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Swoon: Fangirls, Their Idols and the Counterculture of Female Lust – From Byron to the Beatles
Swoon is a prehistory of the fangirl. From the Byromaniacs of Regency London to the screamers of Beatlemania, it revisits six defining moments in book, film and music history through the eyes of the girls and women who gave birth to pop culture as we know it today.
Far from passive consumers, these women were tastemakers, visionaries and cultural disruptors. Their obsessions shaped literary canons, built Hollywood icons and turned musicians into messiahs – long before social media came along. But with power came panic, especially when female fans and male stars were involved. Fandom became a moral and cultural battleground. What was at stake was women's right to want things they weren't supposed to want, feel things they weren't supposed to feel and express all these things loudly, shamelessly and in public.
Far from passive consumers, these women were tastemakers, visionaries and cultural disruptors. Their obsessions shaped literary canons, built Hollywood icons and turned musicians into messiahs – long before social media came along. But with power came panic, especially when female fans and male stars were involved. Fandom became a moral and cultural battleground. What was at stake was women's right to want things they weren't supposed to want, feel things they weren't supposed to feel and express all these things loudly, shamelessly and in public.
- GenresNonfiction
385 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 17, 2025
5 people are currently reading
128 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 1, 2025
Lockets full of pubic hair, footprints in the snow stored in freezers, onions up sleeves to ensure authentic tears as you swoon… fangirls are pretty unstable. Or are they?
DNF at 68%
Let’s get one thing straight, the first third of this book - a history of the fangirl from Byron to Liszt to Valentino - I was enthralled. The re-centring of these cultural icons’ stories (literary, musical, film) on their female fanbases was really interesting and insightful. The strength here lies in the clear analysis of why these figures spoke so strongly to young women in the specific eras, and why (and how) the male contingent of fans has been sidelined or rebranded in more ‘serious’ tones. But by section 4 on Sinatra it was stating to feel a bit ‘rinse repeat’ with marginally different contexts, and by the time it got to Elvis in the fifth case study I was bored - so I missed this and The Beatles, as it stops there, not bringing us up to date in the 21st century. I then read the conclusion.
Was my eventual disinterest because it is repetitive and I had grasped the points already? Byron set off the Stan culture snowball, its embrace and the parallel destain / patronising dismissal is deeply entrenched in the socio-political issues of the time etc…the rest is largely self explanatory if you know a bit about the time periods of the other celebrities.
Or was it because I related to it less and less? Despite their unifying threads, my own fangirling is probably much more aligned with Byronmania than Beatlemania - even in the deepest darkest depths of my tween obsession with the Backstreet Boys I was never going to be standing outside a hotel or screaming at a concert.
I’m sure for those who have experienced that sort of fangirling urge, or those who claim to truly not understand the fact that fangirls are not all inane and trivial (yet can somehow entertain the idea male football fans aren’t all Neanderthal thugs 🙃) it will be enjoyable or enlightening in its totality. Personally it could have streamlined the case studies and then been enhanced by reflecting more on either; how these historical patterns continue in the present, on the line between the maligned embracing of community/passion and the genuinely concerning behaviour of the parasocial, the impact of the internet, or the blurring of the gendered fan distinction with the rise of male dominated fan spaces also deemed low-brow or childish by many.
DNF at 68%
Let’s get one thing straight, the first third of this book - a history of the fangirl from Byron to Liszt to Valentino - I was enthralled. The re-centring of these cultural icons’ stories (literary, musical, film) on their female fanbases was really interesting and insightful. The strength here lies in the clear analysis of why these figures spoke so strongly to young women in the specific eras, and why (and how) the male contingent of fans has been sidelined or rebranded in more ‘serious’ tones. But by section 4 on Sinatra it was stating to feel a bit ‘rinse repeat’ with marginally different contexts, and by the time it got to Elvis in the fifth case study I was bored - so I missed this and The Beatles, as it stops there, not bringing us up to date in the 21st century. I then read the conclusion.
Was my eventual disinterest because it is repetitive and I had grasped the points already? Byron set off the Stan culture snowball, its embrace and the parallel destain / patronising dismissal is deeply entrenched in the socio-political issues of the time etc…the rest is largely self explanatory if you know a bit about the time periods of the other celebrities.
Or was it because I related to it less and less? Despite their unifying threads, my own fangirling is probably much more aligned with Byronmania than Beatlemania - even in the deepest darkest depths of my tween obsession with the Backstreet Boys I was never going to be standing outside a hotel or screaming at a concert.
I’m sure for those who have experienced that sort of fangirling urge, or those who claim to truly not understand the fact that fangirls are not all inane and trivial (yet can somehow entertain the idea male football fans aren’t all Neanderthal thugs 🙃) it will be enjoyable or enlightening in its totality. Personally it could have streamlined the case studies and then been enhanced by reflecting more on either; how these historical patterns continue in the present, on the line between the maligned embracing of community/passion and the genuinely concerning behaviour of the parasocial, the impact of the internet, or the blurring of the gendered fan distinction with the rise of male dominated fan spaces also deemed low-brow or childish by many.
February 26, 2026
Loved this. It’s such a gleeful look and fandom and fangirls in particular. There’s so much feminism in this; it really is about women finding their place in the world and how fandom interacts with that. It’s a delight. I could say that it’s quite heteronormative but, actually, I don’t think it’d be possible to do this in another way. I also think a chapter on Madonna and how girls reacted to her early in her career would’ve been interesting. Otherwise, fabulous!
December 24, 2025
Such a delightful and entertaining read! I enjoyed reading this book as well as looking up all the references mentioned like The Sheik, Rhapsody in Pew, and Fran Sinatra and Elvis’s performance. I couldn’t help but swoon over Frankie, Elvis, and the Beatles while reading this.
March 22, 2026
Interesting but a bit repetitive book about the history of fangirls and fan obsessives
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews