Why are Teenage Girls and Their Interests Always Ignored Despite Their Buying Power?
Teenage girls are an incredibly lucrative and loyal fanbase, so why are their interests not taken seriously?
Teenage girls hold their interests very near and dear to their hearts and go out of their way to support their favorite actors and singers, generating a lot of money for these acts and the projects that they are in. When their interests are taken seriously and projects are made to reflect the intricacies of a young girl’s adolescence, these projects do very well, yet the powers that be do not continue to tap into this market in the way that they should.
In college, one of my cinema and media studies professors said that from a marketing standpoint, there tends to be a refrain that if a teenage boy would see a movie, a teenage girl would see it, but if a teenage girl would see a movie, a teenage boy wouldn’t see it. This sounds about right as a boy’s “cool-ness” may dwindle a bit if they frequent movies that are targeted towards teenage girls (though this shouldn’t be the case), however, it’s pretty obvious from a bystander’s point of view that when teenage girls collectively decide to support something, it’s going to be successful. So, even if that refrain is true, it seems that the more important demographic to tap into is that of teenage girls as they bring in way more money than teenage boys do, or at the very least, the same amount. Yet, this is rarely what is done.
One of the first examples that came to mind for me when generating examples of teenage girls’ buying power was Leonardo DiCaprio and Titanic (1997). If I was alive in 1997, I likely would have been one of those teen girls who went to see Titanic multiple times. I love that movie so much. Not only is DiCaprio the picture of charm in that film, but the story is well thought out, beautifully depicted, and for a larger than life historical event, feels very grounded and real.
But as Rachel Hatzipanagos wrote for The Lily, the film was not only successful because of the dreamy DiCaprio, but because Rose (Kate Winslet), the heroine of the story, was going through a relatable adolescent experience: feeling like her wants and needs were ignored. “No one understands Rose. No one listens to Rose. Rose is miserable and trapped and dramatic and oblivious in the particular fashion teens have experienced for millennia.” Any teenage girl watching this movie, filthy rich or not, can relate to that feeling of being ignored and having your agency taken from you. Additionally, she is very sheltered, naïve, and lacking perspective, much like actual 17-year-olds.
Throughout the story, Rose learns to advocate for herself and stops being so polite. We saw hints of this before her actualization, for instance with her comment on Mr. Ismay’s “preoccupation with size,” but by the end of the film, she is set on only pleasing herself and refuses to engage with anyone who does not respect her. Even in the end, she let go of Jack in order to save herself. Rose is the hero of her own story and Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) was just the catalyst to show her how badly she needed to save herself.
This story of a young woman pushing through the adversity she faces to figure out what she truly wants is what really sold this movie. DiCaprio, riding on the back of Romeo and Juliet (1996), may have gotten the girls in the door, but the coming-of-age story is what kept them there.
Titanic is currently the 4th highest-grossing movie of all time, having grossed $2,264,743,305, much to the credit of the teenage girls who fell in love with the film. But the response to this film’s success was not to create more moving, female coming-of-age stories with a convincing romance. It was to make more big-budget CGI movies.
A more recent example of the power of teenage girls’ support was the worldwide phenomenon of Bieber Fever. Justin Bieber has had an incredible impact on the pop music industry and the culture of young celebrities. He is the blueprint for One Direction, Austin Mahone, Cody Simpson, and all of the swoopy-haired, boyishly cute pop acts that came after him. With success that stems from the admiration of teenage girls comes a lot of backlash from those who claim that the act therefore cannot be serious or talented as the only reason that he is famous is because he is cute. There may be some truth to this, in that a lot of the draw to Bieber was, and still is, due to his looks, but this sort of criticism not only does a disservice to the act, who in many cases does hold some talent, but it also does a disservice to those who admire the act, claiming that their interests are shallow and frivolous and not worth any real attention.
Part of the draw to Justin Bieber for young, tween girls was that he felt down-to-earth, more so than the other big pop acts at the time who started on the Disney Channel. Bieber started off singing covers on YouTube and then people started to find him and share his videos. The people started his fame, he didn’t start out famous or acting and then move into music like Miley Cyrus or Selena Gomez or the Jonas Brothers.
Tween girls did what they do and came out swinging to support him as he blew up around 2009/2010. Tom Lamont in “‘Bieber fever’: the 12-year-old who conquered America,” reported that “[In 2009], the announcement of an autograph session at a mall in Long Island lured so many thousands that, according to the New York district attorney in a later inquiry, security rails and shop windows buckled under the weight of bodies.” In terms of sales, his fans did not disappoint either: “[My World 2.0, a revamped version of Bieber’s debut album] debuted at No 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, making Bieber the youngest solo male artist to hit the top spot since Stevie Wonder in 1963 (with Little Stevie Wonder/The 12-Year Old Genius).” And that support has never really wavered. Bieber is currently the 8th most-listened to artist in the world on Spotify with 74,307,846 monthly listeners.
The more recent success of the Barbie (2023) movie, Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, and Olivia Rodrigo’s music, have also shown how strong the buying power of teenage girls (and teenage girls in their 20s) is and how they respond when their struggles, emotions, and angst are taken seriously. Michelle Goldberg, in her Opinion article for The New York Times titled “The Hunger Fed by ‘Barbie’ and Taylor Swift,” tells us that these two projects have given voice to the realities of living under the patriarchy from pretty accessible standpoints.
‘Part of what has made “Barbie” so resonant — beyond the campy pleasures of its fantastic costumes and sets — is that it treats becoming a woman as a hero’s journey. (This is also what has made its critics on the right so furious.) A pivotal moment in the movie comes when America Ferrera’s character, Gloria, gives an impromptu speech about the impossible demands made of women: “You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line,” she cries. “It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory!”’
Female viewers can relate to the completely idealistic stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) as she realizes how tricky it is to exist as a woman in the Real World and understand how upset she becomes at just how pervasive the patriarchy can be, even in the idealized feminine society of Barbie-Land. She even decides to become a real, human woman at the end of the film, despite learning how difficult it can be. Barbie is not a radically feminist film (it would be incredibly difficult to make one of these that is actually backed by big studios and pushed as hard as Barbie was), but its accessibility makes it easier to digest for those who may be on the fence about female-empowerment-based content and ultimately, I think, does a service as being a bit of a gateway into feminism.
Taylor Swift has always catered to mostly female fans her own age who go through similar heartbreak and trials and tribulations that young women endure. Particularly roadblocks that rob them of their agency and misogynistic comments that are meant to make them look spiteful or vengeful while their male counterparts do the same things and do not face the same criticism. Swift has created an empire for herself built on her marketable brand of feminism and provides hundreds of millions of fans with an outlet for their emotional expression.
Olivia Rodrigo, the 20-year-old phenom who burst on the scene with 2021’s “drivers license,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and whose success in music has not subsided since, has made a name for herself for a similar sort of writing-from-heartbreak style as Swift, but taps into the angst and betrayal aspect more so than the overtly sad and romantic aspect that Swift frequents. Rodrigo gives voice to the often-ignored female rage that comes from those feelings of being overlooked, underestimated, and ignored, particularly by those who tell us that they care about us. She is currently the 22nd most listened to artist in the world on Spotify partly due to her ability to speak to young women’s experiences so honestly.
Goldberg writes: ‘Given the evident hunger out there for entertainment that channels female angst, it would make sense for Hollywood, once the writers’ and actors’ strikes are over, to do more to cultivate female writers and directors… And looking at a list of last year’s major films, I was struck by how few of them seem to have been made with a female audience in mind, part of the reason there was so much pent-up demand for “Barbie.”’
Similar to the mistaken conclusion drawn from the success of Titanic that big-budget CGI movies are what audiences want, the success of Barbie has spurred a drive to make more movies about toys, rather than more movies about women and their experience moving through a patriarchal society and finding resilience and community. Why are teenage girls’ interests so frequently overlooked when they bring in a lot of money if their interests are taken seriously? Isn’t the whole point of these corporate products to make money?
Well, clearly there is a disconnect between what works and what it takes to make something work. As demonstrated above, there are inaccurate conclusions being drawn from ultra-successful projects. Barbie worked, but the studios think that what made it work was the toy-to-life adaptation when it really was the honest portrayal of womanhood that worked. Titanic worked, but the studios thought that the impressive scale and CGI involved was what worked rather than the beautiful romance and the coming-of-age of a teenage girl. The only way to start pushing these conclusions in the right direction and to then generate more stories and products that speak to this lucrative and mostly untapped market is to put more people from this market in the driver’s seat. How are a bunch of old, white men supposed to understand what a tween or teen girl really wants to see on her screen or listen to on Spotify? They clearly don’t bother learning about what this market really responds to, so we must push for more women in powerful positions who can speak to what teenage girls want. Without that perspective, we will have to keep settling for honest and emotional women’s stories that come around only every once in a while.