Despite their enormous market power, they devalue the cool factor of everything they touch. Girl fans of boy bands cop it the worst. They are “bad and wrong,” the music critic Anwen Crawford writes, because it’s assumed “they don’t know how to listen.” Instead: “They lust. They look, and the gaze of innumerable girls upon the pretty faces of their boy band idols is a kind of embarrassment, both to the idol and to the world.” She then notes, “See how I used the word pretty there, without even thinking why—the male musician is made girly by girls. And who would want to be made into a girl, if
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