A fan gets her face painted before Game 4 of baseball's World Series between the Houston Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2022, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Matt Rouke / AP Photo
Why Don’t We Take Fangirls Seriously? A Conversation on Gender, Power, and Fandom
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Asia Tabb
Matt Rouke / AP Photo
A fan gets her face painted before Game 4 of baseball's World Series between the Houston Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2022, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
AIRED; February 17, 2026
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In the wake of another Super Bowl season—complete with tears at the TV, thousands spent on tickets, jerseys, and tailgates, and emotional rollercoasters broadcast nationwide—it feels like the perfect time to ask a bigger cultural question: why is that level of devotion considered normal for sports fans, but excessive or embarrassing for so-called “fangirls”?
For Mary Zaborskis, PhD, Chair of American Studies and Associate Professor of American Studies and Gender Studies at Penn State Harrisburg, the issue goes far beyond entertainment.
“I think it’s a bigger question of not just why we don’t take fangirls seriously, but why we don’t take girls seriously—and the things that girls enjoy, what gives them pleasure, what allows them to take up space and find themselves in the world,” she explains.
Every year, sports fandom is celebrated as passion. Men cry openly over wins and losses. They debate stats, invest thousands of dollars, and rearrange their lives around a game. That devotion is rarely mocked. It’s admired—even marketed to.
Zaborskis is quick to clarify that the goal isn’t to shame anyone’s joy. “Everyone should be able to celebrate without guilt or shame… without becoming the cultural butt of a joke in order to enjoy the things they enjoy,” she says.
The real question is why some forms of fandom are normalized while others are diminished.
Part of the answer lies in gender socialization. “Men are socialized in our culture to take up space, to be excessive,” Zaborskis notes. “If they have an excessive emotion, it’s legitimate by virtue of being expressed.” By contrast, girls are often socialized to be contained, apologetic, and small.
So when women or girls display the same intensity—whether for Beyoncé, Harry Styles, or a television show—it’s framed differently.
The word “fangirl” itself carries weight. “It’s meant to be infantilizing,” Zaborskis explains. “It suggests there’s something juvenile… that you’re in a state of arrested development.” The added “girl” becomes a diminishment, a subtle jab that signals unseriousness.
There’s also a striking contradiction embedded in consumer culture. “Girls and women get shamed for being proper consumers,” she says. “We’re being made to desire these things, then we desire them—but it’s not okay to desire them.”
Through the lens of American Studies and Gender Studies, fandom isn’t just about celebrity worship—it’s about identity, belonging, and power. Zaborskis emphasizes that fandom creates what she calls “lateral connections.”
“There’s something really powerful about the relationships people are able to form,” she says. “They find community—at venues, online, in digital spaces. It connects them to a larger world and reveals something about themselves.”
In other words, fangirl culture is not just about proximity to an artist. It’s about connection to each other.
Still, emotional expression is interpreted differently depending on who is expressing it. When sports fans erupt in anger or joy, they’re labeled passionate. When girls scream at concerts, they’re hysterical. “When girls and women express emotions in a way perceived as extreme,” Zaborskis says, “it gets reduced to something physiological… a way to dismiss and minimize what’s driving that emotion.”
Even language reveals expectations. Boys will be boys. But girls? “Girls will be girls means they’re supposed to be quiet, demure, apologetic,” she says.
The issue extends into media framing as well. Sports fans are often portrayed as knowledgeable experts—analysts who know stats, history, and strategy. Fangirls, by contrast, are frequently reduced along two axes: “aesthetics or sexuality,” Zaborskis explains. They’re seen as superficial, obsessed with appearance, or inappropriately sexualized in their devotion.
Those portrayals flatten the reality of what fandom actually offers.
“They don’t capture all the reasons why girls and women gravitate toward certain icons,” she says. “Nor what they get out of participating in fandom.”
At its core, the conversation isn’t about whether loving Beyoncé is more or less valid than loving football. It’s about cultural permission. Who gets to take up emotional space? Whose passions are seen as legitimate? Who is allowed excess without ridicule?
If sports fandom is simply passion, perhaps it’s time to extend that same understanding to fangirls—recognizing that behind the screaming, the ticket purchases, and the online debates are communities, identities, and deeply human connections.
Because when you strip away the stereotypes, the behaviors aren’t so different. What’s different is who is doing them—and whether we’ve decided they deserve to be taken seriously.
