the history of heartthrobs
Written by Jamilla Philson
Every teen girl has had a heartthrob to obsess over. In the 60s, young American girls swooned over four teens from Liverpool, aka the Beatles. Footage of fans shows young girls pushing and shoving to the front, trying to get glimpses of one of the most iconic musical groups of their time. ”I don’t care what anyone thinks, I love The Beatles and I’ll love them when I’m a 105 and an old grandmother,” a young girl proclaims, “and tell Paul McCartney, Adrian from Brooklyn loves you with all her heart.” Our generation (if you’re old enough) were particularly blessed with the formation of One Direction. And I believed it was appropriate, in the light of Liam Payne’s passing, to discuss the historical impact that heartthrobs have had on our society and how substantial they have been for our girlhood.
Image courtesy of Titanic / Paramount Pictures
Coined in the late 1700s by the playwright and author Matthew Lewis, heartthrobs are modernly used to describe a male celebrity who is known for his attractiveness. Although some notable figures such as the Beatles, Elvis, and Frank Sinatra come to mind, the new age of Hollywood, which is primarily categorized from the 1990s onwards, have graced us with the likes of young Leonardo Dicaprio and Brad Pitt, along with today’s Jacob Elordi and Timothee Chalamet. In the music world, we’ve seen heartthrobs like Justin Bieber, Harry Styles, Jungkook and other K-Pop stars. A heartthrob generally connotes an attractive man with chiseled, striking features and aura that is indescribable. I’m sure you’ve seen the plethora of photos of young Leo and Brad gracing your Tumblr boards back in the day, or even Pinterest feeds now.
Image courtesy of Jim Smeal / Getty Images
During the Y2K era, heartthrob became a staple term in our online forum vernacular, visible in mediums like MySpace and Tiger Beat Magazine. We now have a space online to share our love of these heartthrobs with other fans who feel just as, if not more, passionate about them. In the early 2010s, this eventually transitions to early fandom Twitter, Wattpad, and Tumblr. For a Directioner, this meant wacky usernames featuring your favorite band member’s name, a cutesy edited photo of said favorite member (with their hair dyed pink or various emojis everywhere), and an oil spill header background, just to set the tone for 2013. It was peak Wattpad and it’s something where you just had to be there. Mila Tequila on YouTube has a fantastic brief summary on this phenomena mentioned in their most recent video, One Direction: The Timeline. Now in the 2020s, TikTok has presented heartthrobs in the form of trends such as“ White Boy of the Month”, an advent calendar of internet boyfriends that seemingly spawn from whatever film or other media is released that month; think Jacob Elordi, Tom Blyth, and Nicholas Chavez. The internet has helped turn it into a super niche occurrence, where heartthrobs have become personalized, marketable, and not always the household names we already know and idolize.
Girlhood wouldn’t exist without adoration and idolization, especially of the young men in Hollywood and on the internet today. So many of us create communities around them to feel connected in our love and admiration. We build life-long friendships from these common bonds that seem so simple, yet so crucial to our adolescent brains. And I believe the turnout and reception in the recent Timothee Chalamet look alike contest in NYC can only attest to this experience.
