What makes Fangirls different to previous cultural accounts of fandom is that Ewens is interested in exploring female experiences of fandom in depth, and that she's not just after a quick take on the more extreme, hysterical end of fan culture. Similarly, while the book does feature accounts of One Direction fans, she goes far beyond the usual female fan/male object of desire definition of fandom. In Fangirls you will find accounts of Halsey fans, the Beyhive, Lady Gaga's Little Monsters, Amy Winehouse fans and older Courtney Love fans, amongst others.
When I come to think about the defining characteristics of previous accounts of fandom, I see them as largely falling into two camps. There's the autobiographical 'We were crazy and we were wild, but I'm now a sensible, grown up adult' school of thought and the 'They are crazy and wild and debase proper fandom with their hysteria' school of thought. I could be being simplistic, and Ewens' book certainly hints that there has been a good deal of positive work done within academia so far as fandom is concerned, but as her discussion of the fallout from a notorious One Direction documentary explores, the stereotype of the two dimensional deranged, screaming teenage girl with stalker tendencies is alive and well.
In one of the early chapters, Ewens travels to London's Brixton Academy on several nights to speak to fans queueing for various artists. She vividly portrays a world that few get to see, explaining the attraction of camping out overnight, how it fits into fan culture, how it becomes part of the social scene around an artist, part of friendship networks and cliques within the fandom.
Perhaps the most powerful moments in Ewens book are when she actively advocates for fangirls under attack, firstly in the chapter about emo and mental health, and secondly with her chapter on Ariana Grande, where she speaks to survivors of the Manchester Arena bombing. On the strength of the Ariana Grande chapter alone, this book deserves to be read and showered with awards. It's a powerful take on an incredibly dark moment in musical history that manages not to be sensationalist, is sensitive but also powerfully angry.
Similarly, the chapter on Amy Winehouse and her relationship with her young female fans is a new take on Winehouse, and makes for a far more interesting, three dimensional portrait of her than any of the usual accounts of her life written since her death.
The book closes with an account of Courtney Love's older fanbase, which includes Ewens herself, and gently demonstrates the ways in which fangirl culture goes way beyond the teenage years.
As I have written in this month's Sticks'N'Strings, my own personal experience of fangirl cultures tends to be drawn mainly from the Sleater-Kinney fanbase and the Florence + The Machine Army, neither of whom are featured in Fangirls. To be sad about that would be to miss the point of the book though: A lot of what Ewens describes is universal to every fandom, and that's what makes this book so relatable, and so needed.
