Sports fans have caused actual riots, but people still take sports seriously. Boy band fans scream at concerts, and suddenly they’re “a spectacle of the natural world.“ Things that are made for women, particularly young women, are automatically given less respect. Girls who get interested in comic books or video games or science fiction get called “fake geek girls.”

Magazines and television and advertisements tell teenage girls that they should like certain things, and then other magazines tell girls that they’re stupid for liking those things. Then magazines publish articles and TV shows run specials wondering why teenage girls don’t have better self esteem, like they didn’t make it that way.

There’s nothing wrong with teenage girls being enthusiastic about boy bands or (heaven forbid) having sexual feelings about the boys in boy bands. There is something wrong with the way that other people react to teenage girls and their interests.