Dreaming of becoming Mrs Justin Timberlake
The year was 2002. Osama Bin Laden was still at large, Michael Jackson held his child over a hotel balcony in Berlin, and Justin Timberlake left *NSYNC and went solo. As an 11-year-old girl, I didn’t pay much attention to the first two, but the third, well, that consumed me for the majority of my teenage years.
Everyone remembers their first celebrity crush and Justin Randall Timberlake, born January 31, 1981, was mine.
He was 10 years my senior but that didn’t stop him becoming the object of all my teenage girl desires.
I can trace it right back to when JT graced the cover of Rolling Stone magazine shirtless. A magazine cover that broke him away from the boy band image and solidified him as one of the biggest male artists of all time. In the public eye and mine.
The walls of my baby blue bedroom were lined with posters of him. I had scrapbooks dedicated to him, and even wrote him a six-page letter on yellow paper because I read that was his favourite colour.
Timberlake was with Cameron Diaz at the time, which I really didn’t agree with. So I took it upon myself to tell him.
‘‘I know you’re with Cameron Diaz but I don’t think she’s right for you. You should be with Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, or, you know, me.’’
For a chubby teenage girl with low self-esteem, in the small isolated town of Stratford, Taranaki, where not much was going on, Timberlake gave me something to focus on.
I would sit and dream about one day meeting him, bumping into him on the street and of course him instantly falling in love with me because I knew so much about him.
My school books were covered in doodles of ‘Mrs Timberlake’ and my diary was covered in his photos
My fiance´ , whom I have been with for 10 years, is well aware of my years spent devoted to another man. His main concern was that when we became engaged I ummed and ahhed about taking his last name but at age 11 I was quite committed to take Justin’s.
It was before I found feminism is my excuse. My weekends were spent ransacking the two book shops in my town, spending the very limited money earned from being a New World check out chick, to find any book or magazine that had the slightest mention of Timberlake.
Friday, January 23, 2004: "Dear Diary, I got a mag from Paper Power it was EXPENSIVE it was $15.50! I paid with it with a $5 note $8 Eftpos and got $2.50 off of Ross and Grandpop.’’
So other people were helping finance this thing. I was on a first-name basis with the store owners and knew which day of the week the magazines arrived from overseas and would be in there to collect.
Back then it wasn’t as easy as stalking celebs on Instagram, Facebook, or website. You really had to work to get your information, relying on magazine Q&As, TV segments, and, again, waiting for your dial-up internet to load so you could connect with other fans in chat rooms.
The alternative to waiting hours for a music video to load online was to sit in front of C4 Select Live and wait for a JT song to come on. Which, again, could take hours.
It’s much easier to be a fan these days with the internet loading instantly and for free.
I would dream of him coming to New Zealand for a concert, and in 2007 that dream came true. But, by then a 16-year-old girl, I had NCEA exams at the same time and my mother refused.
As I grew up and got more of a social life, my JT obsession began to subside as I just didn’t have the time required to truly commit to the sort of fandom he deserved.
The stars finally aligned in 2013 and I got to see him live in New York with my fiance´ , but it just wasn’t the same as it would have been when I was in the midst of my love affair.
I would get other infatuations after JT, such as Ben Lummis and Fall Out Boy, but Mr Bringing Sexy Back would always hold a special place in my heart.
Ain’t nobody love you Like I Love You Justin. Can’t stop that feeling.
Back then it wasn’t as easy as stalking celebs on Instagram, Facebook, or website. You really had to work to get your information.