The Natural Order-Defying Fangirl-ness of Hailey Baldwin
At the beginning of his career, whenever Bieber was asked who his crush was in an interview, he would confess that he’s in love with Beyoncé. It seemed like, at the time, were he to name an object of affection more age-appropriate than Beyoncé, he would’ve incurred the wrath of millions of young women who considered him their celebrity crush.
His cult of overzealous female fans, accurately monikered Beliebers, bought his deflection line and sinker. It worked in two ways: it’s believable he’d find Beyoncé crush-worthy, but Beyoncé’s larger-than-life success exempted her from their envy, while Baldwin’s marginal success threatened their fragile fangirl ecosystem. To paraphrase the sociologist Alain Botton: The pauper is jealous of his fellow pauper, not the Queen.
While his fans have matured with him in the decade since he gave his false crush confessions, it didn’t surprise me to discover, in the summer of 2018, that the Instagram announcement of his engagement to Hailey Baldwin triggered a deluge of horrific comments from Beliebers who see themselves in her because she was once a fan. Thousands of jealousy-tinged tweets and Instagram comments were sent to Baldwin from Bieber fans who couldn’t believe she had ever been a real fan, despite evidence to the contrary: she attended at least two Bieber concerts in her youth and while tweeting things like, “I don’t care what anyone says but Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez together is the definition of a teenage dream,” “At Today Show to see Justin Bieber perform. First time we met was at Today Show 3 years ago,” “I’m for sure team Jelena,” and “@justinbieber can we talk about your dark hair? #itlooksreallygood.”
The harshest criticism lobbed at Baldwin, that I saw with my own eyes, were the toxically intertwined accusations of attention-seeking—which, on the internet, reads very pot calling the kettle black—and slut-shaming. Some of the criticism I read though, like the wounded-but-make-it-woke tweets that amounted to, “Of course the ‘One Less Lonely Girl’ singer who pandered to us in calculated and insincere ways married a rich, heterosexual cisgender woman born to a famous parent!” made me laugh like a maniac, only because I understand the outrage better than most.
It’s worth considering, I think, that jolted Beliebers may be right about Baldwin, that she isn’t a real fan, at least not in the traditional sense. Her fangirl-ness was more inward than theirs, contained in tweets disengaged from the broader online community of Beliebers. I guess that’s what makes her an easy victim: girl culture is flat, so girls don’t typically cannibalize each other until one of them has the gall to ascend the ranks without kissing the ring.
It certainly doesn’t help that Bieber and Baldwin’s engagement contained a matryoshka doll of compelling, dramatic narrative for an emotionally injured Belieber to drive themselves insane stewing over. Baldwin waited patiently while Bieber took many jaunts around Hollywood with various groupies, Sophia Richie and, of course, Selena Gomez. Both Bieber and Baldwin were disillusioned with their ex-church, Hillsong, and its leader Carl Lentz, so they ditched it together for another hipster-evangelical church, Zoe Church. But, to my mind, the most irresistible story of all is Baldwin hitching herself to Bieber’s star. Bieber’s fame, which was hastened in the aughts by Youtube’s cover song-to-radio single machine, the hip-hop choreography he flounced into the living rooms of North America with and his side-swept bowl cut, hasn’t simmered down. The Hollywood dynasty-building capacity of their union may be able to keep the Baldwin name alive—no thanks to her father Stephen Baldwin—for at least another generation.
Baldwin’s influence has skyrocketed, in the years since her engagement to Bieber, but she’s hardly the most vertically ascendant example of a civilian capturing the heart of a celebrity. Danielle Caesar, a plain-looking young woman from New York, holds this distinction. Caesar, who tweeted incessantly at Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place actor JT Austin for seven years (from 2009 to 2016), until he finally followed her back, is something of a fangirl legend. Her unorthodox methods resemble that of the sycophants and social climbers in the comments sections of celebrities on Instagram. (Emmanuel Matos, who accrues value by camping out in Cardi B’s comments, comes to mind.) But these shrewd methods work. Caesar is now a bonafide social media influencer, with Casper mattress ads and over 200,000 followers to show for it. She dated Austin from 2016 to the beginning of this year, when they broke up. Like Baldwin, jealous fangirls came for her neck. “What does he see in her?” they collectively pontificated in tweets.
A crush on a celebrity permuting into more seems too good to be true. It defies the natural order of things. But dismissing the online romantic and social courting of a celebrity by a civilian as illogical is merely an underestimation of young ambition that eschews the gold-digging of yesteryear for today’s equivalent: exposure as compensation. Aside from the limitless supply of attention and desire, what is there to gain in this economy for millennials who’ve all but given up on the prospect of making money? Look no further than rap music, where anxious ballads about “clout chasing” is de rigueur. Song lyrics that mention the word “clout” are only matched in ubiquity by crush-themed music. (During the summer that Baldwin and Bieber got engaged, especially, monogamous crushes were the mood: “Boo’d Up” by Ella Mai, “Perfect” by Ed Shereen, “Back to You” by Selena Gomez, etc.)
Fuck her