When people started saying the name ‘Justin Bieber’ my response was ‘who?’ I am too old to know the latest pop superstar craze, to obsess the teenaged girls of the world. But like any global phenomenon, it was impossible to remain ignorant forever.
I still don’t think I have ever heard a song by Bieber, not consciously anyway. But I am now less completely in the dark about who this fresh-faced boy is. I have seen his impersonators on the streets and pavements of our cities, preparing themselves for a life of steadfast metrosexuality.
I am sure their neat polo necks and wispy haircuts will outlive their love of the music.
But there is a new, and for this old trollop, far more interesting aspect to the Bieber fever. ‘Biebians’ – girls who look like Justin Bieber, either accidentally or on purpose. And who do so with such startlingly pretty androgyny that I just want to look and look until my eyes go funny and I feel like I have a teenage crush all over again. (I wish I had had more teenage crushes on girls. Adolescence has to be the best time for sexual experimentation, surely. But it’s too late, baby).
I don’t know if ‘Biebians’ are actually lesbians. Or if the ones who send in their photos to this marvellous fangirl gender-bending website are actually lesbians. It doesn’t matter. What I like is how a pretty boy pop star has garnered the imagination of young women fans and encouraged them to ‘come out’ as androgynous, beautiful, and, even in emulating their hero, so very much themselves.
I mean, you get it right?
http://lesbianswholooklikejustinbieber.tumblr.com/
