Internalized fanphobia

[textualdeviance]

Am hashing out a very long, navel-gazing post about this sparked by Tumblr events from earlier today. Will bore you with it later, but the short version: Trying to decide whether it's inherently icky, or at least disrespectful, to be an openly lecherous fanthing. Also, whether there's a right and wrong way to be a fan (assuming one isn't actually being directly obnoxious to the people one is fanning.) And also whether being a fan--or at least a lecherous one--automatically kills one's credibility as a media and/or creative professional.

Also-also, there's some stuff about personae and "knowing" people and at what point it's acceptable to be attracted to them.

Messy stuff, this.

On top of all that, there's meta stuff in there about how audiences are really supposed to think and feel about creative works and the people who make them. And how we're supposed to express those thoughts and feelings. (This has to do with the notion that storytelling art is all about creating characters we become emotionally invested in.) I may post that over on my Wordpress blog, though.

ETA for a small epiphany that will help me condense the eventual long version:

My own attraction to/interest in the Famous People I like has to do with liking (what I know of) who they are as human beings. But, because prurient interest from fans is so often shallow, objectifying, starfucking, posessive, blah blah, being openly attracted to FPs will be assumed to be that kind of disrespectful stuff, and thus seen as tacky, at best. And, sadly, there's no way around that, because the communication protocols necessary to keep out the icky people also keep out us not-icky ones.

Comments

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Many if not most people are very visual wrt attraction. You see someone, you like what they look like, you're attracted to them. Boom. Is that in some way problematic? I don't think that's in any way problematic.

I think as long as you're not being directly offensive to the person you're attracted to, you're fine, personally.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's problematic, but it's not how I'm wired. Physical features can get my attention, but keeping it beyond the initial prairie dogging requires personality stuff. Conversely, I'm often intensely attracted to people I find amazing who wouldn't necessarily turn my head on the street at all.

I spose my oddity on this might be because I've basically never been single. I've not needed to go on the prowl in order to get laid, so the kinds of surface-level mating dances most people do for that purpose have never been interesting to me. If I want to have sex, I go ask M and it happens. So when I want to have sex with someone other than him, it's because of who that specific person is. Bodies are interchangeable to me, regardless of what they look like or how they're configured. They're just tingly bits to poke to make their owners happy. It's the owners that make the difference, and therefore that's what interests me.

This isn't to say I don't find physical features attractive--obviously, I do--but where many people might like someone because they have a nice ass, I tend to think someone has a nice ass because I like them.

The reason this gets weird on the Famous People angle is because personality is often more closely guarded than the physical for them. Someone who's fine with having their half-naked body on the cover of a dozen magazines might be a lot more posessive of who they are beyond their physical image. So my interest in hour-long interviews over stacks of sexy pics might be seen as invasive.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

I think whether your interest seems invasive or not depends on how blatant you are about it when you don't know them/they don't know you.

I know there are guys who are into me that I'm not into. I don't feel like it's invasive as long as they keep themselves to themselves once I've said "No thank you".

I used to be interested in personality and work myself around to finding someone physically attractive after the mental/emotional attraction happened. For various reasons, I'm not into that anymore. If you don't turn my head immediately, it's not going to happen. There have been a couple of exceptions to that in the last few years, and they were basically always huge mistakes, so I'm trying not to do that anymore. I'm lucky enough to attract the attention of the kind of dude I find hot--if that weren't the case, I'd have to change my approach. :)