From Frank Sinatra in the 1940s to Harry Styles in the 2020s, many of the biggest male stars in the world built their early careers on their romantic appeal to young women. The lovestruck teenager gazing at pictures of her idol in magazines or screaming in hordes at a concert is a stock character in the textbooks of fame. And yet no history book has, until now, told her story from the start.

Swoon revisits six defining moments in book, film and music history to uncover the story of how the fangirl became the most enduring yet disdained icon of pop culture. From the Byromaniacs of Regency London to the screamers of Beatlemania, these women were tastemakers, visionaries and cultural disruptors. Their obsessions shaped literary canons, built Hollywood icons and turned musicians into messiahs long before social media came along. But with power came panic. Fandom became a moral and cultural battleground. What was at stake was women’s right to want things they weren’t supposed to want, feel things they weren’t supposed to feel and express these things loudly, shamelessly and in public.

Part cultural history, part joyful reclamation, Swoon returns the silly, swooning, screaming girl to her rightful place in feminist history – because behind every sigh and every squeal, the seeds of a revolution were stirring.

About the Author

Bea Martinez-Gatell is a writer and pop culture historian. Her work explores the relationship between media, celebrity and the emotional lives of women and girls. She studied film and literature at the University of Warwick and for an MA in the history of film and visual media at Birkbeck, University of London, where her research centred on teen girl audiences and Hollywood cinema. When she isn’t writing books, she studies how people form emotional connections with technology as an experience researcher. You can most often find her in either London or Barcelona.

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