Sascha Samlal

Shame is often mentioned as a common, marginalising feeling among fans who participate in any fandom, and has become particularly central to the feeling lives of fangirls of popular music. Depictions of fangirls often highlight this shame through the routine devaluation of the emotional experience of these fans, through the cultural framing of fangirls as irrational, hormonal, unintelligent and perverted. From the often-cited external societal shaming of girls' interests, to intra-fandom policing of 'fangirlishness', fangirls are subject to and participate in shaming to enforce femmephobic ideals of normative femininity within these spaces. However, shame is also used generatively and productively - shame is often posited as a criterion for community bonding and shared intimacy between fangirls. This thesis will consider how fangirls reconstruct their emotional experiences, remaining resilient in their passion despite facing cultural misogyny. Shame is not only individualising in its affect, but rather shame also motivates community bonding between shamed identities, whose communities endure through reworking their experiences of shame through their kinship (Halperin and Traub 2009). This thesis will challenge the negative focus on shame within the cultural zeitgeist, as shame has emerged as an integral point of connection for fangirls in popular music fandom (Sedgwick 2002). By drawing on surveys and interviews of fans of popular music, this thesis will aim to uncover how fangirls ultimately negate and rework shame through participating in fandom, and how their collective shame strengthens community ties and feelings of kinship among fangirls.