One Direction Infection: Media Representations of Boy Bands and their Fans

Boy bands have long been disparaged in music journalism settings, largely in part to their close association with hordes of screaming teenage and prepubescent girls. As rock journalism evolved in the 1960s and 1970s, so did two dismissive and misogynistic stereotypes about female fans: groupies and teenyboppers (Coates, 2003). While groupies were scorned in rock circles for their perceived hypersexuality, teenyboppers, who we can consider an umbrella term including boy band fanbases, were defined by a lack of sexuality and viewed as shallow, immature and prone to hysteria, and ridiculed as hall markers of bad taste, despite being driving forces in commercial markets (Ewens, 2020; Sherman, 2020). Similarly, boy bands have been disdained for their perceived femininity and viewed as inauthentic compared to "real" artist -- namely, hypermasculine male rock artists. While the boy band genre has evolved and experienced different eras, depictions of both the bands and their fans have stagnated in media, relying on these old stereotypes (Duffett, 2012). This paper aimed to investigate to what extent modern boy bands are portrayed differently from non-boy bands in music journalism through a quantitative content analysis coding articles for certain tropes and themes. Many of these categories were chosen based on music journalism's history of exhibiting misogynistic tendencies by devaluing and undermining the tastes of teenage girls (Coates, 2003; Ewens, 2020; Sherman, 2020; Wald, 2002). My study corroborated these scholars by providing quantitative data that music journalism continues to ridicule young female music fans. Additionally, I found that boy bands are diminished through themes/tropes that are gendered feminine in popular music discourse, most prominently age/youth, authenticity, innocence, and sexuality. However, the boy bands were not diminished through feminine tropes more closely aligned with female fans, like the use of emotional language. Although there are negative aspects to fandom, this paper also explores the many positive benefits of boy band fan cultures, from being bonding spaces to providing teen girls safe spaces to explore their sexualities (Baker, 2004; Ehrenreich et al., 1992).