#them being violently racist is literally the reason why this whole thing has gotten sm attention to begin with duh

[tariah23]

Now ppl are reblogging the yasuke post acting like I don’t know Asians are just as racist towards black ppl as white folks *falling to my knees* (all whites and nbs in general. Most of them jump up and down for white approval, willingly accepting any crumbs they can get so-)

[yaz-the-spaz]

Hello! Just a quick question about bearding, why do we hate the beards so much? (;Gigi, Perrie, Taylor) (the famous ones that is) if we think that our boys don’t have a choice, then the girls don’t either, right?

why do people hate the “beards”? i get they hate that our boys are closeted, but i don’t get why they hate Eleanor or Gigi or Sophia (at the time). if there’s someone to hate is mngmt and s*mon. the girls are just doing a job and it’s not like they’re having the time of their lives. like, they’re “with” someone who love someone else. they can’t have a public relationship either. i think it’s awful for both of them:( i hope it ends soon.

lumping these together cause i’m assuming they’re from the same person since they appear to be asking basically the same thing in slightly different words, also sorry for taking so long to answer nonnie but honestly the thought of answering these just left me so exhausted, like this was literally me when i saw these asks

just because this is something that’s been discussed and re-discussed and re-re-discussed so much in this fandom and there’s so much information on it easily available at this point i almost feel like i shouldn’t have to explain it at all but nevertheless i will weather the storm and attempt to help you understand so here we go…

first off, while i agree with you that a lot of the blame that falls on the beards as individuals is undue—since at least for those that already had established careers in the entertainment industry there was likely at least some degree of coercion and contractual obligation from their respective teams as well just like for the boys and they’re likely not personally responsible for most of the stunts and bs narratives as much as it is their teams pulling the strings in their favor (though often heavily in the girls’ favors at the expense of the boys but that’s a whole separate point)—that doesn’t excuse the fact that they willingly agreed to partake in bearding and closeting. and before anyone chimes in with ‘well they night not have known they were helping to closet/beard someone’ let me stop you right there cause puh-lease. it’s 2018. the number of rumors piled up at this point about zayn/liam/louis/harry’s sexualities that the general public alone knows about is ridiculous all its own, and probably astronomical when you consider what those in the actual industry probably know/have heard by now. it’s not a secret. people in the industry know and they’ve all been soft outed publicly by others in the industry at least once (if not multiple times) at this point. so while the idea that these girls are coming into things blind and naive as a baby deer and have no idea what they’re getting into may have flown in 2011 it’s about as sturdy as sand now and has been since about 2012 (when the first gay rumors about louis, harry, and zayn started to fly).

i’m not gonna get much into perrie because i feel like she’s a separate case since she came from virtually the same machine as the boys but the other famous beards i don’t feel like deserve the same pass as the chances are higher that they still had at least some degree of choice in who they decided to date for pr. i could be very wrong but from what i’ve read and learned from those in the fandom that work in the industry that have talked about this, higher-profile celebs (like taylor and gigi) often get their pick of potential pr boyfriends from a list of candidates curated by their teams and/or have some sort of sway or say into who they’d prefer. and still they specifically (and repeatedly) chose queer men (or at least men widely believed to be queer, leading them both to now come to be seen by many as serial bearders).

those that came into it without established careers of course are a different ballgame because not only did they willingly agree to help closet and beard but they did so at the expense of the boys’, essentially using them as a stepping stone to climb the ladder of fame and success. eleanor might have gotten a pass back in 2011 when she popped onto the scene wide-eyed and bushy-tailed with probably no real idea of what she was getting into and no projects on the horizon to promote, but you can’t argue that she didn’t know exactly what she was getting into when she out of the blue re-upped her contract and came back on the scene in 2016 with a budding modeling career (with connections to gigi no less) and a renewed social media presence and her and louis suddenly started going everywhere looking like walking billboards, promoing every single high fashion company in existence. and pretty much all the “normal” non-famous 1d beards have followed this same/similar trajectory too. it goes: start off getting marketed as just a student and a “regular” girl who’s oh so private and not looking for fame or to be in the spotlight, then flash forward a couple years or a couple months post-break-up and suddenly they’re all models on the come-up with a 1d-launched following on social media, promoting their next shoot or fashion line or what-have-you. 

if you see nothing wrong with any of that i can’t help you…

9 times out of 10 they’ve also turned out to be extremely gross people and this is actually the main reason most people hate them. not just because of the bearding but mainly because of the awful shit they’ve done all by themselves. the bearding is gross on its own sure but i think a fair amount of people these days recognize that—for some of them at least—not all of the blame for the bearding can be put on them individually and we’re not out to just blindly hate them for bearding alone like many fans were wont to do in the days of yesteryear because i think most of us understand by now that they’re people who can be just as manipulated into bullshit by those running things in the industry as the boys have. but whether they were coerced into bearding or not that doesn’t excuse many of their own disgusting behavior on a number of occasions. you can check some of the posts in my gigi, cheryl, danielle, and eleanor tags and the google webs for more concrete and exhaustive deets on the shit some of them have done but for the moment i’m just gonna list the biggest ones/and or the ones i can recall most easily off the top of my head

-gigi - involved in a bunch of racist shit (including borderline blackface, tasteless immigrant campaigns insinuating immigrants are literal aliens, and appropriating black hairstyles like afros and dreadlocks) which admittedly some of the blame for can be put on her team more so than her but still she’s not a puppet, she has a voice and some say in what she agrees to do and she fully could have turned the projects down if she saw anything wrong in it or at least apologized after the fact for participating in it and tried to make an effort not to participate in stuff like that again or to acknowledge why it was wrong (a la katy perry) and yet she continued to be involved in the same kind of shit over and over, but that also doesn’t excuse the shit she did all on her own when she made fun of asians for their features and never apologized for it and then when she got forced out of the Victoria Secret show in China b/c of all the backlash from Chinese people on sm she basically whined about it to her fans (in dm’s no less lmao wtf) and still didn’t actually apologize or admit she did anything wrong

-perrie* - called zayn a freak on-camera in an interview and basically insinuated that introverts and/or people who prefer to deal with their emotions in solitude or like to take time to be alone are weirdos

cheryl - showed her ass to be a transphobe and also a racist to the point of literal physical violence inflicted on a black woman, and also was accused of domestic violence, managed to avoid jail time for it all and basically bury it in the press, and is just an all-around gross person

danielle  - cheated on liam multiple times with multiple guys, treated liam like shit, weaseled her way back into a contract for payzer 2.0 by threatening to out ziam unless mgmt brought her back on, came back out of nowhere this past year and essentially tried to use liam for publicity again (once more by nearly soft-outing ziam)

eleanor - went all the way to india to stage a fake indian wedding with her (all-white) friends complete with traditional indian dress and jewelry and insinuating something about indians being like dogs or something like that idk i can’t remember the particulars rn but i just remember it was gross and racist and that’s really all you need to know (although i also wouldn’t be surprised if she’s pulled some other racist shit i don’t even know about)

eta: i completely forgot about camille or that she even existed lol but she’s an absolute trash human being and here’s a whole thread on why (big thanks and shout out to @achristmasmuke for the link)

as far as i can tell sophia and danielle c. (louis’ danielle, not liam’s) seem to have been the least problematic of all the beards…that we know of anyway (though that’s honestly probably mostly b/c they were perhaps the most low-key and dry of all the beards which imo is a good thing though i wouldn’t completely rule out some shit from them coming to light at some point too…maybe it has and i just don’t know about it idk but i digress)

anyway if after all that if you still don’t see anything wrong i really can’t help you, but hopefully this at least helped you understand at least somewhat better why so many people can’t stand most of them, outside of just the bearding stuff.

tl;dr - while i agree that the beards don’t necessarily deserve all the personal blame and hate they get for the bearding and the stunts, that doesn’t excuse all the other gross (racist/transphobic/violent/or just generally insulting) things they’ve done all by themselves which is actually more so what people these days hate them for besides the bearding

(*as for perrie, i purposefully left out the point about her calling zayn indian that a lot of ppl in this fandom like to use for fodder against her b/c that was print perrie and i don’t believe a word of what was said in that article actually came out of her own mouth b/c the whole thing was “her” gushing about the wedding and every single time she was asked about it irl she was about as uninterested and unenthusiastic in talking about the wedding/engagement [or giving any details at all] as zayn was imo)