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Why is it that the image of young girls
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screaming their lungs out with
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for a pop star is considered uh crazy,
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psycho, scary, a bit much. But the image
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of young boys screaming their lungs out
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for a footballer is perfectly normal.
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Boys crying at the footy, that's the
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love of the game. girls crying at a
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Justin Bieber concert. That's pathetic.
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And as soon as I realized this double
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standard, I realized that all of my
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curiosity about fan girls had been
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sparked by exactly the same judgments. I
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too had suspected that they were a bit
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crazy. I'd looked at images of girls
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screaming [music] for the Beatles, the
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Backstreet Boys, One Direction, and the
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word that had come to mind was not
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excitement, but hysteria.
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And what I did not know was the history
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of that word. that in the 19th century,
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hysteria was considered to be a
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legitimate female mental disorder that
1:01
could be diagnosed by doctors if women
1:04
displayed excessive emotion or difficult
1:08
The word hysterical comes from the Latin
1:10
word hystericus meaning of the womb
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because it was thought that this
1:14
condition was caused by a dysfunction of
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the uterus. And so a treatment for
1:19
hysteria was a hyerectomy, which is what
1:23
we still call a removal of the womb.
1:26
Now, I'm obsessed with the way that the
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world talks about [music] fan girls and
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the way that the world looks at young
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female enthusiasm. [music]
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Because I want to know if girls grow up
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in a [music] world where words like
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crazy and psycho and hysterical are
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casually used to describe female
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enthusiasm, then how does that shape the
1:52
way that those girls get to see
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And if the girls grow up in a world that
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tells them [music] that they are
2:00
designed just a bit crazier than the
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boys, then isn't that a little bit like
2:06
telling them that they are born less
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capable of rationality than men? Less
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capable of reason [music] and unworthy
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of the same intellectual respect as
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their brothers. Fan girls know how to
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love something without apology or fear.
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What if we decided to rethink the words
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we use to describe that joy? And what if
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we didn't allow ourselves to diminish
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girls with words that undermine their
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intelligence, their interests, and their
2:36
Because according to my research, they
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are capable of building a shrine to
2:41
Harry Styles's vomit on the side of a
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freeway within 2 hours.
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That takes some executive skills in
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logistics and communication.
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IF THAT ISN'T CAPABLE, I DON'T KNOW what
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I reckon instead of judging fan girls,
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we can learn from them. We could all die
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tomorrow, so why not love things while
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we're still breathing?
