With Justin Bieber debuting his career return at Coachella this year, decades of fangirls came out of their hiatus to support the singer’s arrival on the desert’s main stage.
Though the festival held a large roster of artists and bands to look forward to, hundreds of women were camped out in front of the main stage for Bieber’s performance. Within these faces, a special moment I noticed from experiencing the Bieber fever in person myself, was that the majority of these women were in the crowd alongside their dads, who also wore Bieber merch and stood in the hot blazing sun for hours.
This unique observance led me to think that while years have gone by and even Bieber himself is a father, a fan girl’s passionate commitment to their favorite artists came from the positive environment that their fathers created to make their teenage dreams come into reality.
I didn’t think that anyone around me was noticing the few dads alongside their daughters in the crowd until a girl across from where I was standing pointed it out loud as well. With what seemed like tears forming in her eyes, I heard the words “I miss my dad” come out of her mouth.
In that moment I realized I too had missed my dad and went into a deep dive on my own personal experience with being a fangirl myself, and everything that my own father chose to do in order to make me happy.
The first boy crush I ever had was on bassist Calum Hood from 5 Seconds of Summer. I remember being a 7th grader in middle school when my rockstar boy phase began, blasting all the songs in The 1975’s discography, and praying to God that one day I’d be one of Justin Bieber’s one less lonely girls. I never cared about boys in school, only those who played instruments and sang love songs about girls twice my age.
From a very young age, I remembered being addicted to the rhythm that music carried. I found any possible excuse for my parents to let me go to a concert instead of school, and even became insanely invested into creating fan accounts on social media — leading me to become the thing that men fear the most, a fangirl.
But luckily for me, the only man in my life who supported this boy craze was none other than my own father, who would do anything for his little girl to be happy with her passion of editing bands online.
From as long as I can remember, my dad would take me out of school early to wait hours in line for a concert. He would drive my friends and I back and forth around Los Angeles, until we met the famous celebrity we were chasing around. His commitment to my own happiness went beyond limits, even when he’d have to attend work-related meetings he’d always think of me — getting Harry Styles to wish me a happy birthday when he met him at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills.
Despite my dad coming from a background in never knowing what it was like to have a loving family or a parent who was there for you, he has always been the most wonderful, caring man I have ever known. He allowed my younger self to curiously adventure the world of boybands and fandoms, not even knowing that later on in life this passion he nourished with all his heart would become my career path and my perception of life.
What my dad and I both didn’t know was that from all the exposure he’d allowed me to have around music, I became more and more interested in being in that industry. My family did not come from a music industry background, but from my dad’s efforts into taking me to concerts and artist meet and greets, I became more than a fangirl, I wanted to be the one running the show and contributing to these bands/artists’ success.
The thought of my dad’s actions towards my fangirl phase opened up a conversation around my creative peers about who influenced their career choices. To much of my surprise, a lot of my girl friends shared similar stories about their dads, explaining how their fathers not only shaped their expectations in terms of love, but also encouraged them to pursue the careers that they had today because of how much exposure they had to the world of fandoms through their fathers.
Dads can be great at teaching you how to play a sport, show you how to drive, and give you life lessons that will help you better understand why that guy is no good for you. My dad made me a fangirl, and through those fathers and daughters at Coachella, I got to relive a little bit of my teenage past.