I have tiny pieces of red crepe paper confetti taped into my diary to signify the first time I saw the band live in concert this year.Īfter that first screening of “What Makes You Beautiful,” I eventually came around to camp 1D after seeing videos and photos and exhaustive GIF-sets on Tumblr of Harry, Niall, Liam, Louis and Zayn playfully grabbing each others’ butts, kissing each other during interviews, pulling one another’s pants down on stage and basically giving a huge middle finger to the assumptions, rumors and denial of homosexuality that have plagued boy bands in the past. For Christmas, I opened up a giant bag of 1D gifts including cushions, plastic tumblers, a calendar and a coffee mug my family had picked out for me. Knowing my tendency to fade in and out of obsessions like this, I figured my fleeting interest in One Direction would be just as brief.īut now, two years later, I have a picture of Harry eating a banana set as my phone wallpaper. I’ve fallen into long and involved conversations about why the ’90s was the greatest era for Saturday Night Live and painstakingly memorized every piece of trivia from Kevin Smith’s filmography. I’ve cycled through a lot of obsessions in my life, from early attachments to S Club 7 and That ’70s Show-era Ashton Kutcher when I was in primary school, to my phase of needing music to validate my cool factor in high school by bragging about how much the Beatles, Dashboard Confessional, the Ramones and Bright Eyes meant to me. I thought they were just another pop band that would fade in and out of relevance within a few months, and I’d never hear their names again. Instead, I got a bunch of clumsy, floppy teenagers wearing polo shirts and tripping over one another on the beach, while singing a song whose message is ultimately, “Hey girl, why is your self-esteem low? I think you’re great but don’t let that go to your head!” I was vehemently not into it. But this time I did not get lady power rap verses or acoustic stories about unrequited love. It’s hard to imagine this all-consuming love I have for 1D didn’t exist until pretty recently I was barely aware of their existence until one fateful night about two years ago when my friend’s teenage brother ordered me to sit down and watch the video for “ What Makes You Beautiful.” He had previously introduced me to Nicki Minaj long before she put the wig on Sophia Grace’s head, and alerted me to the independence and majesty of Taylor Swift when she was still writing songs about her teen years, so I trusted his opinion when it came to pop music. I find it really difficult to have level-headed, fact-based thoughts and conversations about the boy band, not because I don’t know any interesting facts about them-far from it-but because, when I think about this band, all notions of rationality, credibility and legitimacy go out the window, and are replaced by nothing but feeling. I’m a 23-year-old lady with a job and an income and a brain and a social conscience, and I love One Direction more than I’ve ever loved any other band or celebrity.
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