6/6/2023 0 Comments Adib khorramI was a pretty closeted teen in high school, so I didn’t realize what a huge crush I had on Nick Carter, but it was definitely a crush. It’s an outcropping of toxic masculinity and the patriarchy to kind of demonize and diminish anything that even hints at the feminine. When you’re young and gay and trying to pretend to be straight, rejecting anything that girls like is a toxic, but unfortunately common, strategy. Most boy bands cater to the female gaze, particularly the young female gaze, but boy bands are also five boys hanging out all the time, goofing off on stage, so there’s always going to be subtextual stuff there. The book is dedicated to “everyone who’s ever been afraid to sing along to boy bands-but secretly wanted to.” What’s that fear about? Sometimes you just have to follow the muse. But also, the idea for the book just came to me out of the blue, and it seemed fun. The intellectual reasons were that when you’re writing for young adults, boy bands are part of the zeitgeist they’re so anarchic and fun, and they also have a complicated relationship to queerness. And I spent a lot of my adulthood in the event productions industry, doing concerts and theater, so I’ve been around music in a lot of ways. I came of age during the NSYNC and Backstreet Boys wars of the late ’90s and early aughts. What got you interested in writing about a boy band? Are you a fan?
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