Turns out Noah Brand was right, all Teen Heartthrobs eventually are called “girls” by sneering boys.
Last year, I wrote a post about how Justin Bieber was being called a girl by teenage “wits”, and discussing the eerie way that this exact phenomenon plays itself out every year with every shift change on the job of Teen Heartthrob. Girls go crazy for cute young guy, boys sneer and say he’s a girl, or gay, or both, but mostly a girl. Every time, no exceptions. Some folks argued with my premise, saying there were probably lots of other explanations and I was reading in stuff that wasn’t there.
Anyway, it’s 2012, that nice Bieber boy has just about finished puberty, and the corporate powers that be are putting a new boy band on-shift at the teen heartthrob factory. They’re called One Direction, and they’re cute boys doing inoffensive pop music in the Monkees/David Cassidy/New Kids On The Block/N*Sync/Justin Bieber mold, because that’s the job. And what do we see, perfectly in time with the marketing push on these boys?
I don’t like to brag, but clearly my theory has more predictive value than friggin’ GRAVITY. Just saying.
I wonder if it has to do with those “sneering” boys getting reinforcement from other sources. I know that even in the face of those hearthrob guy groups there’s plenty of girls that still get turned off by such behaviors and mannerisms. For just about every girl that think those guys are so hot there’s a girl that seriously hates those guys because they don’t want to be with a guy that looks prettier than themselves. I guess since they start off attractive they get to do it but those regular guys better not or something?