Midnight Sun, the latest book in the Twilight saga, is sitting on my nightstand at this very moment. It is in the top position on my “being read” pile, which is not to be confused with my “to be read” pile, which is much larger, and on the floor. To those of you who are waiting for the part where I add “I have a confession to make,” or “guilty pleasure,” I think I should tell you that you will be waiting a long time, because this isn’t a confession, and I don’t feel guilty: I was a huge Twilight fan.
I’ve always been a fangirl of some sort. When I was in middle school it was The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, and then in high school I was on to Dune. (Yes, I still know the Bene Gesserit’s Litany Against Fear by heart.) Later I could be found at midnight release parties for the latest Harry Potter, and most recently front and center whenever the newest movie in the MCU comes out. (The most terrible personal cost of the pandemic for me to date has been the delay in the release of the new Black Widow movie.)
So yeah. Huge nerd. Again, not a confession, just a fact. The thing is, though, that no one would ever expect me to “confess” to being a Harry Potter fan. They might chuckle indulgently, and tell me about their infatuation with The Lord of the Rings, but they wouldn’t seriously shame me for it. Same goes with my other obsessions: when I arrange my schedule so that I can be one of the first in (digital) line to buy Green Day or Die Antwoord tickets, that’s okay. A little over the top, but okay. When I do the same for Taylor Swift people roll their eyes.
So what’s the difference? Both Edward Cullen and Paul Muad’dib had that tortured teenage antihero thing on lock. Both TayTay and Billie Joe have been accused of throwing over their original fans for pop. And I have absolutely zero interest in debating—even in my own head—who is a “real” artist and who is not. Instead, I’d like to point out that above examples are just a few of the many ways in which our world constantly tries to devalue the things that girls love. Because that’s the real difference, isn’t it? Boys can like—and obsess over—things that are light on substance and depth (*cough, video games, sports, video games about sports, *cough) and we shrug our shoulders. Girls do the same and suddenly they are vapid and pathetic.
“Those who flock ’round…who scream themselves into hysteria, whose vacant faces flicker over the TV screen, are the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures.” (Paul Johnson, “New Statesman”)
This was written about the Beatles over fifty years ago, but it could have been written about One Direction fans last year.
So what, you may say. We’ve been making fun of teenage girls for generations. Big deal. And yet, it is a big deal. Studies of teenage boys and girls show that up until about age 12 there is no difference in the self-confidence of boys and girls—at age 12, however, girls’ self-confidence drops by 30%. And the percentage of girls who feel as if they are not allowed to fail? Up by 150%.
With the current state of things in the world, can we really afford to kneecap over half of our population before they even get out of the starting gate? How many brilliant minds have been stifled by being told they were “too silly” to be taken seriously? If we want teenage girls to become strong, capable, confident women (spoiler alert: we do), then we need to stop denigrating the things they love, simply because they love them.
An adolescent who is passionate about something—anything, really—has a much better chance at becoming a capable motivated adult than one who has had their passion shamed out of them. So maybe let’s give everyone—even teenage girls—the space to figure out what they are passionate about, without shame, without judgement. And then let’s get out of their way while they go out and fix the world that we have broken.