One Direction - is this a legit new threat wrt to a new boy band invasion? y/n

xp-to-self (sorry, this is getting well convoluted)

i.e. the cultural values of the "real world" are bigger than you, and dominate everyone, and the boyband you love belongs to that "real world"'s cultural values and is only pretending to purity to get your money.

by contrast, in the microuniverse of a teen/tween market, the morals deemed acceptable by Disney and your parents and your peers' self-presentation are all one.

i don't disagree with anything you're saying but i do think there are so many 1d fans it seems a bit difficult to say they're all behaving as one mass for the same reasons, no more than it would be criticised if you attributed negative behaviour to them in a blanket way.

The way we've tended to think of boybands' "not having sex" is that it's to convince teenage girl fans that they could be in with a chance-- or at least that no other girl is further ahead in this heart than you potentially could be.

But there's also an extent to which their "not having sex" is the same "not having sex" that teenage girl fans are expected to uphold. It is a state of being that's true and false in the same ways, and the penalties associated with visibly breaking it are similar -- and people from "the real world" will attack you about it in the same ways.

xp yeah this really cannot hold for all of them!

I mean, the reason I started thinking about this was that I was surprised that they were so offended by the "harry styles as total LAD" characterisation, because that was, you know, obviously what GQ would do to make him palatable to their audience.

I'm interested on what set them off here. Lex assumes it's the same thing that bothers him (condescension towards the fans) but the tweets I've seen suggest, as c sharp major does, that it's more about the handling of Harry Styles' promiscuity. Those are two distinct grievances and GQ is culpable in the first case but merely doing its job in the second.

xp-to-self
And because I think at the same kind of age I was very impressed by lad mag culture, there was a coolness associated with it -- i guess because i was v embedded in the UK of the 90s? I think I would have been pleased that this object of my affection was getting a male-world stamp of approval.

So it is AMAZING to me that these girls are so vehemently against GQ making Harry Styles palatable to lad culture.

like, they are basically less impressed by patriarchy than i was at their age, this is astounding

I still don't think it's possible to be fully clear as to what the annoyance is about. Like, this is fanaticism (I don't mean that in a loaded or negative way.) It's like people raging about religion or something, everyone has their own interpretation.

and it's super self-feeding, i think a lot of people are just doing it because other people are doing it.

there's a group of 1D bloggers who are in their 20s and refer to the process of being into 1D and writing on tumblr about it and sharing images and ideas as the 'Contagion'

also, lest we forget, other 1D fan twitter users' greatest hits:
1. being convinced that harry and louis are in a secret relationship and that louis' girlfriend is a paid beard
2. being absolute nightmares to anyone remotely connected to anyone in the band
3. so much racism toward zayn, so much racism, in a way the lulzy ironic racism is more offensive than the straightforward, oh my days

I'm interested on what set them off here. Lex assumes it's the same thing that bothers him (condescension towards the fans) but the tweets I've seen suggest, as c sharp major does, that it's more about the handling of Harry Styles' promiscuity. Those are two distinct grievances and GQ is culpable in the first case but merely doing its job in the second.

I honestly do not think that many teenage girl fans know that they could defend themselves, tbh, that's kind of where i'm coming from.

and it's super self-feeding, i think a lot of people are just doing it because other people are doing it.

otm. it is really like this. twitter obv is a medium that lends itself to this. i kinda use twitter for work pretty much all of my day and i often gaze into the lake of souls of a given trending topic. it does have that feeling of a lot of people who are sort of joining in but not fully aware of what's going on. the multiplication of the words/tweets is kind of scary in a sense of how much person power (in the sense of manpower) it constitutes.

i should really do some work rather than continue to think about The Teenage Girls And Their Complicated Selfhood but

But irl Styles is a grown-up and GQ presented him accordingly.

gq didn't present him "as a grown up", or indeed as irl Styles-- they wanted to interview him as the kind of young man who impresses other young men with bragging about his sex life, and he resisted that (as is kind of his job)

also, if you think "Can you give me a rough, ballpark figure [of the number of people you've slept with]" is a question that a grown-up asks of another grown-up, then... you really need to think about your concept of adulthood.

for ref, here's the images that were floating about at the beginning of the whole kerfuffle:
https://twitter.com/oh1dstalker/status/362234283580076032/photo/1/large
https://twitter.com/alexandergold/status/362232475239469056/photo/1/large

** he resisted that (as is kind of his job) and then his resistance could v easily be read as "him being pressured about the number of people he's slept with" and etc etc etc etc etc etc etc

I"m astounded by this conversation because Harry Styles is an ugly little man.

he's not

I mean if you wanted to blow him up there's aesthetic reasons for doing so

up?

missing a comma.

"Up there's asthetic reasons" etc. Probably a bookshelf or something.

I am surprised that Harry has only awkwardly had sex with two people.

up?

― some dude, Thursday, August 1, 2013

ew

You know yr a gay homosexual when it totally shocks you that harry gets paid any attention whatsoever.

Poor Harry is just rhyming slang for haemorrhoids in our house. Sorry thread, that's all I've got to offer.

― trippin' on brostep beats (NickB), Thursday, August 1, 2013 1:24 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

love this

i can see how harry is attractive though i guess looking hygienic has always been more important to me than some others

also his tattoos are an embarrassment

The GQ description of their fans was unquestionably gross and misogynistic, but their fans' perceived need to defend Harry from being "badgered" about his sexual proclivities seems misplaced. What are the consequences for a dude like him being seen as sexually promiscuous? Not many, I'd imagine. Actually I don't have to imagine, the guy already has a reputation as a womanizer, false or not and it doesn't seem to be hurting him the way it would if he were to be a woman. And speaking of that, I also can't help but take their defense of him and put it in context with how the same fandom has treated just about every woman he's dated or been seen with. I mean, their reaction to him dating Taylor Swift was incredibly gross.

I'm also confused as to why Zayn is not universally agreed to be the obligatory "Hot One" but I feel like if I spent time thinking about why the unfortunate reasons would become clear.

I'm also confused as to why Zayn is not universally agreed to be the obligatory "Hot One"

I'm saying.

Though the second part of your sentence is probably correct too.

I think a lot of fans maybe also equate big fluffy hair with innocence?

I equate big fluffy hair with 1981.

a/k/a innocence

it's no "What Makes You Beautiful" but i like "Best Song Ever"

I think it's their best song ever. I even like the audacity of the nod to "Baba O'Riley."

"Can you give me a rough, ballpark figure [of the number of people you've slept with]" is a question that a grown-up asks of another grown-up, then... you really need to think about your concept of adulthood.

Unable to access ILX all day because it's blocked by the library's new porn filter (!) but fair point, "grown-up" was the wrong word if you think it implied approval. I just meant that he's an adult who has sex. Enjoying your posts itt, csm.

i think zayn is probably second in the Hot One stakes and at some point was probably first - what pushes harry ahead of him is tabloid hi-jinks and celebrity friends

Do you mean officially or for you personally?

"officially" i guess

okay that makes sense - I read it the other way first and was surprised by the idea that tabloid hi-jinx would have such a big impact for you.

Zayn is like astonishingly beautiful but all the people I know who've talked about 1D seem to fancy Harry, i really dgi.

Unable to access ILX all day because it's blocked by the library's new porn filter (!)

library filter otm

I'm so all about Zayn.

Anyway, cis is killing it itt

ikr

for me liam is the Hot One but i am unashamedly into conventionally good-looking men. but zayn before harry obv

Liam would be fine were it not for his purple lipstick

Is this one Liam?

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/29400000/-Liam-Payne-one-direction-29445872-1280-1024.jpg

Cause I have a co-worker who gets told he looks like him a lot. No purple lipstick, though.

Harry has a sexual aura and is also the dominant personality in 1D. Teenage girls can sense these things.

It's not about looks, it's about body language.

Harry reminds me of that guy from MGMT. The one with the hair. Anyway, he does nothing for me. I feel like you could find a couple dozen guys like that walking around Coachella.

tavi gevinson (I know, I know) tweeted something about harry styles looking like beethoven and now I can never not see it

everyone else in the room can see it http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/5300000/Ludwig-van-Beethoven-portraits-classical-music-5377632-500-464.jpg

New song rules. Love when they extend the chorus and you get those sixteenth notes on the hi-hat (or some percussion instrument) - I THINK IT WENT OH-OH-OH/I THINK IT WENT YEAH, YEAH, YEAH!