Boy Bands, I Hate You.

Wow - kids nowadays! What's up with all this One Direction madness! I can't look anywhere without seeing some kind of product tie-in with 1D! And what kind of lame-ass music are they churning out anyway? Why, back in my day...

.... erm, well, erm... back in my day... we had... erm...

New Kids on the Block
Take That
Backstreet Boys
N'Sync
Boyzone
Westlife

... okay, screaming girls (and some screaming boys). Here you go. Enjoy your One Direction. I'll be sitting here sulking in the Corner of Hypocrisy.

God must have spent a little more time on  you,
I mean them.

Ah yes, boy bands. Oh, how I used to hate them.

I hated their schmaltzy love songs, I hated their perfect hair, hated their million-dollar smiles, despised their clear skin and well-trimmed beards.

I hated the fact that they were rich, hated that they were popular, and hated that girls tripped over themselves trying to get to them. I hated that there was the Cute One, the Shy One, the Silent One, the Bad Boy and the Only One With the Actual Singing Talent.

But most of all, I loathed the way that girls my age were talking about them. 'Oh, I'm in love with Robbie, he's such a bad boy!' or 'Nick's floppy hair, oh my God!' or 'I'm going to marry Justin!' or 'I want to pour Ronan's voice all over my body' (okay, maybe not this last one).

Love me for a reason, let the reason be...
my immensely good looks and stylish clothes

And then we would take a look at our woeful teenage selves - the scrawny average Malaysian male student with the

acne-ravaged face from too much spicy food and too little facial wash

centre-parting hair

wearing the short-sleeved used-to-be-white school shirt and

the baggy olive green pants that looked like we had been prancing around in mud

waving our stick thin muscle-less arms used only for computer gaming and shoving food into our mouths

singing with our puberty-afflicted voices which always broke, making us sound like donkeys in heat

splurging the daily RM 1.50 we got for our allowance, which just got us above the poverty line.

Oh hai baybeh. 

We weren't anyone's fire, or the one desire, if you know what I'm saying. It ain't no lie, the girls our age were looking at us and going Bye, Bye, Bye. (Hands up, 80s kids!)

We were more Friendzone than Boyzone.

Weren't they supposed to be singing songs that made us fall in love with each other instead of in love with them? Damn it! How were we ever supposed to live up to that kind of perfection? Talk about girls being pressured to look a certain way, it's not like we boys had it easy either!

So here you go, new generation, here's a new batch of pretty boys for you to idolise and scream your lungs out to, and to throw your undergarments at - and leave you shaking your head at the substandard quality of men around you.

Don't bother going out with that boy who's got his eye on you all of last year - he's no Zayn Malik! And why date that dorky loser who sits next to you in class when you could be saving yourself for Liam, Harry, Niall or Louis?

But seriously, enjoy it while you can - every generation is entitled to their version of The Beatles (go ask your grandparents who they are) and one day, you will fall madly in love with that boy who waited patiently in the corner for you to sit out your imaginary crushes, and he will be far from perfect, but then again neither are you (and that's okay).

And if you're really lucky, you will be perfect for each other. Pock marks and braces and all. (...and that's what makes you beautiful, oh oh oh).

I am sure the Backstreet Boys would have wanted it that way.

Here's one for all the screaming fangirls who 
were in their teenage years in the 90s.