Why it's time to shake off the "cool kid disdain" and embrace enthusiasm with Ellie Kime Artwork

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Why it's time to shake off the "cool kid disdain" and embrace enthusiasm with Ellie Kime

June 05, 2024 • Peta O'Brien-Day • Season 2 • Episode 7

Does being enthusiastic feel a little bit cringe? I don't know about you, but I grew up in a culture where being enthusiastic or passionate about anything was considered to be a little bit weird. It was not cool to be keen. It was cool to be jaded, To not get excited about anything,

Which is one of the reasons why talking to my guest today was so refreshing. Ellie Kime is a messaging mentor, helping small businesses explain who they are, what they do, and why they're so good at it. She also founded the Enthusiast and Co. A platform to encourage people to be more unashamedly, unabashedly, enthusiastic, and to believe that caring is cool.

So she's the perfect person to talk about passion and enthusiasm with. And as Ellie says in the podcast, enthusiasm is one of those things that really makes life worth living.

We talked about a whole bunch of stuff on the podcast, including digging into Ellie's dissertation on fangirls and how they were treated by the media, and my dissertation too.

We discussed how enthusiasm could feel very frivolous but that, actually, it's an essential part of an activist's toolkit - one of the ways that we stay connected.

We talked about how working in the wedding business gave Ellie insight into the psychology behind consumer behaviour.

We talked about how we see women's hobbies and enthusiasms or their pastimes as having less value. And how this bleeds into the way we regard different people's businesses or their skills.

And we talked about how we reach for the big issues when people ask us what we care about. But that actually those seemingly niche causes - not only do they matter to you, but also they're a lot easier to get our teeth into and try and do something about.

Oh, and Ellie introduces me to the patriarchy! (lolz)

I had a lot of fun diving into Ellie's understanding of fangirls, into sexism, misogyny, football games, and academic sugar daddies.

So, yeah, strap in, grab a cup of tea, and listen to Ellie get on her soapbox.

Get enthusiastic with Ellie here
Or discover her ick-free introductions here
Send her an email at ellie@eleanormollie.co.uk
Find her on Instagram here

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So she's the perfect person to talk about passion and enthusiasm with. And as Ellie says in the podcast, enthusiasm is one of those things that really makes life worth living.

We talked about a whole bunch of stuff on the podcast, including digging into Ellie's dissertation on fangirls and how they were treated by the media, and my dissertation too.

We discussed how enthusiasm can feel very frivolous, but that actually it's an essential part of an activist's toolkit - one of the ways that we stay connected.

We talked about how working in the wedding business gave Ellie insight into the psychology behind consumer behaviour.

We talked about how we see women's hobbies and enthusiasms or their pastimes as having less value. And how this bleeds into the way we regard different people's businesses or their skills.

Oh, and Ellie introduces me to the patriarchy! (lolz)

I had a lot of fun diving into Ellie's understanding of fangirls, into sexism, misogyny, football games, and academic sugar daddies.

So, yeah, strap in, grab a cup of tea, and listen to Ellie get on her soapbox.

Ellie, thank you so much for coming to join us on the Soapbox podcast.

I'm really excited to get to talk to you.

so much. I'm so excited.

So for people who don't know you, and they definitely should, can you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and like how you got to where you are?

Yeah, of course. I'd absolutely love to. That's what the entire podcast is going to be about. , my name is Ellie. I am a messaging mentor, , with a business called Eleanor Molly. Newsflash. It's just me. , I help small businesses explain who they are, what they do, why they're so good at it. , because I've been a copywriter for nearly a decade and the thing I enjoyed the most was helping small businesses write about themselves.

Cause so often I found that they were underselling themselves, hated writing about themselves, were really downplaying what makes them so brilliant. , But that originated as a wedding industry copywriting service and I set that business up when I was 21. So my final year of uni, um, kind of in that fallow period between when you finish your last exam, but you haven't yet graduated.

And you're like, this is as good as it's ever going to get. This is not the real world. Um, And then loads of people asked me, um, I got loads of support too, obviously, but some people were like, don't you think it's a bit weird that you've started a wedding that you're so obsessed with weddings? And I was like, well, no, not really.

I think they're fun. I could give you a number of reasons why I love them. And then a lot of people were like, do you think it's because your parents are divorced? And I was like, well, that one probably is true. Yes. Um, but it was, I was so surprised by the amount of people who found it. bizarre that I thought that the fact that I didn't find it bizarre was probably more bizarre.

And then I kind of looked, did some introspection, some self reflection and realized that one of the things that I am very lucky to have had all my life is very natural enthusiasm. Like I'm very enthusiastic about a lot of things. Um, and I realized that some people don't have that either because they, um, have never had it, or it's because they You know, been beaten out of them societally or whatever.

So I then set up a separate second business called the Enthusiast Co, which is a platform to encourage people to be more enthusiastic, , unapologetically, unabashedly themselves. , and for a while, it felt like these two were completely separate things, but I think actually the, the more I've, the older I've gotten, and also the more I've like looked into messaging and that kind of thing, rather than just writing, I've realized that there's one common goal there.

And it's to help people be more themselves and show up as more, more of themselves.

It's very cool. I love the idea of everybody being more enthusiastic about the things that they care about

and not feeling a bit like I feel like, how old are you?

28. Mm

Okay, so you are a little bit younger than me but there was this point in like the the 90s and 2000s where everybody was like, uh, It's just cool.

It's not cool to care about stuff

and I love the idea of being like no Firstly, it doesn't matter whether it's cool or not But also like being enthusiastic about the stuff that matters to you is really important

Yeah. And it literally, it feels every year or so I check in with myself and I'm like, is this still the same? Because the statement sounds so grandiose, but I genuinely believe that enthusiasm is what makes life worth living. And especially in this current time that we're living, I mean, the world has always been tumultuous, but especially now, like with the advent of social media and how we're constantly faced with like the worst things that humanity has ever seen.

Enthusiasm can often feel very frivolous, but actually it's like an essential part of an act. This. Toolkit, like it's the way that we stay connected in the way that we see something to keep fighting for. , and so yeah, every year I'm like, do I still believe this? But I do believe that enthusiasm is what makes the world worth being in and what makes the, what makes it keep turning really.

So it's, yeah, it's the drum roll bang to the dead.

That's pretty cool. So with your Ellen and Molly business, you work with primarily small businesses who are kind of struggling to talk about themselves. That's

I say, it was born from the wedding industry, um, which is in particular, obviously an industry where the personality of the business owner matters quite a lot, because often they're very high price, um, buy ins it's, it's. could be the best day of your life. It's certainly the biggest purchase a lot of people will make.

And so people, it was like a really good microscopic zoomed in view of how people feel generally about purchasing. I feel it was a really good, I didn't choose it for this reason, but it was a really good, um, initiation into how customers and consumers care about who they buy from, um, because it is, as I say, it's such a high ticket luxury.

It really, there's a, That people want to that personal connection. Um, yes, but now it's not just in the wedding industry anymore, but I just absolutely, I call myself professionally nosy. I can't believe that people pay me to just ask them loads of intrusive, but lovely questions about their life. And I get to go away and look at them like a fact finder.

And then like, I get to just. have the joy of writing stuff up and sending back their own brilliance. Like I can't believe every day I wake up and I think this isn't a real job. Like, and I don't mean that in a, I don't deserve to get paid for it, but as in, I can't believe I'm lucky enough to get paid because my, my signature to give context to that, people don't just be like, I'm feeling a bit low.

Can you make me feel good? Although I'd be very happy to do that. Um, yeah, there's worse things to be doing with your time. Um, But my signature service is like a one to one where, um, if people don't know how to introduce themselves or write their bios, that kind of thing. Um, you know, we have a session together and then I go away and write up, you know, it can be 30 plus.

Things that they need to show up online, um, including like podcast pitching documents and that kind of thing. Just cause I've seen so many small business owners now that, you know, the algorithm is doing what the algorithm is doing and stuff people are exactly head and hands, exactly. Um, I feel like the answer to a lot of people are saying like, well, just pitch to be on podcasts or pitch to be on what, and it's like, okay, but if you don't know how to pitch, you don't feel comfortable and you don't feel Talking about what you do, which so many small business owners don't.

Um, it's hard to take that first step. And so, yeah, I saw a lot of small business owners kind of playing small to borrow Tara Moore's terminology. Um, or, or they thought they were the shit, which they are, but they just couldn't be bothered to write. That's also very reasonable. Like it's not enjoyable to write about yourself a lot of the time.

So, um, yeah, so I get to do that and present them back with a whole dossier of things that they can use to go and change the world with, which I absolutely love. Yeah,

have a client say to me halfway through a brown voice session the other day He went this is a lot more like therapy than I was expecting

I had that with my, my first ever client was like, that was like business therapy. I feel great. And that was like, literally as we'd ended the call, I hadn't even sent over the deliverables yet. And I was like, okay, well there's, there's still my actual job is to come. You know

Yes, yeah

I feel so much better.

And I was like, great. Well, that's ideal. Happy for you.

So that's a bit about you and kind of where, where you are now and what you do. The point of the podcast is to get people to talk about their soap boxes. , and so I would love to know what your soap box is.

My soapbox is that we need to completely rethink the way that we talk and think and represent fangirls in media. Ta da.

End of podcast, done.

And yeah,

love it. Okay. Talk me through how the soap box happened.

Um So, where did this come about? This came about from personal experience. So, I was a massive fan, don't know why I'm talking in the past tense, I'm still a massive fan of One Direction. It was a really heady time in my life. It was the best time of my life.

I was that girl at school who was the One Direction girl. I was also the High School Musical girl a bit, a few, couple of years on. As I say, always been enthusiastic. But then as I kind of grew up and grew older and consumed media slightly more critically, I suppose, I realized how that the, the way that we talk about young women young people or women in the media is so off base.

It's unreal. Like it's so tied up in so many things. Um, and I actually wrote my dissertation about it for my master's, which was in sociocultural linguistics. And I did philosophy for my undergrad degree and I hated it and I tried to drop out. And there was just no like practical, I couldn't find practical application that made me feel like it mattered.

Everything we learned was interesting and I'd be happy to like talk to people about it. But at the end of the day, I was like, this is not going to work. , and so for my, my linguistics dissertation, which, , I took the degree during the pandemic so that I could further my craft as like, as a writer. Uh, I thought, no, I want this.

I want this to be something I really deeply care about. And like, that has a really practical application. And so my dissertation was about, , how. One particular newspaper in Britain, , spoke about and treated fans of One Direction during their heyday, which was like 2011 to 2015 or 16. And the stuff I, every time I found a new article for it, I'd be like, I'd have this really conflicted feeling inside because I'd be like, this is amazing for my dissertation, but absolutely terrible for feminism in the world.

Um, which newspaper would that be?

Do you want to take a wild guess?

Well, it's going to be the Sun or the Daily Mail, isn't

It really? it was the

Daily Mail. It was the Mail Online. Yeah. Yeah.

That in no way surprises me. If you'd have said, like, well, it was the Guardian, then we would have had a different conversation.

. So I trawled through a hundred, I can't remember. It was like 800 or 600 or something articles in the end. And then, yeah, it was a lot and it was just so confronting. It was nice to know that I hadn't imagined it. I think in a way. . But also that was vastly overshadowed by just like the amount, the intensity and the, the consistency of vitriol.

And the thing I found most, , disheartening about it was how casual it was. It, I, it wasn't even intended, I don't think a lot of the time. I think for a lot of the writers, it was a foregone conclusion that that's just what fan girls are. That's just how they act. It's just, you know, everybody agrees with them.

There was no. There was nothing even, not that there ever is anything apologetic in the Daily Mail, but there was nothing even semi apologetic or like his, this is a stance we're taking. It just seemed to be, they were just like, Cup Lunch, that is what fangirls are. , which I found wildly infuriating.

So what was this, , talk me through this kind of, , picture or image that was portrayed of what a fangirl was, according to the Daily Mail.

So they were, , hypersexualized, as in, you know, all they wanted was to have One Direction's babies, they couldn't care about the music, , it was just, they saw them as like pieces of meat, they were objects of lust, they were, had absolutely no agency, and they were just laying themselves down with their legs open for the band, , there was that, there was, , patronite, but then at the same time they were treated as really, really young, , completely brainless,

with absolutely no thoughts of their own. And then there was also like pathologized, which is, , a very common trope for fangirls throughout the history, as in like, they're insane, you know, carrying on a very long lineage of female hysteria. , and it being, you know, like genuinely that they were, there was something wrong with them.

, and they were acting, , in a way that was bizarre. , those are the , main three things that I found in the corpus that kind of was backed up.

, so you mentioned female hysteria, are there links to how women are treated through history? And the fangirl kind of presentation is just a new way of doing that?

Yeah, I think it's, it's just, it's the context, isn't it, of the same thing. It was like the, , There was a quote that said that, that hysteria wasn't just a female disease, it was the female disease, like it was just a catch all for absolutely everything that women were doing that was slightly, not allowed or not even not allowed, but just not normal in inverted commas.

, but there was, It was just so wild, like screaming is a gendered verb in and of itself. There was a literary study that I found and screaming was used. I can't remember the official stats, but it was like 10 times more for women than it was for men. Like men don't scream. They shout. Whereas women scream.

. the original dissertation idea I wanted to do, which I was warned off of. And I'm grateful for this in retrospect, but it was going to be a comparison of men at football matches and women at concerts, because I think the activities are very similar. It's just the way that we pass them that makes them feel very different.

Um, yeah.

Why were you warned off that one?

I think because there wasn't, I had no real argument for how I was going to make it happen as a dissertation, like academically, they were just like, what are you going to do? And I was like, I don't know, but I feel like there's something there. And she was like, that may be true, but that's not how you get a dissertation.

This, this study said that it was, it was through literature, but obviously that is part of how, um, you know, common culture and common ideas are, , cemented was that, yeah, women screamed, men shouted, , which is irritating to say the least.

Yes. No, that's very disappointing.

I have a foghorn voice. I can shout like the best of them. I can shout, I would say better than most men. No, I just don't mean to brag. , But I could tell you on

a flex.

yeah, don't mean to brag. , but I can tell you on one hand the amount of times I reckon I've screamed properly in my life. Like it's just stuff.

And, and that's, that's the kind of thing that I found so fascinating about my degree in general, but about this particularly. That's the kind of thing, just one example of how. It's so subconscious. I don't think that they were even thinking about the fact, the writers would think about the fact that when they screamed, they were putting them in a box, but they absolutely were.

Yeah, that's the problem with that. It becoming kind of the air, the cultural air that we're in. We, yeah, we re establish those mores and those assumptions every time we just, , reach for the, for the cliche that makes the most sense. So what, I mean, obviously you can answer this from a personal perspective because you would identify as one of those fangirls, but what were the implications for not only the women being talked about in that way, but also kind of, yeah, I was gonna say all women, but like other women, in society who, , might not have been massive One Direction fans or whatever, but in what was the implication for kind of their actions and their like feelings do you think?

Love this question. So I think that it just feeds into, again, a long feeling that women's hobbies, interests, enthusiasms are, , less. lesser, that they don't have as much value, , that they're not as important, they're not as academic, you know, whatever it is, generally, we tend to treat women's pastimes as a hobby or a little thing.

, and we tend to treat men's as important and it's, you know, we see it play out in so many things like football, men's football players or soccer players, if you're American, are so much higher paid, the industry is worth so much more. Money, but it's for no good reason. The quality of playing is arguably worse a lot of the time.

We see it in, , businesses when women set up or like crafting when men do it, it's like a historical craft. It's craftsmanship when women do it, it's like, Oh, it's just knitting. , and then we internalize that ourselves, the amount of people I speak to who say, Oh, I just blah, blah, blah. When they're a woman.

Whereas when they're a man, they go out and say, I'm an entrepreneur. And it's like, well. So is she selling stuff on Etsy but you know, we don't feel like we can take that, talk about that ourselves, say that about ourselves. So yeah, I think it just plays into part of that of where women are made to feel like, I don't want to put it on them, are made to feel like their hobbies aren't as important.

It feels like that ties into your whole, enthusiast, , section of your business. This idea that, yeah, you want people to be more enthusiastic and, and I was gonna say take, because the phrase I reached for was take them more seriously, but that implies that, that almost implies the opposite to enthusiasm in like our common like parlance, doesn't it?

That's this weird idea that

Yeah. It's, Honestly, talking about enthusiasm is tying me up in some real knots. Um, but I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, it's, I think it is encouraging. I think it's just it treating them with more sincerity or giving them the platform that they deserve or something like that. Um, yeah.

Yeah. So this idea that, um, I, I wanna dig more into your dissertation 'cause I think it's fascinating and I want to read it because, um, and then you are the second person in three days that I've said, can I read your dissertation? And they looked at me really oddly. I was like,

Peter, you can be the third person to read it if you so wish.

that was very similar to what they said. Uh, which like that in itself is quite baffling. Well, I mean, it's not baffling. I understand what happens, but it is quite annoying because we put all this effort into. These pieces of work, and, I mean, especially with dissertations, like, they're your life for, like, months. And then they get bound in these pretty little, kind of, things

even get mind bound. Didn't even have to do a physical version. No.

Oh my goodness, I had to, like, go to a shop and

I wish I had. I wish I had it. Maybe I'll get one. Maybe I'll do that for myself.

I think you should. I've got, yeah, I've got two of them, like, bound on the shelf. And I don't think, yeah, I don't think anybody else has read them. And yes, to an extent, you do them so that you can tick a box and so that you can get your degree or whatever, but yeah, if there was a point to doing them in the first place, then surely we should, yeah, we should put them out there more.

I genuinely sorry to use your pod. Sorry. Well, I'm not going to apologize for the amount I've spoken because obviously that's the point of the podcast. However, I will say thank you for giving me the space to really rant and rave about it because I could talk about this for the rest of my life. But also sorry to use your podcast just as like a messaging platform.

But if anybody knows how to publish a dissertation as in like online, I would be really interested because I do want to put it out there. , but. I'm scared the Daily Mail are going to come and issue me with a copyright claim. So I'd need to get rid of the appendices for one, that's fine. , but I do think I was saying to you before we pressed record that I was reading it and it's, it's, it's a rollicking read.

Like I really enjoyed it. I was genuinely laughing at my own words from two years ago. I was like, this girl. , so I think there are drier dissertations out there to read than mine. I'm not saying it's like five stars on Goodreads, but it's not a bad read, I would suggest.

I do. I do think it's, um, I do think it speaks to a wider point of enthusiasm though. I think sometimes we don't realize how special our enthusiasm is because we haven't chosen it. Like this is something that I just, , you know, wrote, decided to specialize in because it's something that really interests me and similarly for you, I imagine.

And I think sometimes we don't realize quite how special our interests are because We didn't choose them. We've never really, like, thought about them, um, critically.

Whereas when you do, you're like, actually, that's pretty impressive. , not that Enthusiasm needs to be impressive, but I think we forget that we, we're too, you can't see the label from inside the jar, can you? So

So a lot of what I do in this broadcast and in the soapbox community and a lot of my kind of, , of my messaging is encouraging people to think about how the causes that they care about are important. Everybody reaches for, when you think about politics and social justice, or being socially conscious in your business, you reach for the big ones. You reach for, like, climate catastrophes, and you reach for racial justice, and you reach for feminism as a whole, or you reach for sustainability. And all of those are really, really important.

Like, don't get me wrong, and I've had people come on the podcast and talk about them. But, I think, if that's not If the cause that you care about is not environmental justice, it's something that maybe is considered a little bit more niche, you assume that that means it's not as important, and that when someone like me goes, share your, share your politics or share your views in your messaging, you think I'm talking about just the big stuff. , but actually, anything that you are enthusiastic about, anything that matters to you, anything that you want to change in the world or anything you want there to be more of or less of, all those things are just as interesting, , and just as worthy of a platform. , then yeah, then the big stuff, like not everybody is going to be Greta Thunberg, but like everybody has a soapbox.

yeah, definitely. And I completely agree. And I also think it makes it seem, , more actionable as well. Like if you've got one thing that you can really beat the drum for and that you can try and actively make better and change, it feels much more invigorating to kind of wake up in the morning and infuse that into what you do rather than, as you say, trying to tackle the topic of.

Climate change. It's like, okay, where do I even begin? Whereas if you've got one and you know, the ideal scenario, you solve that problem, you eradicate that problem, then you can move on to something else under the climate change umbrella. , yeah, that, and that's what I love about your approach to, , sorry to fan girl.

, but that's what I love about your approach is because it's very practical and pragmatic, which I think is missing from a lot of these conversations.

Well, thank you. , Did you, I'm really interested, did you talk to any other fangirls? Obviously you had yourself as like a prime, , example. But, did you do any like talks or interviews or research with other fangirls?

I didn't because my, um, the research method I chose was corpus based. So it was just about, it was just about the, the language used, but I would have loved , have done that because I feel like there's so much, if I could do a dissertation every year about a different area of like fandom, I absolutely would because I think there's so much richness to be seen in, in terms of, cause the One Direction fandom is obviously fairly defunct now because they are on.

Hiatus, which happened nearly 10 years ago and it still hurts. Don't talk to me about it.

but since then, obviously, you know, there's been so much, there's the Taylor Swift fandom, there's all sorts of conversations about that, the BTS fandom, you know, they literally, um, they screwed over Trump's presidential campaign.

I mean, they've, there's so many, and businesses commodifying fandoms as well, and really using them. There's so many more conversations to be had, and I would love to speak to people kind of on the inside, , in a way that I haven't been just because of, , my advanced age. If, if somebody could fund me to just do fandom research every year, slide into my DMs.

I'm looking for an academic sugar daddy so that I can just advance the cause of women.

Okay, I will pop that in the show notes, so that anyone can contact Ali if they want to help. I think you're probably more likely, unfortunately, to find someone who would pay you to do that, who was a brand, who wanted to tap into the financial,

That is true. That, and I do need to decide whether I will sell my morals for that.

I was gonna say, yeah, that's a

choice that you're gonna have to make.

Exactly. Speaking of daddies, and this is, I promise this is above board. This does not need the explicit label, but this is just my favorite fact that I like to tell every single person. So the link here is daddies, then mummies.

So in the, , one of the Beatles were around the sixties, they were kind of the first, Over here, at least, they were the first record, like that, that was the vision of, of fangirl hysteria, which is what people think of nowadays, and, , they, psychologists, eminent psychologists and sociologists at the time, theorized that the reason Beatles fangirls screamed was because they were, when they saw the Beatles on stage, was because they were preparing for childbirth.

It's my favorite fact. It's my favorite fact. I mean, it's not, it's the worst fact of all, but,

I'm literally speechless, which is not very helpful

yeah. Well, hey, I've got more. The, um, so one of the Beatles, George Harrison, I want to say, uh, said in an interview off handedly that he likes jelly babies, right? And so then fangirls did what they do best. They mobilized that information. They thought this, our idol has given us so much, we're going to give something back.

So they started having jelly babies thrown at them on stage, which sociologists and psychologists. Then took to instead of just thinking, Oh, because he said he liked it in an interview, they said that represents the physical baby that they're preparing for with maternity. It's that, that,

that they'd

want the baby within that they've been chucked on

that they'd chuck on a stage, which

is obviously what you do with all good babies.

Yeah. That's what I find.

oh, my words. Okay.

And this is what I mean, like, every time I found something I was like, terrible for feminism, great for the dissertation!

So, behavior of, of kind of fandoms. So you mentioned then,, we're looking back at the Beatles, they took information from an interview, kind of mobilized it, focused on that, , sent lots of things in, threw them on stage, whatever. Has the behavior of kind of fandoms or fangirls changed through history from that point?

I think fundamentally, it has stayed the same. I think the way it has been shown has changed in that we now have so much more access to, , the people that we are fans of, I think. And, and this is something I'm very clear to point out when people ask, it's always a question I get is like, Not all fan behavior is valid.

There are some who have, you know, terrible paraso parasocial relationships going too far. Some of them do stuff that's genuinely dangerous. This is not me carte blanche saying that all fangirls are incredible and everything they do is valid. But, , I think the I think fundamentally it's just to be seen by people that mean so much to you and have impacted you.

I do, however, think that something that's increased as, , time has gone on is the sense of community that people get. A lot of fangirls, it starts out as being a fan of whatever the band, the singer, the person, but then, , more than anything, it becomes community of people who really understand you, have the same interests as you, really understand it and love it with the same depth that you do and really, really get why you feel how you feel.

, so I imagine that has probably changed just because of the, , improvement in terms of like how. How well connected we are now.

Yeah, sure. And in that way, going back to your earlier wish for your original dissertation topic, it does feel very much like football or sports for wherever, whatever the most popular sport

Yeah, a hundred percent. Sense of belonging, sense of community, sense of tribalism, if that can be a positive thing. , also a sense of structure, you know, like football, you have the season, sports, you have whatever season it is. , and for, you know, there are some fangirls who will follow an artist on every date of their tour.

It gives them, you know, structure around the album or the radio tour or whatever. , so yeah, I think there's a lot of similarities there.

Okay. Men have things that they're enthusiastic about, why do you think that the media has not latched onto that in the same way as it has with things that women are enthusiastic about?

Have you heard of something called the patriarchy, Peter?

mind.

mean, to be fair, it was a fairly leading question.

No, but it's a very good point. I think it's, yeah, I think because men are the ones that have historically written it, for example, , but also because they just have, they are considered the base standard. So , it's unusual when a man doesn't like football, for example, , you know, there's, that is just the standard.

We don't even question it a lot of the time. , and so I think that's why it's not questioned and the activity is kind of seen through, it's, it's male coded as, you know, as I was saying before, they don't scream at football matches, they shout. And we all know that, well, we don't all know, but it's male aggression is seen as fairly standard in our society.

So them shouting is not anything weird. Whereas when females express anything, um, it's because they're female and hysterical and over emotional and can't control themselves. Whereas men shouting, that's just what men do. Yeah, so I think that's my patriarchy in a nutshell.

Excellent.

Something you said earlier about men usually writing it. When you were looking at these articles, what percentage of them were written by men?

That was another great question. That was another killer. So many of them were by women. There was one woman in particular who had such disdain. I can remember her name so clearly as if she's my personal, like, my personal, , enemy. She's not. But yeah, they wrote this wonderful piece. I would say, I didn't actually look into percentages properly, but the majority were women, , which, you know, is a real, a real problem in terms of feminists, women turning against each other.

There was a TikTok I saw recently because the Year of Rose is coming up this summer at the time of recording in the fumble. , and there was a girl who'd said something like, Hey, all the fake fans, , who haven't even seen a football game except for the Euros. And then somebody had commented on it. Oh, , babe, just texted him.

And he really wants you after you posted this good job. Just like, because the, the insinuation being that the girl had posted it with being a real pick me, , just made me laugh.

That's quite depressing. The whole women thing.

The whole, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

the way that, yeah, that they just kind of internalize this misogyny and dislike of,

But it's, and it's not, I truly believe it's not intentional. Like, I really don't think, and I think there was a generational thing as well, obviously for them to be of the age where you are writing for the Daily Mail, you probably are not a teenager. And so there probably was some form of, you know, I'm massively projecting here, but I think it could be argued that there was some form of jealousy that they weren't allowed to have a space like that when they were younger.

Or that the conversation wasn't advanced as it is now, but yeah, that was a particularly depressing. I think it would have been easier to stomach if it was a lot of men writing about girls. Whereas when, whereas when women did it, it was like, no, but you paved the way for this. Like, come on.

Although coming from, , coming from a career where I spent a lot of time around teenagers as a youth worker, not just because I was very random. And watching them, I was going to say indulge, but that's the wrong word, but watching them kind of explore different, , interests and indulge in different enthusiasms and, come to youth clubs and talk about different bands or different pop stars that they were into, there is, I don't know, there was a weird, like eye roll vibe that I found myself falling into quite easily. Not because, well, sometimes it was because I thought that the music that they were into was a little bit of pants. , but that's a personal response. , it wasn't my kind of thing. , They'd play it and I'd go, really? But, but yes, I think there was probably an underlying I wish that I'd been able to kind of indulge in that, or, um, or I wish I had the time now to be enthusiastic about something, but I don't because I'm a grown up and I have all these things that I have to worry about and balance and Blah, blah, blah, blah. , and it feels a little bit like, I had a conversation a few, well a few months ago now, with, a woman, a copywriter who runs a Gen Z copywriting community. And she gets a lot of people kind of like, looking down on her and her community because of their different attitude to work. Like this idea that kind of Gen Z's are all lazy and nobody wants to work anymore. Even though, , People have been saying that in newspapers for about 300 years, that no one wants to work anymore. And I was like, firstly, maybe work is stupid, but that's

It's like a relay race, isn't it? Just like passing the baton on to the next generation of like, and now you're the ones that we will vilify. Thank you so

exactly. Yes. But yeah, so it feels a little bit like that. Like, they're not taking the things seriously that we had to take seriously. So they have space to care about these other things that we never had space to care about. And therefore, they need to almost, like, grow up.

, and yeah, and I can see that from my own perspective, like, Spending time with, with, with a bunch of like teenage girls, but it feels like that gets replicated in, in society that like, some of this, some of this fangirl, , disdain is because they're like, well, why should you have the time and the space to do something so frivolous in air quotes as follow your favorite artist around to their different tour dates or sit on, to sit on social media and, um, and like dissect their albums.

Yeah. And I think when you said about indulge, I think that is the right word. Like it does feel indulgent and I think it's easy, you know, when a lot of fangirls are generally, and I don't have official stats for this, but you know, are generally younger and have more disposable income because they have less responsibilities.

Generally, I'm going to assume that they don't have. Children. I was gonna say they don't have many children. They don't have eight. , you know, they probably don't have many outgoings because of, you know, gestures at situation at large. , I think it's entirely, I completely understand as somebody who gets incredibly jealous myself, I can completely understand that there are people who are, who view that as, you know, reckless, indulgent, , not in the, in the real world, that kind of thing.

And I also imagine for, it goes deeper than that. I imagine it's not just who are you to do this now, but it's who are you to do this when I've never been able to do this because, you know, as we. as I say, like the previous generations have paved the way, but that doesn't mean that they've, they've got it all sorted now.

Like it's, you can be very, I think, sad for your youth that you didn't get to do all the things you want to do. And you can also be sad for 50 year old you, who still doesn't feel like they, you know, who hasn't got the, the ability, freedom, whatever, because of choices that were made in the past. No, not me.

Not by them. , so I do completely get it. And I, I think that's true of everything though. I think we have to, and I have to do this all my, all the time. Remember that we change things to make it better for future generations. Not, it shouldn't be a mindset of, well, I didn't have it. So you can't have it either.

It should be a mindset of, well, I didn't have it. And I am so glad the world is now in a place where you can have it.

Yes, no, I think that's very true. And, and also not seeing, almost deliberately not seeing the positives that come from

something like this. So the community aspects that you mentioned earlier, um, it feels like a similar way to how a lot of the media regard social media. , it's bad.

, it's bad for our attention spans, it's bad for our, understandings of, of people. Politics is bad for making our reductive. It's bad for all these different things. , But not recognizing that actually there are, there are massive benefits, um, in terms of community, in terms of, , feeling less alone in terms of, , seeing examples and role models that are different to those that are around you, , and yeah, in terms of support and all that kind of thing, and, you Maybe, yeah, if we saw fandoms as legitimate communities, then, then that's a whole different perspective on the benefit they bring to those who are in them and, and to the rest of society.

Yeah, I think the social media comparison is such a good example because I think the two are, really intertwined as well. There's especially like, even going back to the, you know, the 90s or earlier than that, going back to, sorry, that sounds patronizing, but, in times past. pre social media, as we know it now, fan boards, community groups,, they were one of the first ever studied fandoms properly with Star Trek because that was such an online community, , that really connected people from across the globe.

, so they do feel completely intertwined. , you might be the only fan of insert. certain, quite niche thing in your area. So it's not like you could find somebody in a coffee shop who's listened to the same song as you. You'll find somebody across the world who will. And I, I know lots of people whose best friends were found, you know, met online and, and they, , met for the first time at a One Direction tour day or something, and,, now they travel the world when Harry Styles is touring, following them and just having the best time of their life.

Like it's, it's lovely to, lovely to see.

Yes, the and the Star Trek thing is, is an interesting comparison to you because it is, again, like, I mean, not so much now since the kind of resurgence of comic book films and, and that kind of thing. But it was very much looked down on for a, for a really long time. It was seen as really geeky and a little bit pathetic and yeah, and nerdy and not something that you would ever admit to. , Whereas yeah, those, those are fully fledged communities, full of great people who Yeah. Can make really important connections.

And that's something, again, that I would love to dive into in one of my future Sugar Daddy funded, dissertations. , it's just about, because that's not something I have personal experience of, but obviously, , this whole conversation has been mostly about fangirls, but that's not to say they're all male coded.

, hobbies, interests, it's not like they get a carte blanche free pass. Obviously nerds, you know, nerdy, geeky gaming, anything that's not kind of alpha male has, has had a history of being derided too. And that's what I found so interesting about the Star Trek community. Um, that being the, kind of the first major one studied because yeah, I think it's, Now it's almost, we've, we've kind of come full circuit with, we've changed our mind on nerd and geeky stuff, which is great, but I think it's almost got to the status of being too cool in that you have to be a particular type of fan to, to be accepted in it.

And actually your prototypical Star Trek nerds from the 90s would still not feel included because that's what happens when fandoms get commodified and they become cool and that kind of thing. Um, fun fact, although I'm going to say that this is unsighted because I can't find the original, original citation for this.

But highbrow and lowbrow were originally racial terms,

Oh,

on the shape, based on the shape of your skull.

That blew my mind when I read it.

crap.

And there's so much that's, there's so much that's like bound up in what we think of as cool, who the tastemakers are, like, and this is why I would like to do a dissertation every year until I die. Because there's just so much that we don't think about that goes into it, of how we, how our society is structured.

Um.

Okay. Interesting.

But as I say, I cannot find the original citation for that. So that might be hearsay. So don't, don't quote me on that guys. But if I, if I, I, it's my lifelong wish to find the citation for that. Um, cause I read it once and then I lost it and I was like, no,

there. That's really annoying. So pulling this around to

How we can kind of put the things that we've talked about into practice in, , the way that we talk online or in person, how can we make sure that we are not falling into that automatic kind of social disregard, , for fangirls specifically or for kind of people who are enthusiastic about a particular thing more generally.

Tiny

of it, it's just a really great step because I think as soon as you're aware of it, it's not something you want to like consciously partake in. And I'm assuming the people that listen to this are very conscious about not, um, you know, about choosing the words carefully anyway. , just really investigating when you go to say that somebody is too much or that they're too loud or that they're, you know, if they just need to calm down or quiet or be quiet, just thinking about what's gone into that, why you're saying that.

, yeah. And to think about like who. And this is a, a bright, a broader topic for another time, perhaps, but like who says what's cool and what's not. I think that's been a real game changer for me. And then finally,, not underestimating the people you're talking about. Again, I'm assuming that you have a lovely bunch of listeners here who probably don't underestimate people on face value.

But, that was one of my favorite, which I don't think I have worked into my dissertation actually, but I really wanted to, , during the Second World War. There were codes that were being passed and secrets being passed between America and some other country, and they were being passed in, , it was either like Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra fangirl letters or something, and the, , post, the, whoever, government didn't bother to check them because they thought, oh, well, they're that there'll be nothing in there.

, and it was, it was a way of trading secrets. So yeah, don't underestimate people either. I think those are my three main ones.

spies everywhere.

Maybe that can be another project I have just coordinating a network of fangirl spies. I'd love that. What a woman of mystery.

That would be epic. Cool. Okay. Thank you very, very much. , that was really, really interesting, and I do now want to read your dissertation and all the other ones that you write until you have decided that you've

I mean, you, you will get them cloth bound because you will have been the network. You'll have been the matchmaker for me and my eventual sugar daddy, who will come from this podcast. Also. , it can be a glucose guardian, sugar daddies, and a non gendered term. , so whoever wants to come up, that would be fine.

Blue Coast Guardian. That is my new favourite phrase. I love it. So, if anybody does want to be your dissertation sugar daddy, or, , just find you and come and say hi, , or find out about the messaging services that you provide, where should they go? There

I am all over the internet in case this conversation hasn't made that abundantly clear. , so you can find my messaging and copywriting work at Eleanor underscore Molly on Instagram or EleanorMolly. co. uk. , or you can find my more enthusiasm guided musings, , at the Enthusiast Co. Or theenthusiast.

co, , that's just generally where I hang out and yeah, pop me a message, send me an email. I love to chat about these things, yeah. And thank you so much. I've absolutely loved this.

was lots of fun. Of course, everybody should go and find you and I will put all of that information in the show notes in true podcast fashion. , and now I'm going to go off and read my dissertation again.

You send me yours. I'll send you mine. It will be a lovely time.

and everyone who's listening should go back and read their dissertation too, because I promise you, you are smarter than you think you are.

Yeah. And also they should let us know what they are. Cause I find it fascinating. I love people talking about what they're enthusiastic about it. Like I would find it so fascinating to know what you wrote 10, 000, 15, 000 words on. Like that's, that's no, that's no small feat.

Yeah. Nice. Okay. Yeah. We're going to do a database of, of people's dissertations. They're very exciting. Cool. Okay. Uh, thanks very much, Ellie. I'll see you soon. Bye.