"The practice can be infantilizing for the young women involved, while somehow also belittling and tokenizing and objectifying. The participants are carefully stage-managed and yet make easy targets for condescension and snark. And the experience combines the probing visibility of stardom with the dehumanization of being part of a bundle a cog in the machinery of a Voltronic personality matrix which can put groupmates in a constant charisma grudge match."
"The members of the U.K. girl group Little Mix quite literally began in competition. After crashing out of the first challenge of The X Factor as soloists, Perrie Edwards, Jesy Nelson, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Jade Thirlwall were sorted into two groups to compete against one another again. Both failed, but the four were fated for reclamation as judge Kelly Rowland, formerly of Destiny's Child, brought them together as a quartet."
Pop girl groups often subject young women to infantilization, tokenization, objectification, and relentless scrutiny. Participants are heavily stage-managed yet easily targeted for condescension and snark. Group membership can combine intense visibility with dehumanizing dynamics, reducing individuals to cogs in a manufactured personality matrix and encouraging internal charisma rivalries. Little Mix formed on The X Factor after solo eliminations, were combined into a quartet by judge Kelly Rowland, and won as the first girl group on the show. Their debut single "Wings" established a brassy, rap-inflected dance-pop sound, and the group grew to global prominence before internal pressures prompted a member's 2020 departure.
Read at www.npr.org
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