When women express passion for music, film, or sports, they’re often labeled as “obsessed”. Men, on the other hand, are praised for their dedication to the very same interests, but why does it happen? And more importantly, why doesn’t it happen to men?
This double standard reveals a deeper issue rooted in sexism – and it’s more common than you think.
Historical aspects
The way “obsession” is described relates to how hysteria used to be described in the past. As an uncontrollable emotion or excitement. Going back thousands of years, when Greeks originated the word itself, hysteria was something entirely female, as it came from the Greek word hystera, that means “womb”. It was thought that the womb was the reason for a series of feelings that affected women exclusively.
“Obsession”, on the other hand, comes from Latin and means to have your mind besieged by uncontrollable thoughts of something. That’s where the two words can relate to each other. The world assumes feelings as a female thing because of the sexist roots of our society, and so when talking about something that is nothing more than an elevated expression of feelings towards something, it is immediately related to women.
Fan, fanatic or obsessed?
There are many different levels of interests someone can have. They can be casual listeners of an artist, fans of a soccer or a basketball team, part of a punk subculture, movie enthusiasts or even engaged in politics.
Everyone can be a fan, there is a healthy way of being one and worshiping your favorite things without being blind to others’ opinions and critiquing whatever is different than what they like. What happens is, while most men are treated normally, even though they act in an exaggerated way towards their interests, women are portrayed as obsessed while simply enjoying something.
Why are women judged by others when they spend a lot of money to go to a concert they enjoy and men treat attitudes such as throwing animal heads in a stadium as a little joke? When is the line between being a casual fan and obsessed about something drawn?
For example, an AC/DC’s fan is someone who listens to their songs, enjoys them and maybe if they had an opportunity would go to a concert. Someone who is a fanatic, would collect vinyls and CDS and try to go to more than one concert in their city, sometimes getting away from other things to try and get the tickets or to be able to stay in line to get a good spot. At last, someone who is obsessed would go out of their way in order to go to every concert around the world, spend more money than they should, maybe have a room dedicated to everything that belonged to one of the members of the band they could get their hands on.
But why, without doing all that, are women seen as obsessed? The brazilian singer Jão once said, in the making of his SUPERTURNÊ tour in Brazil: “In the end, I think it’s kinda hypocritical that men think it’s normal to tattoo a team’s badge, to cry for a soccer player, and when it’s my fans – tattooing, crying, expressing themselves – then it’s too much.”
Sexism in the daily life
When the Barbie movie directed by Greta Gerwig was released in 2023, women all around the world decided it would be a fun and cute idea to have everybody wear pink. Something so simple and harmful became a reason for women to be judged. They were called superficial and stupid just for choosing to do a cute little trend for a movie that represented the struggles in their lives.
In 2025, the Minecraft movie came out. A movie mostly men were talking about online and there were several videos of them littering movie theaters with popcorn and drinks and one of them even found a way to get a chicken in the theater because of the “Chicken Jockey” (a baby zombie sitting on a chicken that appears in the movie).
The big difference between how the women that wore pink for Barbie and the men who trashed an entire theater was that one was seen as a “stupid woman thing”, and the other was laughed at and just generated memes (of course, besides the work it caused to the employees at the movies).
What is very shocking to see is how easy it is for women to understand, from a very young age, how sexism works against them and how nothing is fair in their lives, while men don’t seem to even understand sexist behaviors. Many young women grow up recognizing unfair treatment early on, while men are often less aware of the privileges they benefit from – a gap that perpetuates inequality in seemingly small, everyday ways.
The sexism we deal with is so rooted that some of the times it goes unnoticed, but those are not the cases. Men choose to put women in a position that makes them look crazy, even though they are doing the same or less than they do regarding their idols. It is absolutely normal to admire someone or even worship something as long as it keeps a healthy amount and doesn’t interfere in your life in a deeper way, but your gender is not supposed to play a part in determining what “level” of a fan you are.
It is also important to understand that not only men put women in this position of being “obsessed”. Many times, because of the rooted sexism, women have some opinions that are sexist and don’t realize the problem in having them and they end up looking down on other women for various reasons: to seem different, to please men, or even because they don’t know another way around. Many women are created in a sexist environment that doesn’t let them learn about feminism and almost imposes ideas and points of views that are not necessarily fitting with reality.
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The article above was edited by Gabriela Travizzanutto.
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