#feministfriday episode 257 | Fix me in 45
Hullo nice people,
Today's newsletter is about being a very specific sort of teenage girl. I personally was much better at being a teenager when I was 25 than I was when I was 15; having more feelings, drunk more frequently and – this last one is the relevant one – certainly crushing harder on Pete Wentz.
Imagine, then, my excitement on seeing the title of this article. I could not jump on it fast enough:
Another girl tells me, 'I think that it is OK for people to comment on how attractive a "famous" person is, but there is a line with that kind of stuff that has been crossed many times'. I asked her what that line is. 'Just downright saying that they want to have sex with them. When I leave a comment it is usually just a quick "hey, I love you, you’re awesome".' On one particularly cute selfie of Pete, she had commented 'STRANGLE ME WITH YOUR PHONE CHARGER'.
https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/fangirls-extract-emo-fall-out-boy
I will never stop laughing at that last line.
The author of this article, Hannah Ewens, has written a whole book, it is called Fangirl and you better believe I already have my copy. Here's a review:
From Beatlemaniacs and Brosettes to Directioners and Beliebers, female pop fans have long been gathered into amorphous groups and variously painted as sad, hysterical, sexually predatory and mentally ill. The message, both within and outside the music industry, is always the same: male musical appreciation has to do with a deep understanding of artistry while girls are driven by idolatry and lust. Labelled in relation to the men they admire, they are frequently dismissed as groupies or, in today’s parlance, “fangirls”. But as the American music critic Jessica Hopper once tweeted: “Replace the word ‘fangirl’ with ‘expert’ and see what happens.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/24/fangirls-by-hannah-ewens-review
Finally, here's a terrific interview with the Jessica Hopper of that pullquote above, stalwart of the early emo scene who here talks about her book about Chicago in the early 2000s:
I just wanted it to feel like a precious little bubble of my life. I think with the remove of more than a decade, almost fifteen years in some cases, you look back on your younger self and go “Why didn’t you?” — that gimlet-eyed, adult regret and nostalgia. I didn’t want to operate from a place of either of those things. I didn’t want to neuter that history and I didn’t want to romanticize how carefree it was.
https://longreads.com/2018/09/28/falling-in-love-with-chicago-at-night-an-interview-with-jessica-hopper/
Were you aware that Franz Kafka once said that a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within you, and that's what emo music was to me, an axe to the frozen sea within me. I suppose it still is. I hope you liked this week's newsletter.
Love,
Alex.
Today's newsletter is about being a very specific sort of teenage girl. I personally was much better at being a teenager when I was 25 than I was when I was 15; having more feelings, drunk more frequently and – this last one is the relevant one – certainly crushing harder on Pete Wentz.
Imagine, then, my excitement on seeing the title of this article. I could not jump on it fast enough:
Another girl tells me, 'I think that it is OK for people to comment on how attractive a "famous" person is, but there is a line with that kind of stuff that has been crossed many times'. I asked her what that line is. 'Just downright saying that they want to have sex with them. When I leave a comment it is usually just a quick "hey, I love you, you’re awesome".' On one particularly cute selfie of Pete, she had commented 'STRANGLE ME WITH YOUR PHONE CHARGER'.
https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/fangirls-extract-emo-fall-out-boy
I will never stop laughing at that last line.
The author of this article, Hannah Ewens, has written a whole book, it is called Fangirl and you better believe I already have my copy. Here's a review:
From Beatlemaniacs and Brosettes to Directioners and Beliebers, female pop fans have long been gathered into amorphous groups and variously painted as sad, hysterical, sexually predatory and mentally ill. The message, both within and outside the music industry, is always the same: male musical appreciation has to do with a deep understanding of artistry while girls are driven by idolatry and lust. Labelled in relation to the men they admire, they are frequently dismissed as groupies or, in today’s parlance, “fangirls”. But as the American music critic Jessica Hopper once tweeted: “Replace the word ‘fangirl’ with ‘expert’ and see what happens.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/24/fangirls-by-hannah-ewens-review
Finally, here's a terrific interview with the Jessica Hopper of that pullquote above, stalwart of the early emo scene who here talks about her book about Chicago in the early 2000s:
I just wanted it to feel like a precious little bubble of my life. I think with the remove of more than a decade, almost fifteen years in some cases, you look back on your younger self and go “Why didn’t you?” — that gimlet-eyed, adult regret and nostalgia. I didn’t want to operate from a place of either of those things. I didn’t want to neuter that history and I didn’t want to romanticize how carefree it was.
https://longreads.com/2018/09/28/falling-in-love-with-chicago-at-night-an-interview-with-jessica-hopper/
Were you aware that Franz Kafka once said that a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within you, and that's what emo music was to me, an axe to the frozen sea within me. I suppose it still is. I hope you liked this week's newsletter.
Love,
Alex.