Fangirls really do make the world go ’round.
This past summer, from June 11th to June 19th, one of the biggest sporting events on the planet took place: The FIFA World Cup. Every four years, the best soccer (sorry, football) teams from across the globe come together to compete for the title of “best in the world.” A different country hosts the tournament each year, leading to cross-cultural interactions aplenty from both players and fans alike. In 2026, the United States, Canada, and Mexico jointly hosted, leading to legions of fans turning their attention to the North American continent in hopes of seeing exciting matches. Additionally, as a result of the World Cup being held in the United States, a lot of eyes that typically wouldn’t have paid attention to the sport were tuned in.
Soccer is widely regarded as the most popular sport in the world. However, in the United States, sports such as American football and basketball reign supreme. It’s not that soccer goes entirely unnoticed here; in fact our women’s national team has taken the World Cup home four times since the women’s tournament began in 1991. There just seems to be a combination of factors (the pay-to-play model, already existing sport markets, a general disinterest) that have led to an overall indifference to the sport. As someone who played soccer competitively for the majority of my twenty years on this Earth, I’ve noticed it for sure. In high school, the crowds for regular season games rarely strayed beyond players’ families and friends. The bleachers only became packed during the playoff rounds. On the other hand, football and basketball consistently drew in large spectator numbers every home game. In the U.S., especially in small towns, those sports have a more lucrative attention market.
So imagine my surprise when my social media feeds became overloaded with World Cup content.
There were celebrity sightings at every game, game day fashion inspo, cute interactions between fans of different countries, and, of course, edits galore.
For those unfamiliar with what an “edit” is, it’s essentially a short, fan made tribute video, typically set to music, designed to make the subject appear as awesome as possible. They are quite prominent on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. With the sport being so popular, it’s natural that the players involved would also amass a large following of admirers, so soccer edits aren’t a new thing at all. The main distinction I noticed this past summer was, funnily enough, a mass influx of edits made with the intention to make these players look like the most adorable men in the world. Bubblegum pop, cute illustrations and graphics, bright colors, and clips of players smiling or acting cheerful are staples of such creations, and even though the tournament is over, I still see plenty of them every single day. In the hands of the right editor, even the most ferocious of players on the field can be made as precious as a puppy.
As someone who is no stranger to fan culture of this nature, I wasn’t too surprised by the phenomenon. In fact, I was greatly reminded of common habits displayed by K-Pop fans. There’s a tendency to devour perceived cute behavior from male and female K-Pop stars, which often makes them the usual subjects of edits like this. This overlap is reflected in the edits as well, with a lot of them being set to K-Pop songs themselves.
What is Babygirlification?
“Babygirlifying” boils down to taking a male character or celebrity that is typically associated with traditional masculinity or brooding edginess and turning them into a sad wet cat that you just want to scoop up and snuggle. There’s an emphasis on soft and vulnerable moments, and babygirlifying can be accomplished through a variety of different creative outlets. This includes edits, like we’ve seen above, but it’s also expressed through fanfiction, artwork, and more.
There’s no limit to who can be transformed. Sure, Luka Modrić may be the most decorated Croatian player in soccer history and also a forty-year-old man, but that won’t save him from becoming someone on the internet’s pookie bunny angel. Anyone can be babygirlified, not just K-Pop stars and soccer players. It’s not a new phenomenon. In fact, one may argue that it’s a staple of fandom culture as a whole. Here are some other examples of male celebrities and characters being turned as cute as a button.
Why Babygirlification?
There can be a multitude of different reasons as to why fan content goes this direction. For one, it can act as a subversion of tropes and ideas tied to the way men are expected to behave. It also can become an outlet to embrace vulnerability and creativity for both the character/celebrity and the person creating the fan content in the first place.
Additionally, there are a lot of practices within the soccer sphere that overlap with behaviors found in other fandoms, particularly those that are populated by a majority of female fans. For instance, let’s look at the parallels between soccer and K-Pop fans again.
- International and club level soccer is similar to company and bias culture within the K-Pop community. Fans go all out to show support for their country’s team or their favorite team within a specific club league the same way K-Pop fans go gaga for their favorite groups. To take it one step further, the different club leagues can be compared to different K-Pop entertainment companies. A fan may prefer groups from SM Entertainment or JYP the same way soccer fans prefer to watch matches in the English Premier League or Germany’s Bundesliga. Additionally, having a favorite player within the team can be akin to a K-Pop fan having a bias within a group. For translation, a soccer fan saying something like, “My favorite La Liga team is Real Madrid, my favorite players are Mbappé and Vini Jr., and I like forwards,” is equivalent to a K-Pop fan saying “My favorite group in JYP is Stray Kids, my bias line is Seungmin and I.N., and I like the vocalists.”
- The different positions of players on the field are like positions within K-Pop groups. Soccer has defenders, midfielders, goalkeepers, and strikers the same way K-Pop groups have dancers, singers, rappers, etc. K-Pop groups also have leaders, comparable to captains with soccer. Usually, the person chosen for these respective positions display a strong, commanding presence and have earned the respect and trust of their teammates/groupmates.
- Collection and merchandising culture are prominent in both industries. Of course, there are the obvious options of clothing related to your favorite team or group. In fact, some K-Pop groups have released merchandise collections inspired by the designs of soccer/American football jerseys, furthering that “team support” mentality. However, it goes further than that. A big draw for purchasing physical K-Pop albums are the extra goodies within the packaging, and the biggest of those is the photocard: a three inch selfie of a group member drawn at random. Fans will buy multiple different copies of the same album for the chance of pulling their bias. On the other hand, compare this to the Panini World Cup sticker books. Fans will buy sticker packs at random in the hopes of completing a specific team’s roster, or even filling up the entire book.
- Some K-Pop fans have even gone as far as to make custom photocards of their soccer “biases,” complete with intricately decorated toploaders and bag keychains.
The Upsides…
In my opinion, I find a lot of the babygirlification quite funny. The juxtaposition of something associated with traditional ideas of “manliness” alongside cutesy softness makes for an unlikely, yet humorous combination. It’s also very funny to me as someone who has a long background in the sport. If you’ve played in a high-stakes match, you’re aware that things can get intense very quickly (if anyone from my high school team is reading this I apologize once again for how mean I sounded when shouting across the field). It can take a physical and mental toll on you. I think it’s nice to have a trend that is lighthearted in nature and makes the sport fun in its own way. The fangirl in me is also happy to be able to save edits of players to some of my favorite songs instead of exclusively badass aura-farming compilations all the time.
Some have also found the babygirlification trend to be a healthy way of embracing non-traditional forms of masculinity. While there has been more of an acceptance of male vulnerability in recent years, it’s still not taken seriously by the vast majority of the general public. This is especially true not just for soccer, but all across the sporting world. Athletes, both male and female, are often mocked to a disproportionate degree when they perform poorly or speak about their own emotions. Perhaps if a more compassionate viewpoint of athletes becomes widespread, it can reduce toxic expectations and extreme standards of pressure that athletes place on themselves.
Another development that I appreciate is the amount of women that are becoming interested in the sport following the World Cup. “Women in male-dominated fields” if you will. The way I see it, you can’t complain about wanting soccer to become more well-known in the US and then complain when the general public wants to get into it. Female soccer fans have long existed before the 2026 World Cup. However, with the extreme media coverage the event got this past summer, it’s only natural that people will be curious. It’s a very difficult task to gatekeep one of the biggest sports in the world. With the Women’s World Cup coming next summer, I hope that this new influx of viewers will engage with that as well.
…and the downsides.
From firsthand experience, it’s not always a good thing to behave like a K-Pop fan. Unhealthy attachments can develop fast, and this can lead to unwanted harassment towards the players, as well as their friends and families. For instance, England’s Jude Bellingham gained a lot of attention during the tournament for both his impeccable skill and the fact that he’s very handsome (that SKIMS photoshoot probably helped too). However, once a certain subset of fans discovered that he’s been romantically linked to model and influencer Ashlyn Castro, her comments were flooded with attacks on her appearance and the perceived notion that she wasn’t “good enough” to be dating such a star. “Jude is mine!” and sentiments similar to it was something that I saw a lot of when looking through her social media presence. This can very quickly snowball into parasocial territory. There’s nothing wrong with having a harmless crush on a public figure that’s already taken, but harassment is a problem.
After the World Cup there was another instance with France’s Michael Olise’s post-tournament celebrations. There were a few Instagram stories of him posted alongside some bikini-clad women on a yacht during his vacation. While there were a lot of reactions of surprise due to Olise’s typical reserved manner on the field, I noticed a few comments along the lines of “I didn’t think he would do this,” “I thought he was different,” and even other women attacking the ones on the yacht. Regardless of what was going on in that video, the fact of the matter remains that Michael Olise and those women are all adults. I’m also willing to bet that most of the people complaining do not know Olise personally and, as such, he does not owe them an explanation for his actions. He’s not committing a crime because he unknowingly went against the expectations someone made about his personality. The whole thing reminded me of when Taehyun, a member of the boy group Tomorrow X Together, got caught going to a club in November, 2023. Not only was he criticized just for being at the club in the first place (even though in most of the pictures he’s literally just standing there), but a lot of fans were furious that there were women in the same general vicinity as him. It basically became a chorus of “get those *insert plural derogatory term for women here* away from my man!” Sadly this kind of behavior towards women when they interact with male K-Pop stars isn’t uncommon. I’ve seen many harassment campaigns directed at multiple female idols for daring to look at a boy group member in my years. I would hate for this new influx of soccer fans to adopt a similar attitude.
Finally, as is unfortunately the case when women take an interest in a male dominated source of entertainment, you see the inevitable comments of “you’re just pretending to like it because you think ________ is hot!” There’s this assumption that women have to prove themselves as real fans whenever they enjoy…well, anything. I understand that yes, it is annoying when someone comes in and acts like they’re the supreme authority when they’ve been a fan of something for a good thirty seconds at most (the amount of comments I saw this past summer saying things like “why doesn’t he just score” really irked me). But a lot of people come at women specifically on the assumption that they can’t possibly know anything about soccer on the basis of their gender alone, which I don’t think is fair. Anyone can be a “fake fan,” it’s just that women seem to be targeted for it on a disproportionate scale compared to when a man shows interest in more female oriented topics. It’s not a crime to genuinely enjoy the grit and strength that goes into the sport while creating cute edits and artwork.
OVERALL…
I’m happy that more people are becoming interested in soccer. I like seeing the intersection of fangirl behavior with a sport that I observed and participated in for a very long time. In the future, I hope more fans will be encouraged to watch and enjoy soccer, as well as develop an interest in different music styles and creative outlets.