Thursday, May 5, 2011

What Is It About Justin Bieber?

I'm way too old to have any knowledge about Justin Bieber other than that he is some kid from Canada (right?) who is famous because he sings, or acts, or dances. I've noticed, however, that many men have some sort of a serious issue with this guy. There is this man who makes YouTube videos of himself shooting at a huge poster of Justin Bieber. He gets millions of views for those videos.

My sister went to a bachelorette party last weekend. The prospective bride walked around with a huge cardboard cut-out of Justin Bieber for fun. My sister tells me that several men stopped to hit or slap the cardboard version of Justin Bieber. 

Then, today my students were writing their final exam in the Spanish Intermediate course. Part of the exam consisted in listening to a text about Pedro and his friend Elena and their activities and answering questions about them. Obviously, there was nothing even remotely connected to Justin Bieber in the exam. However, I have already graded two exams by male students who used this opportunity to express their intense dislike of Justin Bieber.

What is it about this kid that bugs men so much? Is it that he is so popular with young women in spite of his non-traditional masculinity? Any other explanations?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Like you say, he doesn't match with the cliché, that they learned makes a man attractive. They don't understand what makes him so attractive for women.

I've seen this behavior on women too, when men are drooling over a woman, who seems to get out of that clichéd attractiveness.

It's hilarious to see them, both the admirers and the jealous ones.

Lear

Pagan Topologist said...

I have never heard of Justin Bieber, so that puts me pretty far outside the norm, I suppose.

Pen said...

And yet, there are those guys who see how much girls like Justin Bieber, mimic his haircut, and then proceed to go on and on about how much they hate him.

"Is it that he is so popular with young women in spite of his non-traditional masculinity?"

-Based on my experiences, maybe this is right, seeing as none of the boys who have mimicked the hair have gotten to be much more popular with girls than they already were in the first place.