Teenage girls have always ran culture.

Teenage girls are often overlooked, dismissed, called crazy. Bedroom walls covered in posters, crying over Harry Styles, staying awake until 3am refreshing stan Twitter  “they’re just hysterical.”

But that “hysterical” fifteen-year-old girl has shaped culture far more than people realise and will one day be the one making the decisions in the boardrooms. 

The first person I ever truly fangirled over was Katy Perry. I was about eight years old, following directly in my older sister’s footsteps because she was the biggest KatyCat imaginable. Our playroom literally had a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Katy Perry standing in the corner, and my bedroom walls were covered floor-to-ceiling in posters of every single thing I had ever loved. It looked less like a bedroom and more like a tiny museum of obsession.

And honestly? My parents completely leaned into it. They took me to my first ever concert at the O2 to see Katy Perry, bought me the Claire's x Katy Perry collaboration that I treasured like family heirlooms, and continuously refilled a Smurfette balloon I refused to let die because I was so deeply obsessed with The Smurfs era of Katy Perry lore.

Looking back now, getting Instagram at nine years old with the username “katyperryamy” feels objectively insane, but at the time it felt completely normal.

My entire personality revolved around the things I loved. And if I’m being fully honest, I still secretly have a fan account to this day. No one knows this, which feels mildly terrifying to admit publicly, but at one point it had over 5,000 followers and one of the videos reached more than three million likes. I haven’t posted in a while, but for a while I was editing and posting everything related to Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter.

Being a fangirl has always been part of who I am. I genuinely think it’s just the way I’m made.

Before algorithms decided what we listened to, teenage girls already knew what mattered. Before marketing teams understood “community building” and “audience engagement,” there were simply girls screaming in crowds.

Girls waiting outside concert venues for hours just to catch a glimpse of someone who made them feel understood. Girls covering bedroom walls in posters like shrines. Girls scrolling Twitter all night, building entire emotional universes around the music, films, and artists they loved.

People love to dismiss fangirls as irrational, dramatic, excessive. But history tells a very different story.

Teenage girls have always been the first to recognise and shape cultural shifts long before the rest of the world catches up.

It happened with Elvis Presley. It happened with The Beatles. It happened with One Direction. And now it continues with Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, and countless others.

The pattern repeats itself every generation: girls love something loudly first, the world laughs at them for it, and eventually the world adopts it as culture.

What people misunderstand about fangirls is that fandom has never only been about celebrity. It has always been about connection. About community. About feeling part of something bigger than yourself.

Almost every close friendship I have today began because we bonded over an artist we loved. There’s something strangely intimate about realising someone else understands the exact lyrics that shattered you at sixteen. Often, when people connect through the same music, they are connecting through the same anxieties, heartbreaks, loneliness, or fears too. Whether online or in person, fandom creates connection effortlessly in a world where genuine connection feels increasingly rare.

And concert culture itself feels almost magical.

Watching the Eras Tour become its own tiny travelling universe of friendship bracelets, glitter, inside jokes, and emotional connection genuinely moved me. People making and trading bracelets with complete strangers. Hugging the girl standing next to you in the pit because you’re both crying. Spotting your online mutual across a stadium and suddenly becoming real-life best friends because an artist unknowingly brought you together.

That’s the thing people miss.

This was never just celebrity worship.

This was growing up together.

There is something almost sacred about standing in a stadium with ninety thousand strangers screaming the same lyrics at once. Fandom creates belonging. It creates identity. It gives people friendship, creativity, confidence, and community during the years of life that often feel the loneliest.

Entire friendships have been built because two girls loved the same song.

Entire creative careers began because someone started making fan edits, writing fan fiction, designing graphics, filming concert videos, running fan pages, or posting their thoughts online. So much of modern internet culture was born from fandom spaces populated primarily by young women teaching themselves how to create, curate, market, and communicate.

And honestly, I see that reflected in my own life constantly.

Over the past few years I’ve fully leaned into sharing the things I love online, and somehow I’ve managed to turn being a “professional fangirl” into an actual career. Editing, writing, understanding algorithms, negotiating brand deals, planning strategy — almost everything I know came from years of obsessively analysing fandom culture online.

I genuinely think growing up decoding Taylor Swift Easter eggs trained my brain to notice details other people miss. Because at my core, I’m still a fan first. I understand how fans think because I am one.

Long before brands understood audience engagement, teenage girls already did.

Over the past year, working closely with major record labels made me realise something fascinating: the people making the smartest decisions about artists and fan communities are often former fangirls themselves. The women who once spent nights on stan Twitter are now shaping marketing campaigns, digital strategy, and cultural conversation from inside the industry.

The entertainment industry has always known the power of fangirls, even if culture refuses to say it out loud. Merchandise, streaming numbers, sold-out tours, viral moments, TikTok sounds none of it exists without emotional investment, and nobody invests emotionally more fearlessly than teenage girls.

And perhaps that is exactly what makes fangirls so powerful: their willingness to feel things fully in a world constantly encouraging detachment. There is something deeply optimistic about caring deeply. About loving art openly. About finding pieces of yourself in music, films, stories, and other people.

In many ways, fandom became the blueprint for the modern internet itself. Google images was litrally made because everyone was searching the 2000 Grammy Awards, where Jennifer Lopez wore a green Versace dress and they wanted to see! Stan accounts became social media strategy. Fan edits became marketing language. Online fandom communities became the model for digital engagement. Entire industries now attempt to recreate the kind of devotion teenage girls built naturally from their bedrooms years ago.

But beyond the economics, the influence, and the marketing power, fandom matters because of what it gives people emotionally.

It reminds people they are not alone.

For every joke ever made about “crazy fangirls,” there is also a girl who found confidence through fandom. A girl who found friendship through fandom. A girl who survived difficult years because music, community, and belonging gave her somewhere to place her feelings.

Being a fangirl has given me identity, creativity, confidence, friendship, escape, inspiration. There is nothing more inspiring than passion whether that’s spending hours DIY-ing a concert outfit, dissecting lyrics that feel painfully specific to your own life, or simply loving art enough to let it change you.

People often underestimate teenage girls because they mistake softness for insignificance. Yet some of the most influential cultural movements of the last century began exactly where people refused to take them seriously: in the hearts of young women loving something loudly together.

Culture does not begin in boardrooms.

More often than not, it begins in a teenage girl’s bedroom.