Recently my 13-year-old cousin started discussing how ‘hot’ this guy from a TV show was. I was surprised at first because never in my life had I imagined that this little girl who I had seen taking her first steps would talk to me about boys. And the most surprising part was that I agreed: that man was attractive. It got me thinking, I was around 12 when I had my first crush on a celebrity — Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys. I put up his photos everywhere in my room, wrote his name multiple times on the back of my notebook and screamed as soon as I heard his voice coming out of my Walkman. It felt like it went through my ears directly into my stomach. It was not just me, it was all of my friends, and the strange part is, we all are still the same.
What is this strange obsession that girls (or even women) have with these men who in no way are ideal in real life? I think that is the hook, what we ladies see is one man or a group of men, baring their emotions, serenading, crying and in Enrique’s case even dying for a girl.
I don’t see men going crazy after the girl bands, maybe because they already have women who are so obsessed with the idea of perfect love in their real life that they don’t really need a make believe one to trouble them more.
I have seen videos in which girls scream, cry and even faint at concerts, be it The Beatles, Elvis Presley, One Direction or Justin Bieber taking to the stage. These men are constantly getting weird fan requests, girls pull at their clothes while they are on the red carpet and screech in their faces while they are signing autographs. These men bring out of the women any animal instinct that they might have inside them and turn them into shrieking, teary-eyed banshees who run after cars thinking they might catch up. It is a horrid picture to paint, but the men really have to go through this every time they step out. Where does all the self-respect of the women go?
It doesn’t matter if the celebrity is in a relationship, or even married with children. All that matters to women is the image of the perfect man that he portrays and we forget that these famous men are humans and not the gods that we make them out to be.
Twenty three-year-olds swooning over the pre-pubescent voices of 16-year-olds or 14-year-old girls holding photos of 45-year-olds to their hearts, this is one crazy world, the entertainment industry. Age, location, relationship status, sexual orientation, everything is taken out of consideration. It may be George Michael crooning I never want to dance again or Enrique Iglesias asking I can be your hero? girls hold each other and cry. They pretend that the songs are written for them. Bruno Mars says I like you just the way you are and girls preen themselves in the mirror trying to be as perfect as they can ‘naturally’ be. These men have been playing with the most insecure thoughts in the minds of women for ages, and I don’t see this boy band phenomenon ever coming to a stop. Even when we have concerts in space, alien girls will be there in all their glory, crying green tears and holding human girls to jump around with.