Picture yourself caring for someone who is unable to reciprocate your feelings. Scratch that, imagine loving a person who is not even aware of your existence. In a rather understated way, this describes the daily experience of a fangirl. Marriam Webster defines a fangirl as “a girl or woman who is an extremely or overly enthusiastic fan of someone or something.” We must note that the term is now also used for anyone who is a fan and is not limited to gender and sex. Indeed, it’s aptly justified, as a fangirl devotes her entire time to expressing affection for various subjects, spanning from fictional characters and singers to actors.

From politicians to boybands, fangirl has paved their way into each niche, giving the concept an overwhelming reach. Social media, of course, or literature for that matter is no stranger to the concept of fangirl. Riding on the wave of popularity that ‘booktok girlies’ bring to reels and posts on Instagram, good literature is often liquified to having an attractive male lead who is a good ‘book boyfriend.’

We now notice that the concept has enough content to create its vocabulary. The two trending prominent terms are The Booktok and The Book Boyfriend. Booktok is made up of the words book and TikTok (the famous video-sharing app) and while the app is not available in the country, the term seeps through to every form of social media possible. Considered as ‘Tiktok’ of the ‘book girlies’, one search on the keyword would lead you to heaps of content, the majority of which focuses on the actions of the male lead of the book. Most of the content is about how he can be a wonderful “book boyfriend”, a boyfriend who is fictional and defined as better than real-life men. However strange, irrational or erroneous, these book boyfriends are certainly the source of serotonin for thousands of fangirls.

This leads to various questions, especially in the minds of those who are on the sidelines and observing this trend, or fad, take over the youth. What is the beauty in pining over words written on dead trees? What touches the human soul that it resorts to conjuring its own stories to feed into the reader’s narrative? To understand the emotional and psychological reasons behind this unrequited devotion, we found the following answers.

Fandom at the baseline leads to a fundamental need for attachment. Attachment is defined as a connection that children develop with their caregivers in their early years. These help satisfy core needs for intimacy (Bowlby). Unless those needs are fulfilled in time, we tend to carry them into our adult life and seek partners who exhibit traits that either match those of the caregiver or fulfil the ones uncared for. This leads to the parasocial attachment to fictional individuals (Silver & Slater, 2019). These fictional individuals become the escape from reality, serving various narratives in the consumer’s mind. They do not have the ability to do us any wrong, for these personas only act how the attached individual wants them to.

Absence of Threat of Rejection

A widely accepted factor in prevailing attachments to fictional characters, as Marina Rain and Raymond A. Mar write, is the lack of threat of rejection. The connection between the piece of media and the consumer is such that the character has zero chances to ever reject the attached individual. This lets the individual feel an envelope of comfort in expressing their desires alongside the character, and not fear any type of shaming or rejection. In the 2007 study by Wei and Ku, it was outlined that selecting fictional partners was often a coping mechanism. It alleviates stress and lets the individual be clingy or distant depending on their preference, without being worried about the outcome (Rain and Mar 2021).

Wishful Thinking

“What if I am that one in a million.” This line popularized in Hannah Montana, perfectly captures the humane need to be different and better than everyone else. We all crave the special benefit, that award onstage, the mention in the credits. “What’s to say I won’t be the girl my idol marries?” Having an idol to look forward to, possibly in the guise of a romantic relationship, provides relief to fangirl.

Most of them are aware of the shortcomings of this delusion and are self-aware, only applying this to quench the regular thirst of boredom, but some get a little too invested, taking this wishful thinking to obsessive heights. A manifestation of this belief is seen in the trend: ‘Boys at school never looked at me, but (insert celebrity name) did.’ This reel includes a video taken at a concert where the celebrity glanced at the fan’s camera.

Of course, at the end of the day, it is a trend and most of the individuals making it are only participating in a fun little challenge. This still goes ahead to show how easy the drop is from this cute appreciation to the delusion of marriage. It gives us insight into the importance a fangirl can attach to her idol as compared to attachments in her real life.

Narrative Transportation

A third one would be narrative transportation, or our tendency to become deeply immersed in story worlds. (Gerrig, 1993). Transportation involves focusing of attention on plot events, diminished awareness of the self and surroundings, and emotional involvement in plot events and characters (Green & Brock, 2000). Yet again, the preference of wanting to leave real life to live one that is fake but tailored to your needs is seen.

When you see yourself taken hostage by the words on your page, unable to come back from the magical world created by your favourite writer, you are possibly applying some amount of transportation in your life. It is important to emphasize that transportation is not a mere way of running away from one’s problems, but multiple individuals often lean to these mechanisms to alleviate severe anxiety and stress. Various studies by Noftle & Shaver, and Silver & Slater, list more kinds of transportation, along with the states of anxiety it can help alleviate.

Conclusions

There are various reasons for this behaviour of attachment, however, there is a somewhat consensus on wanting to escape the reality that fuels this behaviour. It is not just limited to books, when we look at K-drama fangirls, we often see them compare the ‘male idols’ to their classmates. There is a lack, and it is always convenient to pick a fictional character to fill it.

There is nothing your fictional character cannot do for you, he has already done enough for his love interest in the show or the novel, and if he was alive (a possibility that is not even possible) he would definitely be doing it all for you. The safety net is what keeps this attachment thriving, but hey, as long as it is not detrimental in any manner and makes you happy, it’s just another hobby.

The studies on fictional attraction are endless, and the reasons for the same can go on and on. From fictophilia to parasocial relationships, the realm of fictional attraction has been constantly under research. It is difficult to place these declarations of love in any box, and it is wrong to not consider them confessions either, but it is definitely intriguing to keep exploring these.

Author: Dr. Garima Rajan is Faculty of Psychology at FLAME University.