Attractiveness and morality have long been intertwined, but this conflation has recently become engrained in online stan culture. It has become part of what drives fandoms, celebrity discourse, and the way we speak about each other on the internet.
Physical beauty has been associated with goodness since the dawn of society as we know it. And we’ve been interrogating that idea for just as long. Take, for instance, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when the Weird Sisters declare, “fair is foul and foul is fair,” suggesting an upset in the moral balance of their universe. Or in The Picture of Dorian Gray, where a decaying portrait reveals the depravity behind the immortally beautiful man. Or Wicked, whose film adaptation is nominated for this year’s Best Picture Oscar, which interrogates what the word “goodness” means, and why everyone in Oz is so much more willing to use that word for fair-haired Galinda than green-skinned Elphaba. We grow up on stories that warn of the dangers of judging a book by its cover, so we might think that, as a culture, we’re beyond those false equivalencies. But this concept is so ingrained in our consciousness that it shapes the way we speak, especially online.
Female celebrities, and women in general, are urged not to age, even though that’s impossible on a physical level. So when someone seems to have achieved that, the impulse is to pat them on the back and consider them “good.” This is especially true if they do so without showing visible signs of plastic surgery because identifiable plastic surgery means you’ve tried and failed. You’ve attempted to play God and deceived no one. Kylie Jenner and much of the Kardashian clan have faced this criticism throughout their careers. Since we can tell their beauty is fabricated, their inner nefariousness is only natural.
Beauty is the currency of fandom. Liking someone’s work comes along with the assumption that you find them beautiful. If we like someone, they are “hydrated” and “snatched;” we point out their “body tea” and that their “face card never declines.” On the surface, this is just language for us to point out someone’s physical beauty, and pop stars tend to be more physically beautiful by societal standards. More importantly, though, it’s a way to reify our fandom. To affirm that in the eyes of the internet, they’re doing a good thing by looking the way they do. It’s almost as if their goodness inside manifests itself on the outside, and fans, by proxy, get to bask in their glow, becoming more beautiful themselves.
We “stan [insert any celebrity or pop act] for clear skin.” The act of participation in a fandom (therefore holding the popular stance of any given circle) will save you from blemishes. We point out that Miley Cyrus looks similar at age 17 and age 30 because she’s “unproblematic,” not because it’s her job to look good, and not to mention, she’s only 30. This type of language pervades every fandom, every cultural sphere, every thread of celebrity discourse.
When George Lopez appeared on the Jennifer Hudson show looking a bit like Albert Einstein, it was no surprise to commenters online, given his history of racist remarks and infidelity toward his wife. This type of language also cropped up in leftist online circles around Luigi Mangione, the man identified as a suspect in the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The common rhetoric boiled down to, “We support his cause, therefore he’s attractive. Or perhaps “he’s attractive, therefore it’s easier to support his cause.” It’s sometimes difficult to parse out the difference.
Hyperbole is a hallmark of stan culture, and fans online are constantly inventing new, creative ways to talk about celebrities. But there’s a strong ideology that lurks behind this language, one that conflates beauty with goodness, and ugliness with evil. It's a sort of witchy, fairytale outlook on the world, where bad actors are punished with hideousness and good ones are graced with beauty. The “Twitter Stans” are like the story's narrator or perhaps its jealous God/Creator. It’s easy, then, to see looking ugly as a moral failing. This is the way the world can make us feel sometimes, even outside the online spheres, so it’s difficult to tell whether stan culture just reflects this pre-existing notion, or helps create it. Either way, we haven’t come as far as a culture as we might think we have. Maybe it's why we’re still mounting productions of Macbeth.