July 18, 2012

Confessions, pt. 1

I have a confession to make: I like One Direction.

Maybe that sounds silly coming from the girl that shamelessly follows Hanson around, but the key word here is shamelessly. Hanson has never been a guilty pleasure for me at all. I’m quite proud of their music, and telling people I’m a Hanson fan has always felt more like a privilege than a confession. I think that’s why I’m fighting myself so hard on liking One Direction. They embody every stereotype that people like to cast onto Hanson—a teenage boy band that doesn’t write their own music or play instruments. I’ve spent so long explaining that those things are NOT Hanson that it just feels wrong to like a band that actually fits that description. There are enough people in the world that don’t take me seriously because my favorite band is Hanson. Add another band with another stigma to the mix and it’s like verifying what people already think:

Holly has crappy taste in music.

And then my inner English teacher looks at the word “taste” and thinks about its synonyms, like “preference,” “favor,” “choice,” etc. What they all have in common is that by definition, they’re completely subjective, entirely up to the user. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that jazz. Basically, it’s my “taste” and darn it, nobody else is going to tell me what to feed it.


Click here for part 2, in which I go to a 1D show alone.

No comments: