Thank You, Olivia— It Really IS Brutal Out Here
Thank You, Olivia— It Really IS Brutal Out Here
Why is it so hard to be a teenage girl in a post-One Direction world??
Some people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime, and some people are your manager at a skincare store who help you laugh it off when you inadvertently insult a customer.
All of this is to introduce this week’s guest: Erin Raderstorf is a full-time barista, part-time real estate agent, ex-camp counselor, and a Media Studies degree holder. She was also (if you couldn’t put two and two together) one of my managers at Glossier, and a fellow Directioner.
This week, Erin and I talked about why teen girls in every generation are mocked for simply liking things, what larger societal issues that entails, and if your favorite One Direction member still influences the woman you are today (spoiler alert: it does).
And if you’re thinking: “Hey, the CFO of the Trump Organization and the Trump Organization itself were both just arraigned on 15 felony charges, including your favorite of all felony charges —larceny— why aren’t we breaking that down???” then you clearly have not been reading along these last twenty weeks.
The Trump story? She’s been fifteen years in the making. She can wait one more week. But a chance to talk about One Direction in a professional setting has only come around exactly once in every job I’ve held so I have to break this one down first.
I have priorities.
Fan Behavior
Since we’re talking about One Direction, I have to establish Erin’s credibility before we start:
Emily: Who was your favorite member of One Direction?
Erin: Between you and me, Louis was always my favorite, but I used to say it was Liam because he seemed the most attainable.
Emily: Does this define your personality today?
Erin: Being a secret Louis girl? Absolutely.
As I have ascended into adulthood I find that I am attracted to natural leaders and usually the funniest person in the room, but I’m also quite aloof about it.
Clearly, Erin passed the vibe check, and, as a Harry girl myself, we can now move forward without any infighting.1
Girls On Blast
Last week, Vox writer Constance Grady published a phenomenal article about the paradox between teen girls’ influence on the relevance and longevity of pop culture trends and the disrespect they constantly get for simply liking what they like. Grady reminded us of the origins of The Beatles’ success, writing:
Adults called those Beatlemaniac teen girls oversexed and hysterical — until, eventually, they saw the perfection, too. The Beatles went on to become one of the most influential rock bands in history, and the girls who loved them first were treated as the punchline of a tired joke.
When Erin responded to a poll on my Instagram story that she was an expert on One Direction, I knew we had to talk about this paradox and how it has shaped our experience as teen girls who are now women. I started by asking:
Emily: When was your first memory of being "a fan" and participating in fan culture, and when was the first time you remembered being ridiculed for it?
Erin: My first interaction with fan culture was the absolute chaos surrounding the Hannah Montana 2006 tour.
Loving Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus was such an important piece of my identity and it was so important to me that people knew that. The big “body double” scandal during that tour was devastating to me. I vividly remember kids at school calling Miley fake and a lip syncher and I took it so personally. It felt like it was my personal cross to bear and would armor up to defend her. It felt like people couldn't wait to poke holes in this thing I loved and it really broke my heart.
I hope one day Miley thanks me for my efforts.
Erin touched on something that seems to be a constant thread throughout the ridicule young girls face, which is that we can’t have things that are good enough to last a long time.
Emily: I remember constantly being told One Direction was going to break up or not last. Do you think people who weren't fans enjoyed making these kinds of comments? If so, why?
Erin: Simply, yes.
I think because their rise to fame was so meteoric, there were a lot of people so confused as to how it could've happened, that they genuinely believed it wasn't real and wanted to bring everyone back down to the reality that this band existed as an entity to make money— and we were all falling for it.
I think so many comments which are made to deliberately tear down something you love are made by people who are on the outside who are feeling excluded and want to alienate you to make themself feel better— in other words, they weren't invited to the party and want to make sure you know that it’s going to suck anyway.
For all the language that exists to paint young women as insecure and petty, this behavior sounds a lot more juvenile than simply listening to a boy band.
But then again, Mean Girls wasn’t created in a vacuum. Women are mean to each other and oftentimes, older women will turn around and mock younger generations of teens as if the patriarchy was Simon Cowell’s latest boy band.
By the way, just because I’m writing this piece doesn’t mean I’m above this behavior— last year, I cringed at VSCO girls, fully forgetting that I was yesteryear's VSCO girl. I asked Erin:
Emily: Do you think as teenage girls become young women, we are conditioned to then degrade younger generations of teen girls much in the way we were mocked?
Erin: The transition from pre-teen girl to grown adult woman is packed with so many different micro-phases that it’s so easy to look back and judge other girls in those previous phases, even if it was just a few years ago.
I also think as women we want to protect other women from the embarrassment we experienced but it always comes off as judgey. A perfect example is the “pick me girl” or the “bruh girl” trend— you know who is making fun of these girls? OTHER GIRLS. Not men! Other women!!!!
The age group in which these trends are identifiable is the same age when you really begin to develop your unique personality so of course there is going to be a level of homogeneity— that’s how you figure out how to be your own person!
I think we have to start acknowledging how vital these trends are to individual development even if they seem ridiculous and potentially embarrassing to an older generation.
Sidenote: I read an article which identified that the VSCO girl trend shift from sexy to girly and age appropropriate —scrunchies, friendship bracelets, pastels, big tee shirts hiding girls bodies— almost directly refuted the sexualization of young girls. It would make sense that older generations are reacting with anger that they didn't get that phase rather than reacting with joy for this generation of girls who figured out a way to desexualize themselves.
All I can say in response to that is skskskskskskssk so true bestie.
More Than Just a Fan…. A Stan
I feel as though a lot of times when we talk about teen girls and what we like, the implication is that the actual liking of something is superficial. The assumption is usually that girls care more about fawning over pretty boys than they do about listening to music.
As if Stockholm Syndrome wasn’t an absolute fucking banger.
Obviously, this generalization is super messed up and we’ll get into it in a bit, but it also is so stupid. How can you devote years of your life to something without developing friends, enemies, and a personality along the way? I wouldn’t say men who play fantasy football care more about hot athletes than they do about watching sports games with friends (although, honestly, they should).
Moral of the story is, fan culture goes much deeper than even just liking music. It often shapes the way young girls consume media and communicate with others during our formative years, but our interests are never framed to include that. Erin spoke to this by saying:
Emily: We came of age on social media, around the same time we would have gotten into fan culture. Has that shaped how you approach social media? If so, how?
Erin: This is something I could talk about for hours. Ironically, I have a very healthy relationship with social media because of how I was introduced to it.
To me, the “social” part of social media was a tool for me to get closer to celebrity culture, not to connect with my peers. I didn't even follow any of my friends on Twitter and Instagram for a long time because their content wasn’t interesting to me— I saw them everyday, I already knew what they were doing.
The seed planted in my brain was that social media was a tool that could be easily manipulated to fuel a narrative— specifically that Justin Bieber was just a regular guy. So many of my peers had to teach themselves that social media was easily manipulated, that it was a person's “highlight reel” and not an accurate representation of their lives.
I already knew that because I had been trying to read between the lines of celebrity published content for years without the interference of content from “real people.”
Emily: In the Vox article, Constance Grady wrirtes that, "to be a teenage girl is to simultaneously be pop culture’s ultimate punching bag, cash cow, and gatekeeper." Has your personal experience of being a teenage girl interested in pop culture either proved that or rejected it? How so?
Erin: Oh, it has proved it, time and time again, and I’m so glad I have the language to describe it now.
I always felt like it was my personal responsibility to defend my interests to everyone. I was defending the worth of “teen soaps” (which are just shows… we can just call them shows), I was defending the talent of Justin Bieber, I was defending the price of concert tickets, I was defending UGG boots. Honestly who cares if I only wanted them because my friends had them? I like my friends!
I was not only being asked constantly by society to justify my interests, but to also defend them, like a damn thesis.
Battle of the Binary
As I was typing up the questions for Erin this week, I started to clock how frequently I wrote the word girl. Then, I noticed that girlhood, as we were discussing it here, seemed to connote “feminine” behavior like this:
There seemed to be another conversation under all of these points that we just weren’t having.
Emily: This is kind of a big question but a lot of this conversation and conversations like it rely on the existence of the gender binary. Do you think having conversations about girls specifically has a subliminal goal of continuing the binds of the gender binary?
Erin: As long as the male gaze persists, we will need to continue to advocate for the population most affected by it and, in this case, it’s young girls.
There will always be this idea that everything women do is to attract men— all of their interests are not genuine, but actually calculated moves to impress men. This pervasive belief that the interests of teenage girls are “less than” stems from the idea that it’s unearned and disingenuous.
With the way girlhood is approached in our society —as something frivolous enough to be entertaining for men to put down while appealing enough to be for their attraction— you open a cell door at the Metropolitan Correctional Center and let in this idea that girlhood is yet another thing for men to consume.
This way of thinking also leads to objectification (perceiving a woman less by who she is and more by what role she plays in a man’s life), which is how men often justify violence against women, and it maintains heteronormativity in the same way calling your infant son a “lady killer” does2— teen girls don’t like One Direction simply because they want to get with Harry Styles. That would be a nice bonus, but that’s not the root of our interests.
By classifying and judging interests based on gender, we uphold strict and restrictive hierarchies without barely even trying. To think, Phyllis Schlafly would have been so proud.
We don’t have too much time to get into why the gender binary needs to go (especially now that I brought Jeffrey Epstein and Phyllis Schlafly into the mix), but I will say two things on it: the first is that you can subscribe to the binary —aka identify as a man or a woman— and still be for breaking it down because you recognize it is unbearably restrictive. The second is if we broke it down, it would subvert a lot of fucking power structures. More importantly, we’d all be allowed to enjoy the kinds of pop culture we liked in peace.
But since we can’t tear down this entrenched construct with one measly newsletter, I asked Erin what would happen if we instead just flipped the script:
Emily: What do you think would happen if society began to mock adult men who are obsessed with WWII in the way they lead everyone else in mocking the interests of teenage girls?
Erin: I don’t think anything like that could happen, although I’d love to see someone try. I’d buy tickets to that show.
Referencing my previous point, male interests are not seen as solely to attract women and when they are, it’s seen as “brave.” Don’t get me started with the romanticization of men who like rom coms— of course you do! They’re great films!
Because male interests are given the stamp of authenticity from creation, entire industries carry with them an air of infallibility. There is no reality in which we could subvert this norm without first breaking down the institutionalized differences in the interests themselves.
Maybe men should start with getting a better hobby than mocking the interests of teenage girls. Or at least listen to FOUR (Deluxe).
Saving the Hardest Conversation for Last
Let me paint you a scene.
It’s a cold and rainy Wednesday in March. The weather sucks in Connecticut in March. A young Emily Sharp is sat in the back of her high school English class with all of her friends not because they are slackers in English class— no!!! It is because they do not like anyone else in said English class and want to put some distance in between.
Now. Phones are not allowed to be out in this high school but alas, one of Emily’s friends is looking below her desk when she gasps! Emily and her friends all turn to the messenger as she says, “Zayn is leaving One Direction.”
The friends stop the class because this is far more important than talking about phallic symbols in My Ántonia when it was literally just like one scene with a snake.
This is the end of an era.
Emily: Where were you when One Direction broke up?
Erin: The memory that still sticks with me was when I got a text in my college digital art class that just said “check Facebook” and it was the post which announced Zayn was leaving the band.
I can still feel the full body chills.
I actually just got up and walked out of class, and went to my room and took a nap. If you were a real One Direction fan, this news wasn't totally shocking but it felt like being broken up with over text, when you really thought you were going to work it out.
The announcement was so vague and ambiguous (and on Facebook??) no one knew what was going to happen. There were three days before anyone knew whether the band would continue on tour or even have another album. A nightmare.
The hiatus announcement was nothing compared to those three days.
Thank you so much to Erin for answering all these questions and for being such an incredible presence at Glossier Atlanta. That whole experience, much like One Direction’s longevity, was cut too short.
If you’re feeling up to it, please take my Absolute Ultimate Only One Direction Quiz You Ever Have To Take Again. It’s more indicative of your personality than Meyers Briggs.
I’m not going to degrade Erin in the body of the newsletter like this, but I do think she ranked the 1D albums entirely incorrectly. Last March, when the world was on fire and all, I spent two full days listening to every 1D song released in order and ranked the albums from best to worst. In my astute opinion, Erin is wrong and this playlist has the top 36 best 1D songs in order. Thank you.
P.S. stop doing that. It’s fucking weird.