Infantilising Male Celebrities is Weird and Misogynistic
The Depp V. Heard defamation trial was one of the worst times to be active on social media. The constant barrage of pro-Johnny Depp content, from fan edits of him in the courtroom, to memes about Amber Heard’s physical appearance, to Twitter threads detailing why user @IStandWithJohnny thought Heard was a “lying slutbag” was increasingly hard to stomach as the days of the court case went on. But at the time, I wasn’t really surprised that a lot of people, particularly Depp’s fan base, didn’t believe Heard — we do live in a society that constantly refuses to listen to and consistently tries to silence victims of abuse and assault, after all.
What stood out to me as particularly bizarre was that so many pro-Depp people weren’t just claiming that he was innocent, they were also treating him like some sort of helpless victim, who wouldn’t make it to the next day of the trial without their support. I would type out comments like, Depp isn’t going to pay you for cooing at him eating candy and doodling like he’s some adorable kid and not a literal abuser, and I promise you he doesn’t give a single shit about you, before reconsidering that I didn’t want trolls in my DMs for weeks.
What strikes me now, a year after the trial and having bounced around a few separate fandom spaces, is that the victimisation of Depp by his fans was not out of the ordinary. Don’t get me wrong, his fans babying him was definitely weird and awful, but it shouldn’t have been all that surprising. Just look at the way that Henry Cavill fans bullied his girlfriend for supposedly using him for clout back in 2021, or the way fan Twitter goes up in flames every time another white boy of the month-type reveals he’s in a relationship. The infantilisation of male celebrities by their fans is nothing new.
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“When fans continually defend their faves, they always couple it with directing abuse at women who don’t deserve it.”
It also feels important to note that it is often male celebrities who get babied by their fans, and that audiences rarely seem to deem female celebrities, who are often vilified for the crime of being public-facing women, needing or deserving of even defence, let alone infantilisation. Academic research also backs this up: a study on K-pop idols conducted by UCLA students, for example, found that fans are more likely to tweet positive messages directed at male stars than they are to tweet similar messages to their female equivalent.
Now, it’s one thing to post about liking a certain male celebrity, provided he’s not an abuser, — nobody’s stopping you from being a fan! — but treating a real-life individual with his own thoughts and feelings (most of which they probably don’t share online, at least not truthfully) like a baby that can’t make his own decisions and needs your protection is more than a little weird. Calling someone your “babygirl” or “little princess” is arguably a little cringe (after all, this is an actual person, not Kendall Roy from Succession) but not actively harmful. This baby-ification becomes problematic, however, when you attack every girl your fav male celeb posts on Instagram - God forbid your “fave” be in a relationship that makes him happy! - or defend him like he’s your red pilled boyfriend and you’re the liberal girlfriend trying to change him, when he should be taking responsibility for the harm he’s causing.
The infantilisation of male celebrities usually comes down to one thing: misogyny. Fans feel the need to protect their faves from the women around them, who are seen as either manipulative girlfriends or false accusers. When fans continually defend their faves, they always couple it with directing abuse at women who don’t deserve it. The phenomenon of trying to shield adult men from the real world didn’t start with the rise of the modern-day celebrity and online fandom — we’ve always seen it: From “boy moms” treating their grown sons like infants, women having to tackle weaponised incompetence, and the time-old tale of boys getting away with immature behaviour at school because “they develop later than girls”.
It’s only natural that fans will treat male celebrities the same way they see people treating the men in their lives, and it is only exacerbated by the development of parasocial relationships — fans feel like they “know” their faves and have the authority to treat them like helpless babies. Younger fans are particularly vulnerable to this, as they are exposed to both the babying of the men in their lives and the infantilisation of their favourite male celebrities at the same time at a period in their lives when they are most impressionable and most likely to push boundaries on communication with others online, leading to endless hate espoused at the fellow women choosing to disagree with their opinions.
By realising the infantilisation of male celebrities is undoubtedly linked to the way non-celebrity men are treated by the world every day, it’s obvious that this is not just an issue with rabid fangirls — this is a wider problem with gendered expectations and stereotypes that affects everybody.
Words: Avantika Singh
