Marketing "Safe" Love: How Boy Bands and Celebrities Are Marketed for Adolescent Parasocial Relationships

So last week when we were talking about parasocial relationships and media, it didn't surprise me at all that most of the people in our class had crushes on celebrities and boy bands. I mean, usually when I talk to people about the good old days of high school and middle school, I always ask who their celebrity crushes were...or are. In fact, when people tell me that they've NEVER had a celebrity crush, as a Communications major, I get a little worried. After all, according to Rachel Karniol (2001), "love objects provide a “safe” target of romantic love in the period of time before girls start dating and become sexually active," (63). So it's always interesting to meet those few girls that have never had parasocial relationships before.

Now as a Comm major, I've taken a lot of classes on methods of persuasion and marketing an object. And while I always jokingly say "Wow they really marketed him well to his targeted audience", it never really hit me until today that boy bands and younger male celebrities are targeted in very SPECIFIC ways for there to be a greater chance of interested girls, and thus greater chances for parasocial relationships.

If we look back to Karniol's article, she states that these love objects are "safe", meaning a non-risk resource for girls to experiment and fantasize about their crushes, and thus learning more about norms for sexuality and romance without threatening their innocence or fears. This reminded me of when we noticed in class that our younger parasocial relationships were filled with very feminine, pretty boys from bands or shows and our older celebrity crushes were more masculine men. This is really interesting because that implies that younger girls see older, masculine men as intimidating or frightening, but see feminine soft teen celebrities as safe to love, be a fangirl, and fantasize about. And once they get older, they learn more from their real relationships and their parasocial ones, and change their interests to more masculine men.


This makes sense as to why MANY young teen celebrities are portrayed or marketed as soft, sensitive, cute, and innocent. Plus they pick boys that are more pretty and feminine with thin bodies. You don't really see teen boy band groups with buff guys. Because young teen girls that don't know much about dating or boys can feel safe around a guy that might have more similar qualities to them. It's something they are more familiar with possibly. It's almost as if marketers (probably) know all about parasocial relationships, and have adjusted the images of these teen boys for their target audience. I mean, it was pretty weird for a lot of people when Justin Bieber went from a soft, sweet looking teenager (with a very feminine voice) to a muscular bad boy with lots of tattoos. I don't know if younger teen girls still fantasize about him in the same way when he was younger. And that's why whenever teen boybands or singers that were originally catered to a younger audience try to move on to an older audience, they completely change their image or physique.

Which makes me curious as to what would happen if they marketed teen boy bands like One Direction and Justin Bieber as tough, bad boys instead of the sweet, soft boy next door types. After all, despite their seemingly innocent image in their music videos, the reality is that they are not as soft as they seem.