four years ago a teenage girl changed my
life's in a one conversation she was 13
years old she was a friend's little
cousin and she casually told me that she
had met the man she was going to marry
so I said okay tell me about him and she
told me that his name was Harry Styles
so I laughed a little like you and then
she said I know you don't think I'm
serious fun actually gonna be with him
because I love him so much that I would
slit someone's throat to be with him and
that was the moment that I became
obsessed with fangirls I didn't know it
then but that moment would transform the
course of my life and go on to change
everything that I thought I knew about
being an adult being a woman and being
truly happy but before we get started
what is a fangirl and what is our Harry
Styles well according to the dictionary
the merriam-webster dictionary a fangirl
is a girl or woman who is an extremely
or overly enthusiastic fan of someone or
something technically you can have
fangirls of anything but my specific
interest was in fangirls of boy bands
because of their somewhat lethal
reputation I remember my dad had told me
this story of some Beatles fans in the
60s who apparently had torn apart BMW
Tildy Turrell pieces because the band
had supposedly just been Satna in the
60s The Beatles were the biggest boy
band on the planet but when I met this
girl in 2015 the biggest boy band on the
planet was none other than one direction
and Harry Styles was a member of One
Direction Harry Styles was reputed for
his compassionate demeanour and perfect
hair I learned this when I read
thousands of tweets about him I learned
that he is a sweet cupcake I learned
that he is a perfect angel I learned
that one time he vomited on the side
freeway in California and that within
two hours fans had turned the site of
the vomit into a sacred shrine I
scrolled through this girl through
fan-made paintings of hairy baby photos
of him paintings of baby photos of him I
watched videos that show me how to make
DIY love totems for Harry and for
example a lampshade covered in photos of
his face or a keyring that states the
exact time of his birth I read hours of
fanfiction and I fall down this specific
rabbit hole of stories that actually
place me as a protagonist inside of
various imagined romances with him so in
one I tell him that I'm pregnant with
his child in another we meet in hospital
where we're both fighting cancer and in
another we fall so deeply in love that
we become fugitives who kill people but
then something unthinkable happens one
direction the biggest boy band on the
planet loses a member zan Malick quits
the band and the internet explodes with
fields
I read tweets as these girls described
the physical pain of this loss how they
can't eat or sleep or walk I read them
describe how much Zayn had meant to them
and I watch videos of ten-year-old girls
crying but like really crying and then I
watch as people repost these videos but
with new titles that contain words like
crazy and creepy and insane
and suddenly my YouTube sidebar contains
compilation fans react to Zayn leaving
psycho alert then I watch as mainstream
news outlets cover the story I read them
describe these young banshees I read one
journalist say it's a commonly known
fact since the age of the Beatles that
there is nothing scarier in this world
than a group of excited teenage girls
and then I ask myself a question I've
never considered in my life
why is it
the image of young girls screaming their
lungs out with excitement for a pop star
is considered crazy psycho scary a bit
much but the image of young boys
screaming their lungs out for a
footballer is perfectly normal boys
crying at the footie that's the love of
the game girls crying at a Justin Bieber
concert that's pathetic
and as soon as I realized this double
standard I realized that all of my
curiosity about fangirls had been
sparked by exactly the same judgments I
too had suspected that they were a bit
crazy I'd looked at images of girls
screaming for the Beatles the Backstreet
Boys One Direction and the word that had
come to mind was non excitement but
hysteria and what I did not know was the
history of that word that in the 19th
century hysteria was considered to be a
legitimate female mental disorder that
could be diagnosed by doctors if women
displayed excessive emotion or difficult
behavior the word hysterical comes from
the Latin word hystericus meaning of the
womb because it was thought that this
condition was caused by a dysfunction of
the uterus and so a treatment for
hysteria was a hysterectomy which is
what we still call a removal of the womb
and at this point I decide to read
eclair my obsession because I am no
longer just obsessed with fangirls now I
am obsessed with the way that the world
talks about fangirls and the way that
the world looks at a young female
enthusiasm because I want to know if
girls grow up in a world where words
like crazy and psycho and hysterical are
casually used to describe female
enthusiasm then how does that shape the
way that those girls get to see
themselves and if the girls grow up in a
world that tells them that they are
designed just a bit crazier than the
boys
then isn't that a little bit like
telling them that they are born less
capable of rationality than men less
capable of reason and unworthy of the
same intellectual respect as their
brothers separately I become obsessed
with female screams nun a creepy way I'm
talking about like those shrieks and
squeals that fangirls let out at
concerts I wanna know why it is that
some people instinctively flinch when I
merely describe the sound like it's
painful just to think about it then I
meet Amy Hume she's a voice coach and
she blows my mind because she tells me
that the female voice between the ages
of 11 and 13 is one of the most
interesting things to study why because
there's this research by Terrell
Gilligan that says that is the age when
girls begin to perform and alter their
voices for example adding rest for
maturity or adding vocal fry' for apathy
but tell me according to this research
when do you reckon that boys began to
perform and alter their voices now I
guess 18 because men mature later right
wrong the answer was four years old
because that is when boys learn not to
cry or squeal that those are not manly
sounds and that's when I realized that a
fangirl shriek is therefore like a
superpower
because it's this fearless and honest
expression of pure celebration and joy
and it's a sound they have not forgotten
how to make I actually reckoned that
fangirls have a second superpower
because they know how to do something
that most of my adult friends have no
idea how to do fangirls know how to love
something without apology or fear my
years of researching fangirls culminated
in this determination to write something
that celebrates and vindicates them so I
decided to make this thriller comedy
musical that sounds like a Beyonce
concert meets rave mix Church I called
it fangirls and I designed it like a
Trojan horse so it appears to make fun
of these young women only to like to
smuggle them into your heart at one
point a girl sings why should I hide my
feelings because they annoy you or
because it isn't what the boys do and as
a former fangirl cynic that is the
question that I want to leave you all
with why should fangirls turn it down
because they're crazy or because our
definition of reasonable is based on
what it is acceptable for men to do what
if we rethink the judgments we've been
conditioned to feel when we see young
women screaming their lungs out with
excitement what if we decided to rethink
the words we use to describe that joy
and what if we didn't allow ourselves to
diminish girls with words that undermine
their intelligence their interests and
their capability because according to my
research they are capable of building a
shrine to Harry Styles as vomit on the
side of a freeway within two hours
that takes some executive skills in
logistics and communication
it's not even capable of analogies
[Applause]
I reckon the instead of judging fangirls
we can learn from them we all die
tomorrow so why not love things while
we're still breathing and with that I'd
like to ask you all to try something
with me
can I get you want to stand up stand up
if you can stand up all right so here's
what's gonna happen
I'm gonna count to three and when I
finish I'm going to ask every single one
of you to let out your very best fangirl
scream yeah here is why I am asking you
to do this because if all five or so
thousand of you do this and really
commit we all get our first chance to
hear that sound and to decide that it is
not a crazy sound it is a hopeful sound
so should we do this I said should we do
this okay now I am going to cheat and
I'm not gonna go in full volume cuz I
might and we don't want to hear that but
it means you will have to go 110 % you
ready okay take a deep breath with me
think of someone you love let's go one
two three
[Applause]
just sounded stunning and as sane and as
intelligent and as dignified as when you
walked in this room thank you
[Applause]