I recently read a post on the social journalism platform Medium called “The Social Implications of Dissing “Boy Bands”” written by Heidi Samuelson. This post struck a personal chord with me. Samuelson writes about how boy bands are perceived by society and the implications those perceptions have on fans, specifically teenage girls, and on the band members themselves. Growing up, music, fandom, and boy bands were a big part of my life and helped me get through high school. Boy bands played a huge role in jumpstarting my concert obsession, and still play a role in my concert-going today. However, as Samuelson writes about, I experienced a lot of people who thought my interests were stupid or silly. 

This article is essentially about how boy bands are marketed toward a certain demographic, teenage girls, and how society fails to take both the bands and the fans seriously. Samuelson starts the post by questioning and condemning the term “boy band,” and what that actually means. She then goes on to define boy band as not a musical designation, but “a marketing term applying specifically to music that targets the teen girl demographic.”

One of Samuelson’s arguments is that teenage girls and anything marketed toward them are typically seen as a joke in society. She also pushes back on the idea that only teenage girls can listen to boy bands, defending older fans, specifically older women. She mentions how boy bands’ music only becomes socially acceptable and “cool” when men start to listen to it. A well-known example of this is The Beatles.  

I agree with everything Samuelson writes and although it is listed as an 18-minute read, I highly recommend reading it if you have ever scoffed at someone else’s music taste. One of my favorite quotes from the post is “Whatever it is you listen to or don’t listen to doesn’t make you a cool or uncool person, it doesn’t make you better or worse than anyone else, except maybe in your own mind’s eye. Taste isn’t a matter of pride. Taste is usually constructed for you.” 

I have experienced the stigma that Samuelson writes about. I’ve been a fan of boy bands and pop music for as long as I can remember. I’ve found that pop music, from boy bands especially, is generally looked down upon and frequently classified as not being real music. In the article, Samuelson briefly mentions two bands that have taken up a good portion of my concert-going and are subject to this scrutiny. I’ve been to five One Direction concerts and six 5 Seconds of Summer concerts. 

During middle and high school I felt that I couldn’t express my interests in these bands and others because everyone around me constantly made fun of them. Even more so, they made fun of their fans. These concerts were a safe space where I could enjoy myself without being ridiculed because everyone around me liked the same thing I did.

It’s always made me sad that society constantly mocks teenage girls. Though, when it comes to boy bands, it doesn’t stop once the teen years are over. I still find people laughing and scoffing at my music taste today. There are boy bands that have some really great music, but society has constructed this kind of music snobbery that makes some people hate anything mainstream, so they never even give it a chance. 

Samuelson summarizes her stance in one quote when she writes, “boy band” is a “loaded term used by the music industry to manipulate markets and, perhaps inadvertently, used to maintain certain features of patriarchal societies like the infantilization of men, the disrespect to children, and to shame women and girls of all ages for their interests.” 

It’s 2020 and I think we should stop music shaming and let people enjoy things.