‘In the tear-streaked faces of the teenage girls spilling out of Manchester Arena, I see myself and my friends’
HOW THE OFT DISMISSED BECAME THE MOST RESILIENT
On Monday night, a terrorist bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, left 22 dead – including children ( one as young as eight) – and 59 injured. The bomb went off at the end of the concert, when parents were picking up their children from the show, the majority of them young girls. It was reported that “teenage screams” filled the arena.
Having dubbed themselves the Arianators, this fanbase doesn’t just know every word to every song ( even the unreleased tracks), but what Ariana likes to eat for breakfast and what she likes to do in her spare time. They care for her as much as they do their own sisters and friends. It’s an unbridled passion for a figure who, through her music, captures the strength they want to have, the confidence they want to emulate and the beauty they see in each other.
These fans might not read Pitchfork or NME. They may not have even heard of Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones. Their taste is – more often than not – dismissed as hysterical. They populate Twitter, blogs and online forums. They hit up Ticketmaster on the dot. They write fanfiction pairing their favourite singers together. They form fanclubs and fansites. And they scream louder than just about anyone else. They are young girls, and as such, the things that they love are open to ridicule, merely because they love them so boldly and with such eager abandon.
After all, popular music is defined by its fans, and there is nothing more powerful than a female fan. From The Beatles to New Kids on the Block to * NSYNC to One Direction, a band of haircuts and dimples has always existed to entertain the young masses who, in turn, have helped propel group after group into the biggest- selling pop acts of all time. These fans were there when Taylor Swift still wore cowboy boots and when One Direction auditioned for Simon Cowell.
My high school lockers were plastered in posters of Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and the Spice Girls – proud declarations as loud as I could make them, with not an ounce of shame of who I was a fan of or how much I was a fan. I was on first- name basis and knew Justin’s favourite drink ( milk) and each Spice Girl’s entire dating history ( Posh & Becks forever). I made friends by bonding over the bands I liked, we went to shows together, we sang the songs together, and at recess, we attempted the “Oops! ... I Did It Again” dance together, day after day, until we got it right.
All of that passion, all of that energy would ultimately come to a head at a concert. It was because it was months in the making: saving up for the tickets, begging our parents, lining up for admittance, choosing our outfits, planning our signs – you name it, we did it with equal zealousness. And never was there a night that didn’t disappoint, lip-synching be damned. With each sway of a hip, each belted lyric, those concerts were our church. Hyperbole now, maybe, but at that age, there weren’t words to describe the sheer experience of it all.
So it seems natural that my parents were always terrified of my sister and I going to a concert. Presumably, they imagined us getting lost in the crowd, or worse: having our youthful optimism and obsession corrupted. The potential for this must have seemed ever-present to them; among the sweaty masses in attendance and an eardrum-bursting soundtrack.
But actually, there has never been a place I’ve ever felt safer or more in touch with my girlhood than in a concert hall with a thousand other prepubescent girls, waving the same signs etched in pink sharpie. I have yet to go to a concert that can sing in unison the way we sang along to Christina Aguilera, as if the cumulative energy would keep us rooted there forever, united in our boundless love for pop music and the pretty face on stage who helped us forget our parents, school, boys and all the little things that felt so much bigger at the time.
There is a difficult-to-define kinship between girls of a certain age and the artists they love. Worship feels too strong a word, but for a teenage girl, there is a sense of great admiration and hope found in the vestiges of pop music; a sense of safety in a love that binds. To some, it may seem like a gripping mania, but for them, it’s a vessel to channel their evolving identities into a person who feels like a saviour in their world.
Obviously, there is no victim of terrorism that is less tragic than any other. However, for many of us, there are certain faces that appear more familiar and feel more personal because we see ourselves in them. In the tear-streaked faces of the teenage girls spilling out of Manchester Arena, I see myself and my friends, just over a decade ago, preparing for a night never to be forgotten. And unfortunately, for these girls, it will be for a different reason entirely that Monday night remains etched in their minds.
The awful memories that resulted, though, have shown no signs of breaking their spirit. Just a day after the Manchester attack, hundreds of Arianators have tweeted out their support for each other and for those lives lost, along with an image of a black ribbon against a pink background, emblazoned with Grande’s signature cat ears. A symbol of solidarity, it’s a defining moment for the power of fangirls in one that sought to rip them apart.
That, to me, is the best we can do with such a situation. I’m not so sure it’s ironic, or if one aspect leads into the other, but it seems very much as though the group whose tastes we’ve been most dismissive of is also the group that might prove most resilient.
THINGS THEY LOVE ARE RIDICULED BECAUSE THEY LOVE THEM SO BOLDLY