Why I Would Bone Harry Styles and What It Says About Boy Band Worship

Sometimes, I wish I could be One Direction’s Harry Styles, just for one day. Harry Styles: currently the most prominent symbol of teenage lust.

I have no desire to find out what it’s like to be Katy Perry or Taylor Swift, because I'm a woman and I can imagine what it’s like. (Plus, Katy Perry made a movie about it, remember?) Men jerk off to all kinds of women on the Internet. I remember a comment someone once left on an article that I had written, saying, “You know that people jerk off after White Lung shows.” Fabulous. So glad you like my music.

But the way teenage girls lust after their male crushes is different. Teenage girls make shit romantic. They create these totally unrealistic fantasies that go beyond the sexual realm and involve dating, sharing a bag of chips at a rodeo, or watching YouTube videos in bed on an iPhone—post-coital, cheek-to-cheek. Maybe this has something to do with the Disney complex and the way our princess icons taught us that achieving a great love (who almost always arrives in the form of a prince on a magic carpet or a white horse) is the ultimate fulfillment.

Girls are raised with the ambition to fuck rock stars, not become them. As young women, we're delicately instructed how to properly worship our heartthrobs; in the 80s and 90s, magazines like Tiger Beat and BOP shepherded us with glossy centerfold photos of stars like the Hanson brothers intended to be ripped from their cheap staples and pinned above your bed. Kiss your Prince Charming goodnight and fall asleep dreaming of your fairytale wedding.

Read the rest over at NOISEY.