting their fans.
17:39
Speaker 1: This is when fandom, though, and criticism of music fandom
17:45
Speaker 1: becomes less generalized and more gendered. Yeah, well, I mean,
17:50
Speaker 1: you know, Kristin mentioned earlier that the whole music a
17:53
Speaker 1: mania thing was really not not gender did. It honestly
17:57
Speaker 1: seemed to be more about class about and not even
18:00
Speaker 1: necessarily financial stuff, but just you were on a higher
18:04
Speaker 1: plane of existence if you consumed and enjoyed music in
18:07
Speaker 1: a certain way versus the people that you look down upon.
18:10
Speaker 1: You know, people who had music a mania were obviously
18:12
Speaker 1: not to be trusted. We don't like those people, but
18:15
Speaker 1: it was all sort of equal opportunity snobbery. There were
18:19
Speaker 1: women who wrote in their diaries sniffing it, like, look
18:22
Speaker 1: at these writhing masses of people how disgusting, same as
18:26
Speaker 1: you did with men. And they were writing about people
18:28
Speaker 1: of either gender. And so it is interesting to see
18:31
Speaker 1: that evolution in the mid twentieth century about fan girls
18:37
Speaker 1: and teeny boppers specifically consuming music that honestly, as we'll
18:42
Speaker 1: get into here in a second, I mean, it was
18:44
Speaker 1: made for them. Yeah, and we'll get into all of
18:48
Speaker 1: that and talk more about teeny boppers past and present
18:52
Speaker 1: when we come right back from a quick break and
18:56
Speaker 1: now back to the show. So in the first half
19:00
Speaker 1: of the podcast, we talked about the history of music
19:04
Speaker 1: fandom that I know I wasn't familiar with. But now
19:08
Speaker 1: it's time to pick up with a name that really
19:13
Speaker 1: launched the whole teeny bopper thing, which is Frank Sinatra. Yeah.
19:17
Speaker 1: I mean this was in the nineteen forties and Sinatra
19:20
Speaker 1: was he was a younger gentleman, is kind of handsome.
19:24
Speaker 1: I mean, he had kind of a pointy face. Yeah,
19:26
Speaker 1: we're gonna be honest. He was kind of the original.
19:29
Speaker 1: Can we say the original justin Bieber. I don't want
19:33
Speaker 1: to disparage Frank Sinatra in that way, but I mean
19:36
Speaker 1: he really incited though the first modern fan girling of
19:41
Speaker 1: girls crying and loving him and just wanting I mean,
19:45
Speaker 1: they just wanted Frankie. Yeah, but I mean I think
19:47
Speaker 1: that goes, you know, not to go too deep into
19:50
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra, but I mean, I think the whole issue
19:53
Speaker 1: with getting the teeny bopper love and tears and emoting
19:57
Speaker 1: over Frank Sinatra goes back to what he talked about
20:00
Speaker 1: with Taylor Swift in our last episode. Because Taylor Swift
20:04
Speaker 1: is herself a very young woman, very successful, knows how
20:08
Speaker 1: to connect with fans who are also very young, much
20:11
Speaker 1: younger than even she is. And I think that Frank
20:13
Speaker 1: Sinatra was one of the first, early, very young performers
20:19
Speaker 1: who was able to connect with young women who were
20:22
Speaker 1: all of a sudden part of this rising consumer culture,
20:26
Speaker 1: part of this new teenage group of people that had
20:29
Speaker 1: never really been recognized before. That's such a great point.
20:32
Speaker 1: And also with Sinatra, he I'm sure he was not
20:36
Speaker 1: the first to do this, but he also was available
20:41
Speaker 1: in so many different ways to his fans because not
20:43
Speaker 1: only could they see him in appearances or see him
20:46
Speaker 1: singing live, he was also in movies as well, so
20:50
Speaker 1: you could watch him act, you could watch him fall
20:53
Speaker 1: in love. I mean, there you know, it's definitely a
20:55
Speaker 1: multi dimensional star um. But then in the nineteen fifty
21:00
Speaker 1: we have the emergence of bubblegum pop that, according to
21:02
Speaker 1: the book Girlhood in America quote set the precedent of
21:06
Speaker 1: style over substance in the musical consumption of teenage girls
21:11
Speaker 1: because it was really manufactured for them. Yeah, it was.
21:16
Speaker 1: You definitely had a lot of of record industry executives
21:19
Speaker 1: coming together and saying, Okay, so we're we're in the
21:23
Speaker 1: postwar period. I don't know if anybody was actually saying
21:25
Speaker 1: that in the fifties, but they're in the postwar period.
21:28
Speaker 1: We have this new group of people were recognizing called teenagers,
21:31
Speaker 1: and they have consumer power somewhat a little bit now
21:34
Speaker 1: and and there they have a little bit more agency
21:36
Speaker 1: than children of their age group fifty years prior. Let's
21:41
Speaker 1: package something for them. And so this sort of came
21:44
Speaker 1: along with the whole advent of top forty radio, which
21:48
Speaker 1: relied on a specific teen appealing formula to turn a profit. Yeah,
21:53
Speaker 1: because teams were spending time by themselves in ways that
21:56
Speaker 1: they never had before. They're also dating, they also had
21:59
Speaker 1: cars um, and they also had magazines being created specifically
22:05
Speaker 1: for them. Six teen Magazine in particular, was one of
22:09
Speaker 1: the earliest and most widely circulated teen magazines that totally
22:13
Speaker 1: fed early fandom. Um, this is coming again from Girlhood
22:18
Speaker 1: in America, saying, quote, teeny bopper fandom is essentially a
22:21
Speaker 1: subculture of consumption. Yeah, and I sort of this is
22:25
Speaker 1: something that if you really think about it, it makes
22:27
Speaker 1: total sense. But that I still hated reading because it
22:30
Speaker 1: made me sad for young girls who apparently can't win. Um.
22:34
Speaker 1: So this is also coming from Girlhood in America, and
22:36
Speaker 1: he writes that the genre is primarily a commodity to
22:40
Speaker 1: be marketed and sold to teenage girls. It uses a
22:44
Speaker 1: specific formula to turn a profit, leaving many to believe
22:47
Speaker 1: that the fans who consume the product are cultural dupes.
22:51
Speaker 1: So basically, girls are being blamed for consuming the very
22:57
Speaker 1: things that they are meant to zoom according to record
23:01
Speaker 1: industry executives or radio DJs or what have you. Yeah,
23:06
Speaker 1: I mean, and and sure there is a lot of
23:08
Speaker 1: it that is very formulaic. I mean, go back and
23:11
Speaker 1: listen to our episode a while back on boy bands.
23:14
Speaker 1: I mean, these things are specifically built and made for
23:18
Speaker 1: this specific audience. And so from then though until now
23:24
Speaker 1: when you read media descriptions of this um of this demographic,
23:30
Speaker 1: of the tunny popper demographic, which is which makes it
23:33
Speaker 1: sound like such fogies. Also, I just use the word fogy.
23:37
Speaker 1: I'm but to call them teeny poppers. Um. But even
23:41
Speaker 1: today they're described as just having really no taste whatsoever.
23:46
Speaker 1: It's all emotion and hormones and no discriminating taste whatsoever.
23:50
Speaker 1: We're just looking for the Frank Sinatra essentially, because you've
23:55
Speaker 1: got people who are saying, if you are consuming and
23:59
Speaker 1: rapidly can saym ing um something that is prepackaged and
24:04
Speaker 1: bubblegum popish, then yeah, then you must not have any
24:08
Speaker 1: discriminating taste. You're just as as people talk about a
24:12
Speaker 1: lot of people just dismiss girls who like pop music
24:15
Speaker 1: as just this writhing mass of unbridled girlhood sexuality. Yeah,
24:22
Speaker 1: and a lot of pop music scholars mark this point
24:27
Speaker 1: in the emergence in the development of the music industry
24:29
Speaker 1: in the United States as this sort of dichotomy between
24:33
Speaker 1: male pop and rock fans seen as active consumers. They're
24:37
Speaker 1: choosing what they like. They're smarter and more discriminating in
24:42
Speaker 1: whatever goes in their record player versus passive fan girls
24:46
Speaker 1: who are just sort of we're spoon fed our tastes. Yeah,
24:50
Speaker 1: just tell us who the new pop star off the
24:52
Speaker 1: conveyor belt is, and we'll just consume this music and
24:55
Speaker 1: buy the posters and buy the tickets. Except who should
24:58
Speaker 1: I have a crush on? And I do remember remember
25:00
Speaker 1: that in my own experience when I first heard about Hansen,
25:05
Speaker 1: because friends of mine had crushes on them, and there
25:09
Speaker 1: was a whole thing of you know, which one did
25:11
Speaker 1: you like? Of course it was the middle one. Obviously
25:14
Speaker 1: he was the hottest, and so I went pre anticipated
25:19
Speaker 1: liking mop and wanting to have a crush on him.
25:23
Speaker 1: So there is, I mean, there is that aspect to
25:25
Speaker 1: it as well. I have something to confess what I
25:28
Speaker 1: think you and I in our lives in we're acting
25:32
Speaker 1: out the dichotomy of which we are currently speaking, really
25:35
Speaker 1: because I remember being in six or seventh grade whenever
25:39
Speaker 1: Buck came out. But for us, I don't mean whatever
25:41
Speaker 1: have rolled everybody else was but looking at it and
25:45
Speaker 1: being like, hmm, well, Caroline, you gotta remember too. I
25:48
Speaker 1: was homeschooled, so I I will play that card. And
25:53
Speaker 1: I was edgy, urban youth. I certainly wasn't an edgy
25:59
Speaker 1: urban but I don't know like where my snobber even
26:03
Speaker 1: came from. It's not like I was actively consuming any
26:06
Speaker 1: type of music other than what I heard on the radio,
26:08
Speaker 1: but just looking down my nose at at this pop music,
26:13
Speaker 1: I think it was less than music though for me,
26:16
Speaker 1: and just the fact that I was primed for crushing. Heck, yeah,
26:19
Speaker 1: I love to crush, so I was sorry. Sorry, I
26:23
Speaker 1: was really busy crushing on Gavin Rossdale, so I didn't
26:25
Speaker 1: have time for tailor hands. Oh yeah, I jumped on
26:27
Speaker 1: that tram a little bit later. I was just just
26:29
Speaker 1: that was probably just a late bloomer. But anyway, Um,
26:34
Speaker 1: Also at this time, though, it's not just male pop
26:37
Speaker 1: stars who are being developed and groomed for the Bubbleguma audience,
26:41
Speaker 1: but also you do have girl groups like the Ronet's
26:45
Speaker 1: and the Cherrell's who were also being pitched directly to girls,
26:49
Speaker 1: sort of like uh proto Taylor Swift. Yeah, in honor
26:55
Speaker 1: of this episode, last night, I was listening to my
26:58
Speaker 1: um Marveltt's Pandora station, and it's all of these wonderful,
27:02
Speaker 1: wonderful girl groups. And it's interesting, though to listen to
27:05
Speaker 1: that station. And here all of these bubblegum pop, totally
27:10
Speaker 1: manufactured groups girls who Marry Me not have even known
27:13
Speaker 1: each other, being dragged together by record executives to make money.
27:19
Speaker 1: But the whole thing about those girl groups is, even
27:23
Speaker 1: if they weren't doing their own songwriting, which they weren't,
27:25
Speaker 1: you had people like Carol King, for instance, writing a
27:27
Speaker 1: lot of the lyrics for these girl groups to sing.
27:30
Speaker 1: The songs were still providing a window into the emotional
27:35
Speaker 1: world of young women. And this is something that Andy
27:37
Speaker 1: Zeisler wrote about in feminism and pop culture that that's
27:41
Speaker 1: sure they're manufactured, Sure it's pop, it's not like the
27:46
Speaker 1: highest Denominator or whatever, but it's still great music and
27:51
Speaker 1: it's still for girls, and it's just like Taylor Swift
27:53
Speaker 1: is today. It's giving girls of that era something that
27:56
Speaker 1: they can look at and relate to. Yeah. Absolutely, and
28:01
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen forties and definitely in the nineteen fifties,
28:04
Speaker 1: sort of this groundwork has been laid, so that also
28:08
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties and sixties, once Elvis comes around
28:12
Speaker 1: and then the Beatles, all hell kind of breaks loose
28:16
Speaker 1: fan wise, but that also sort of cements this stereotype
28:20
Speaker 1: as well of the fawning, crying, hysterical. That work comes
28:25
Speaker 1: up a lot and it's important that it does come
28:28
Speaker 1: up a lot. Um. And the perception hasn't improved since then, Yeah,
28:33
Speaker 1: it certainly hasn't. UM. I do think it is interesting though,
28:38
Speaker 1: that there is so much literature out there about young
28:41
Speaker 1: girl fans, whether they're the teeny boppers of the fifties
28:45
Speaker 1: or the swifties of today. But um. Jacqueline Edmondson edited
28:50
Speaker 1: this book Music and American Life that did talk about
28:54
Speaker 1: the whole pop versus rock, feminine versus masculine, active versus
28:57
Speaker 1: passive thing and said that although girls and women became
29:01
Speaker 1: an integral part of the popular music industry, they were
29:05
Speaker 1: constantly devalued and objectified. I mean it goes back to
29:08
Speaker 1: that whole thing of rock being serious, rap and hip
29:12
Speaker 1: hop being hyper masculine, and pop is just this thing
29:14
Speaker 1: that gets shoved aside as valueless because it is consumed
29:18
Speaker 1: by girls and women. And there was a note as
29:21
Speaker 1: well in the Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music in the
29:24
Speaker 1: World talking about how popular music scholars have really gone
29:30
Speaker 1: back and quote challenge negative and stereotyped conceptualizations of female fans,
29:36
Speaker 1: who have regularly been presented in news reports and popular
29:40
Speaker 1: literature as passive consumers. There's that word again, passive uncritically
29:44
Speaker 1: supporting mass produced music, or as swooning teenagers idolizing male
29:50
Speaker 1: pop stars. Yeah. And the thing you get a lot
29:53
Speaker 1: too the more you read about this is the recognition
29:57
Speaker 1: that a lot of it has to do with the
30:00
Speaker 1: idea of the feminine and the female being considered the
30:04
Speaker 1: other um. Asia Romano, who wrote an article in The
30:09
Speaker 1: Kernel called the teens on Tumbler Are all Right, talks
30:13
Speaker 1: about how teenage girls continue to be one of the
30:15
Speaker 1: world's prime targets for being held up as a social
30:19
Speaker 1: example of something alien, foreign and overtly sexualized, arriving primordial,
30:24
Speaker 1: massive or orgiastic emotions waiting to be tapped by adult
30:27
Speaker 1: men who treat their identities as a bizarre spectacle. Because
30:31
Speaker 1: when you think about it, especially when you read and
30:33
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this article a little later, when you
30:36
Speaker 1: read like the g Q piece about One Direction and
30:40
Speaker 1: talking about their fans, and I mean the way they
30:42
Speaker 1: describe these young girls is a hormone bomb, I believe
30:47
Speaker 1: was the way they described it. Well, there was just
30:49
Speaker 1: a lot of horrifying, like a dark pink mass of
30:52
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. It's just it got old, too old
30:55
Speaker 1: to sexual especially since the girls are talking about are
30:57
Speaker 1: like eleven um. But it's strange that nobody seems to
31:03
Speaker 1: be able to step back and say, wait, okay, this
31:07
Speaker 1: is just this is just another half of the population
31:09
Speaker 1: doing something like they want to do. Maybe we should
31:12
Speaker 1: question why the other half of the population does things
31:15
Speaker 1: like they do. For instance, you know, men going nuts
31:18
Speaker 1: over sports or sports teams or whatever, or going nuts
31:21
Speaker 1: over music as well, but just in a different kind
31:24
Speaker 1: of way. And at this point, I think it's worth
31:26
Speaker 1: noting that this conversation really is not an argument on
31:31
Speaker 1: behalf of like the fine musical quality of all pop music.
31:36
Speaker 1: It's not about the music. It's more about this persistent
31:41
Speaker 1: pattern of like marginalizing this very specific demographic, and you
31:48
Speaker 1: throw pop music under the bus along with it as well.
31:52
Speaker 1: But what's fascinating to see is just how how the
31:55
Speaker 1: media even approaches fangirls. It's like, we still don't know
31:59
Speaker 1: how to wrap our lines around these young girls. There
32:03
Speaker 1: was even an article about this in the Wall Street
32:06
Speaker 1: Journal of all places, called inside the brains of Justin
32:10
Speaker 1: Bieber fans which interviewed these neurologists being like, what's happening
32:15
Speaker 1: inside their brains? I mean, what what would compel a
32:19
Speaker 1: twelve year old to cry at the sight of One Direction?
32:24
Speaker 1: And answering this very serious and hard hitting question, uh,
32:29
Speaker 1: neuroscientists and neurologists were basically saying that this experience of
32:35
Speaker 1: listening to Taylor Swift or watching One Direction releases dopamine,
32:41
Speaker 1: which is of course a neurotransmitter involved in pleasure and addiction.
32:46
Speaker 1: It provides the same rush as eating chocolate or winning
32:50
Speaker 1: for a compulsive gambler. Yes, so we like it in
32:53
Speaker 1: other words, and we just really like it and it
32:55
Speaker 1: makes us feel good. We like it now. It was
32:57
Speaker 1: noteworthy though that and this is nothing against Dr Daniel
33:01
Speaker 1: Leviton conducting this research at all, um, but I did
33:05
Speaker 1: think it was interesting how he said that these musical
33:09
Speaker 1: chase are really formed and wired in our brains in
33:12
Speaker 1: the teen years and really become part of our brains
33:15
Speaker 1: internal wiring, so that, for instance, in my case, when
33:19
Speaker 1: I hear Bob, I am taken back to when I
33:23
Speaker 1: was eleven or twelve years old listening to being like,
33:25
Speaker 1: oh man, there homeschool too. I know, well it's I
33:31
Speaker 1: didn't mean to totally skip over. You just said sorry
33:34
Speaker 1: my tween dreams, tween dream, homeschool romance with the middle,
33:38
Speaker 1: with the middle handsome brother. Yeah, I mean this this.
33:40
Speaker 1: I feel like dude roommate has said similar things to me,
33:43
Speaker 1: although his his brain stunting came a little bit later.
33:47
Speaker 1: I guess he's still obsessed with the atari's so he
33:51
Speaker 1: formed that emotional obsessive bond with a pop punk band. Yeah,
33:54
Speaker 1: it's just it's just nostalgia here is. But there's also
33:58
Speaker 1: too Almost any time this conversation comes up of like
34:02
Speaker 1: why beatlemaniacs, why one direction? Or is why justin Bieber fans.
34:06
Speaker 1: There's also this talk of safe sexuality. And we talked
34:09
Speaker 1: about this a lot too in our episode on boy bands. Um,
34:13
Speaker 1: it's like, calm down, parents, It's just these are just
34:16
Speaker 1: kind of like practice boyfriends, which is also highly heteronormative,
34:19
Speaker 1: and we don't even have time to get into uh,
34:22
Speaker 1: sexual orientation and race when it comes to fandom, the
34:26
Speaker 1: portrayal of fandom as well, because it is very white
34:28
Speaker 1: and very straight. Um, but there's this it's almost like Okay,
34:33
Speaker 1: we can calm down, because this is a safe way
34:36
Speaker 1: for girls to express their sexualities. We we should actually
34:40
Speaker 1: be glad that they're kissing posters and not actually making
34:44
Speaker 1: out with real boys. Yeah. Well, I mean it's when
34:48
Speaker 1: you think about yourself being in sixth grade or whatever.
34:54
Speaker 1: Is it really so hard to understand this and to
34:56
Speaker 1: imagine it because you're you're hitting everybody, You've got these
35:01
Speaker 1: hormones rushing through you for the first time, You're looking
35:03
Speaker 1: around going like for the first time, your Tina Belcher.
35:06
Speaker 1: Basically you're looking around and being like, butts awesome, and
35:12
Speaker 1: so just like it's no surprise that girls of the
35:16
Speaker 1: fifties consumed the music that was packaged and presented to
35:20
Speaker 1: and for them. Is it really any surprise that a
35:23
Speaker 1: girl of thirteen would, who's suddenly awakening to the idea
35:28
Speaker 1: that hey, I really like butts boys butts, would look
35:32
Speaker 1: at somebody like one direction and start fantasizing or almost
35:37
Speaker 1: obsessing over them. Yeah, and not almost. I mean plenty
35:40
Speaker 1: of girls do outright obsessed over these things. I mean
35:43
Speaker 1: I outright obsessed over Prince William truth be told. And
35:46
Speaker 1: I was young, I thought I would be Kate Middleton
35:49
Speaker 1: per chance. Um. But and this is also too all
35:53
Speaker 1: in the context of living in a society where expressing
35:58
Speaker 1: outright that kind of actuality, the sexual desires, Tina belterering
36:04
Speaker 1: um is not okay for girls. So it's not only
36:08
Speaker 1: a thing of and I think that that's often left
36:11
Speaker 1: out these conversations of like, well, no wonder they're freaking
36:14
Speaker 1: out because in a lot of ways were kind of
36:16
Speaker 1: pent up um. But one quote though from that Wall
36:19
Speaker 1: Street Journal article that jumped out was boys also developed
36:24
Speaker 1: musical taste in this phase of life, but adolescent girls
36:27
Speaker 1: are far more likely to become infatuated with pop stars,
36:30
Speaker 1: experts say, because they are awakening to romantic and sexual
36:34
Speaker 1: feelings that are both intoxicating and scary. And it's like,
36:38
Speaker 1: but what about the boys though, So they're doing all
36:41
Speaker 1: of this, they're developing these kinds of things. They are
36:45
Speaker 1: also you know, having experiencing sexual feelings that are probably
36:49
Speaker 1: both intoxicating and scary. But we aren't as weirded out
36:52
Speaker 1: by that, right. It's almost like a coming of age, uh,
36:56
Speaker 1: an expected and accepted phase that a boy will like,
37:00
Speaker 1: you know, tape up pictures of Megan Fox or whoever.
37:03
Speaker 1: In his bedroom, and you know, we were all like, oh,
37:07
Speaker 1: that's just a pervy little thirteen year old bullets what
37:09
Speaker 1: they go through, whereas there's not that same acceptance and
37:13
Speaker 1: a pass is not given to young girls. Instead, it's like,
37:17
Speaker 1: it's icky and scary that you're also obsessed with these
37:20
Speaker 1: pop stars. Yeah, how strange And also too, this is
37:24
Speaker 1: around the time there were every now and then you'll
37:27
Speaker 1: have comparisons to boys and men's obsessions with sports teams
37:34
Speaker 1: to the point that they are also yelling and screaming
37:37
Speaker 1: and crying. But there but that doesn't seem strange at all.
37:40
Speaker 1: There's never any like, oh, well, what's going on inside
37:43
Speaker 1: those fans brains? Right? But coming back to the girls,
37:48
Speaker 1: the teeny the girl teeny boppers emotions aside, and perhaps
37:53
Speaker 1: unrealistic obsessions with boy bands aside, it's still unanniable that
37:59
Speaker 1: this is such an influential group. I mean, these girls
38:03
Speaker 1: prop up in a lot of ways the music industry.
38:07
Speaker 1: I mean we talked about in the Taylor Swift episode.
38:09
Speaker 1: How I mean her sales accounted for of all records
38:17
Speaker 1: sales in the United States the week that it came out. Yeah,
38:20
Speaker 1: I mean this is just part of a wave that
38:22
Speaker 1: has been waving since the eighteen fifties. There is nothing
38:27
Speaker 1: new about consumer culture when it comes to music and
38:31
Speaker 1: the fact that these fans who are so disparaged so often,
38:37
Speaker 1: they really are giving these artists quite the fat paycheck.
38:41
Speaker 1: And and you know, so for that their disparaged, they're
38:44
Speaker 1: they're buying something it's prepackaged. They're listening to something that
38:48
Speaker 1: is that is super hyper produced. Um, and everybody says
38:52
Speaker 1: that that's just not good enough. But as Asia Romano
38:56
Speaker 1: over The Colonel pointed out in August, it's not like
38:59
Speaker 1: we have to worry so much about the future of
39:03
Speaker 1: our country based on the fact that kids like pop music.
39:06
Speaker 1: I mean, they've always liked pop music. If anything, these
39:10
Speaker 1: kids might be better off than we were, she argues,
39:13
Speaker 1: because they're so social media and real world savvy and
39:17
Speaker 1: much more so than we give them credit for, and
39:20
Speaker 1: they happen to be much more likely to engage in actual,
39:22
Speaker 1: real life activism. For instance, Yeah, there was there's a
39:27
Speaker 1: mom who wrote a column I think it came out
39:29
Speaker 1: in The Guardian who talking about her daughter who is
39:33
Speaker 1: a die hard One Direction fan. She's a one Direction
39:35
Speaker 1: of and she said, yeah, you can disparaiture all you want,
39:40
Speaker 1: but she is demonstrated and learned all sorts of real
39:45
Speaker 1: world skills, such as navigating her way to a concert,
39:49
Speaker 1: like getting on the subway with her friends, figuring out
39:52
Speaker 1: how to budget and then buy a ticket, and also
39:55
Speaker 1: meeting all of these other girls, these other one direction
39:58
Speaker 1: ers as well. And she was like, I think it's
39:59
Speaker 1: actually really been rather valuable for her. I mean, that's
40:03
Speaker 1: a that's a really glass half full kind of perspective.
40:07
Speaker 1: But I think that it's worth opening up our our
40:13
Speaker 1: perception of who these girls are, because a lot of
40:15
Speaker 1: times we just kind of distilled them down into just
40:18
Speaker 1: arriving pink hormone bomb waying to go off, rather than
40:22
Speaker 1: oh no, these are individuals and they probably do all
40:25
Speaker 1: have different tastes in certain ways. I mean they you know,
40:28
Speaker 1: we all they have to at least choose which One
40:31
Speaker 1: Direction band member they like the most. That's right. Well,
40:36
Speaker 1: I thought an interesting perspective on it, kind of jumping
40:39
Speaker 1: off from the whole using social media to connect, using
40:43
Speaker 1: social media to participate in activism. They're sort of echoes
40:46
Speaker 1: of that from the fandom around girl groups of the
40:50
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, and this is coming from that book Feminism
40:54
Speaker 1: and Pop Culture by Andy Szeisler, and she was quoting
40:57
Speaker 1: Susan Douglas who was talking about how back in the sixties, yes,
41:01
Speaker 1: you have commercialism and all of this pop music, but
41:06
Speaker 1: the girls who were listening to it got this sense
41:09
Speaker 1: of euphoria. She was saying, it wasn't just the the
41:12
Speaker 1: happiness of listening to this music or purchasing it and
41:16
Speaker 1: participating in this culture. But she said that for tens
41:19
Speaker 1: of millions of young girls who started feeling at the
41:22
Speaker 1: same time that day, as a generation would not be
41:25
Speaker 1: trapped and there was plan of the tiniest seat of
41:27
Speaker 1: a social movement. And again that might seem like a
41:30
Speaker 1: glass half full, kind of a pie in the sky idea,
41:33
Speaker 1: but you know, we did mention earlier that those girl
41:36
Speaker 1: groups of the fifties and sixties it was really the
41:39
Speaker 1: first time that female singers were singing lyrics about female emotions. Yeah. Well,
41:47
Speaker 1: and even when it comes to the beatle Maniacs, there
41:50
Speaker 1: have also been uh feminists who have said, hey, well,
41:55
Speaker 1: this is also to the first time we really saw
41:58
Speaker 1: the female gays and masks. Maybe we're also a little
42:02
Speaker 1: uncomfortable with this just because the tables have turned in
42:05
Speaker 1: that way of you have thousands and thousands of girls
42:09
Speaker 1: actively lusting after a group of men, and hey, we
42:13
Speaker 1: probably just hadn't seen that very much anymore, and we
42:16
Speaker 1: still to this day are uncomfortable with seeing that kind
42:20
Speaker 1: of um sexuality perhaps on display, right, because it's the
42:24
Speaker 1: whole heteronormative male culture being the default. That's why no
42:28
Speaker 1: one questions crazy male sports fandom. It's why it's cool
42:32
Speaker 1: from my former dude roommate to scream at the television
42:36
Speaker 1: or lose his mind at a U G A game,
42:39
Speaker 1: but it's looked down upon if a girl loses her
42:41
Speaker 1: mind screaming over Taylor Swift. Well, I think this two
42:44
Speaker 1: circles back not only to our episode on boy bands,
42:46
Speaker 1: but also to our Bitch episode because we kicked it
42:50
Speaker 1: off talking about basic bitches, and the hallmark of a
42:53
Speaker 1: basic bitch is also a die hard love of Taylor Swift,
42:57
Speaker 1: which I think to reflects this kind of you know,
43:02
Speaker 1: eschewing any sign of just unabashed femininity. Because as writer
43:07
Speaker 1: and editor Rachel Adiden said two Time Magazine talking about
43:12
Speaker 1: this issue of fan girls, and this is more of
43:15
Speaker 1: fan girls in geek culture being disparaged. She said, quote
43:18
Speaker 1: feminization is almost universally seen as appreciation of value. And
43:24
Speaker 1: it's not only that depreciation of value. It is also
43:28
Speaker 1: a giant pushing together of really different groups of people.
43:33
Speaker 1: It's assuming that all of these young girls and can
43:36
Speaker 1: we not forget the young boys to who we like
43:38
Speaker 1: this music? Yes, I mean talk about like heteronormative culture.
43:41
Speaker 1: It is very heteronormative, and it honestly wasn't until recently
43:45
Speaker 1: that popular music studies have really highlighted that diversity. And
43:50
Speaker 1: this is coming again from the Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular
43:53
Speaker 1: Music in the World, which cited study by a pop
43:59
Speaker 1: music scholar or which found that female Elvis fans had
44:03
Speaker 1: their own particular personal and also political uses for the
44:08
Speaker 1: performer rather than simply worshiping Elvis because they should worship Elvis.
44:14
Speaker 1: And the same thing, there was another study that they
44:16
Speaker 1: decided um talking about how being a fan is quote
44:20
Speaker 1: more of a celebration of girl culture and a process
44:24
Speaker 1: through which female sexuality and identity are produced as it
44:28
Speaker 1: is about the male performers involved. That makes a lot
44:30
Speaker 1: of sense, totally. Yeah, I mean, if you have I
44:33
Speaker 1: don't want to keep going back to the sports example,
44:35
Speaker 1: because I realized that things are not always black and
44:37
Speaker 1: white with clear lines. There's plenty of overlap here, and
44:40
Speaker 1: women love sports. Women love sports too. Yeah, But I mean,
44:43
Speaker 1: just to kind of pick on an example, I mean,
44:45
Speaker 1: there's a lot of social acceptance for boys from a
44:49
Speaker 1: young age learning to love sports and using it as
44:52
Speaker 1: a way to bond with other men in their lives,
44:55
Speaker 1: whether those are friends or dads or brothers or whoever.
44:59
Speaker 1: And why should girls fandom or girls love of whether
45:06
Speaker 1: it's a pop princess or a boy band or whoever,
45:09
Speaker 1: why should that be less valued? Well, and a lot
45:14
Speaker 1: of it's probably for that reason though that a lot
45:16
Speaker 1: of UH analysts and scholars have noted how in a
45:21
Speaker 1: lot of ways, die hard fandom is transgressive of the
45:27
Speaker 1: appropriate feminine roles, both then and still today. And we
45:31
Speaker 1: see that just kind of reflected in the kind of
45:34
Speaker 1: brush off that they often get. Now, can fangirls get
45:39
Speaker 1: obsessive and go wild and also say horrible things on
45:43
Speaker 1: social media if you disagree with their taste. Yes, fans
45:48
Speaker 1: are not perfect, No fan is perfect, but I think
45:51
Speaker 1: it's just worth considering why teeny boppers, in particular the
45:57
Speaker 1: female teeny Bopper is just so universe resally maligned. It
46:02
Speaker 1: will be interesting, Kristen, when you and I are podcasters
46:06
Speaker 1: in our eighties to look back and see how this
46:10
Speaker 1: particular point in time where we have the intersection of
46:15
Speaker 1: pop music and fandom and all of that stuff and
46:17
Speaker 1: social media, how that will affect things. Because you and
46:21
Speaker 1: I in the beginning of the podcast kept mentioning changing technology,
46:25
Speaker 1: changing methods for consuming music, and all of that stuff
46:28
Speaker 1: in the way that it fostered that music lover culture.
46:32
Speaker 1: It will be interesting to see how all of these
46:34
Speaker 1: young girls who now feel like they have a voice
46:35
Speaker 1: on social media and can connect with each other over
46:37
Speaker 1: their fandom, but can also say, hey, screw you g
46:40
Speaker 1: Q writers for portraying me as a terrible person and
46:44
Speaker 1: portraying Harry Styles as a terrible person. It will just
46:47
Speaker 1: be interesting to see how and whether that changes the
46:50
Speaker 1: culture and whether it gives young women more of a
46:53
Speaker 1: voice as they get older. And you can tune into
46:56
Speaker 1: that episode in on Stuff Grandma never told you that's right,
47:03
Speaker 1: But now we want to hear from teeny Bopper's fangirls listening,
47:08
Speaker 1: what do you think about all of this mom stuff?
47:10
Speaker 1: At how stuffworks dot com is our email address. You
47:13
Speaker 1: can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages
47:16
Speaker 1: on Facebook. We definitely want to hear from fans. Have
47:19
Speaker 1: you been dismissed simply for being a fan who also
47:25
Speaker 1: happens to be a girl or a woman. Let us
47:28
Speaker 1: know mom Stuff at how stuffworks dot com and we've
47:30
Speaker 1: got a couple of messages to share with you right now.
47:38
Speaker 1: So I've got a couple of letters here about our
47:40
Speaker 1: episode on ankles and cankles, And this one is coming
47:44
Speaker 1: from Wendy, who writes, my husband related to me the
47:47
Speaker 1: story of a teammate on his high school football team. Hey,
47:50
Speaker 1: guys in sports call back. This individual was a linebacker
47:54
Speaker 1: with a stocky build and was overall very athletic, but
47:57
Speaker 1: was very aware of his lack of ankles. You mentioned
48:00
Speaker 1: that there were no exercises to slim the ankle, but
48:03
Speaker 1: the approach he took was to perform tons of calf
48:05
Speaker 1: raises to make his calves more prominent, giving the illusion
48:09
Speaker 1: of a smaller ankle. One day, he burst into the
48:11
Speaker 1: weight room exclaiming, I have ankles, showing them off to
48:14
Speaker 1: his fellow teammates. He was so enthusiastic. He was also
48:18
Speaker 1: totally open about his excitement with the other guys, which
48:21
Speaker 1: I love. And also it shows that men do talk
48:24
Speaker 1: to each other about more than sports and babes in
48:27
Speaker 1: the locker room. I thought it would be interesting to
48:29
Speaker 1: share that this was not just a lady centric issue.
48:33
Speaker 1: Love the podcast and keep up the good work. Well thanks,
48:36
Speaker 1: Wendy Well. I have a letter here from Diana, who
48:40
Speaker 1: starts off the email with three thank you's and so
48:43
Speaker 1: you're welcome. She says, I have cankles. It is genetic.
48:47
Speaker 1: My grandmother on my dad's side never wore dresses, and
48:50
Speaker 1: now I am in the same boat. It is a
48:52
Speaker 1: painful thing to see people staring at my ankles, are
48:55
Speaker 1: making comments. Don't even think about skinny jeans, which you
48:58
Speaker 1: didn't mention. But it is a problem for people like me.
49:01
Speaker 1: I know what they're saying. As you said, there is
49:03
Speaker 1: nothing I can do about it. I have large risks too,
49:06
Speaker 1: and although it helped me as an athlete, it will
49:09
Speaker 1: never be the definition of the Gibson girl. We women
49:12
Speaker 1: are still held out to be. Even finding skew boots
49:15
Speaker 1: is impossible at times. Oprah once mentioned cankles years ago
49:19
Speaker 1: and laughed at the term. I cried. Even Oprah, who
49:23
Speaker 1: acts as though she is the defender of all people
49:25
Speaker 1: who are different, didn't get me. I hope this message
49:29
Speaker 1: reaches those who don't or can't understand my position in
49:32
Speaker 1: the hope it will help alleviate the judgment. So thank you, Diana,
49:36
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry Oprah doesn't support you. Yeah, Oprah, maybe
49:41
Speaker 1: so blind to cankles. Even Oprah is not perfect though.
49:44
Speaker 1: It's a good reminder. So if you have letters to
49:47
Speaker 1: send to us, no Mom stuff at how Suffworks dot
49:50
Speaker 1: com is our email address, and we'd love to hear
49:52
Speaker 1: from you. But if you'd like to give us a
49:53
Speaker 1: shout out on social media, you can find links to
49:55
Speaker 1: all of those places as well. It's all of our blogs, videos,
49:59
Speaker 1: and podcast asked, including this one with our sources so
50:02
Speaker 1: you can read along with us if you like. All
50:05
Speaker 1: of that's over. It's stuff Mom Never told You dot
50:07
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
50:13
Speaker 1: Is it how Stuff Works dot com