The Peter Pan Privilege: What the History of Boy Bands Tells Us About Maturity and Race
By: Blythe Spindler-Richardson
Tags: Race, Boy Bands, Maturity, Privilege

The Peter Pan Privilege: What the History of Boy Bands Tells Us About Maturity and Race Blythe Spindler-Richardson Follow Jun 23 · 8 min read

Original illustration by Paige Spindler-Richardson

Innocent flirty lyrics, frosted-tipped hair, oversized outfits, outrageous dance moves; these are all campy, nostalgic features of the boy bands in the collective cultural consciousness, and, under closer inspection, white-reading characteristics. Mentally listing off the most infamous bands, you probably also picked all white groups, though the history of boy bands exhibits a fairly even split between black and white representatives. In many public Internet polls on the most popular boy bands of all time, Black groups do not even crack the top three despite their prevalence and importance in the music industry, and about half of the critically acclaimed African American acts do not even appear on the lists. According to Merriam Webster, a boy band is defined as “a small ensemble of males in their teens or twenties who play pop songs geared especially to a young female audience” and usually is comprised solely of vocalists; an identity that fits many groups across race lines, but why do we as a society not think of Black boy bands as what they truly were? Considering the branding, proposed behaviors, and lyrical subject matter of both groups, what it boils down to is perceived maturity.

It’s All in the Name

To most prominently spot these differences, the focus must be centered on what some might describe as the Golden Era of American boy bands, or the 1990s into the early 2000s. This decade and a half marked the explosion of the genre into the mainstream and lends a rich sample of both racial groups, and is the most revealing of the divide in posturing and reception of each, though boy bands were far from new on the scene. Arguably the foundation of boy bands was established in 1960s with Jackson 5 and The Osmonds, each of which held an all-in-the-family approach not only in the fact that they were comprised of biological brothers but also in their clean, saccharine appeal. Out of the two, Jackson 5 undeniably had the most significant impact on music history and culture, so it would be logical to assume that this along with the 1980s formation of another early genre-codifying group, New Edition, would concretize boy bands as a relic of Black culture, or at least even out the scale of representation. Even New Kids on the Block was formed for the purpose of being a “white version” of New Edition, as indicated by the producer of both groups, but instead white boy bands quickly began to overshadow established African American bands.

The cow-birding of white acts can partially be attributed to the linguistic identifiers linked to boy bands. Visiting the current website of ’90s pop elites Boyz II Men, their biography fervently sticks to deeming them as a “group”, and their widely acknowledged status as a boy band is not mentioned even in detailing the beginning of their career. While this could be chalked up to the transition of age wittily built into their name for industry longevity, it is a striking pattern among African American acts. Jackson 5 and New Edition are referred to only as “groups” and icons of R&B outside boy band polls perhaps due to the monolithic career shifts of the first producing the King of Pop, and the second undergoing two re-brands from their bubblegum image to the Temptations model and then to a more adult persona under Bad Boy Records in the 2000s, essentially erasing any past boyishness. Meanwhile, white boy bands that are currently together display a surprisingly youthful identity; the Backstreet Boys, in which currently all members are well into their 40s, self-identify as “The Boys” in their biography, and, concurrently, New Kids On the Block’s recent single uses the infantilizing and on-the-nose title “Boys in the Band”. It’s also telling that African American youth groups who obviously fall into the category, such as 112 and Jagged Edge, are never in a five mile radius of the word (though here they will be classified as such), while a white group like 98 Degrees, who were of a similar age and stylization, hold the boy band epithet.

Perceived Peer Groups

Associated acts to a band are the music industry’s version of friend groups; the company you keep says a lot about what you value and who you are. Logistically, youth groups would be paired and tour with other young adult acts, forming a faux friend group with which teen listeners could relate and form parasocial relationships. This is the case with white groups — think the connection of Britney Spears and *NSYNC, the Backstreet Boys and Aaron Carter, the rivalry between these two groups, and 98 Degrees and Jessica Simpson — but African American boy bands’ industry connections are far more cultivated. Take, for example, B2K, who peripherally linked with a few fellow younger performers like Lil Bow Wow, IMx, and Jhené Aiko, but were also closely linked with P. Diddy and later toured with Mario and Nick Cannon. 112’s cohorts skewed more mature as they launched their career opening on tour for the Isley Brothers, Janet Jackson, and Whitney Houston. The perceived peers of white and Black groups could not be more opposed social circles, and while the white groups did branch out in their latter albums to more established acts, such as *NSYNC’s collaborations with Gloria Estefan on “Music of My Heart” and Stevie Wonder on “Something Like You”, Black boy bands were automatically placed on the inner circles of senior-level musicians. This meant white groups had the benefit of being innocent newcomers alongside their youthful compatriots while Black groups were instantly judged as honorary adults at the onset of their professional lives.

Brand Image and Lyrical Personality

Diving deeper, the lyrics and individual branding of each group expresses the patterns of the values and aesthetics molded for white and Black boy bands, and their pop hits serve as a reduction of these mores. All white acts seemed to remain firmly stuck in a juvenile sense of relationships throughout their trajectories, vacillating slightly between plaintive pining to cautious sensuality (98 Degrees “Invisible Man”, Backstreet Boys’ “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely”). Then, when the members did finally commit to relationships or break up in their songs, they were often childishly demanding of their girlfriends (*NSYNC’s “It’s Gonna Be Me” and “Bye Bye Bye”, Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way”). Meanwhile, African American groups would dabble in innocent romances and jaunty self-promotion very early in their careers (112’s “Cupid”, Boyz II Men’s “Motownphilly”), though they were quick to shift gears into more intimate, adult topics like marriage, expressions and explorations of sexuality, emotional maturity, and even death (Jagged Edge’s “Let’s Get Married”, 112’s “Peaches and Cream”, B2K’s “Bump, Bump, Bump” and “Uh Huh”, Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love to You”, “On Bended Knee”, and “One Sweet Day”). Debatably the most evident of these distinctions, white and Black groups’ feelings toward sexuality show a vast difference in maturity, best summarized by Nick Carter’s questioning of the hypothetical audience of “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” if he is, in fact, sexual, in contrast to Q Parker referring to his partner’s vagina as an autonomous entity in “Anywhere”. Even wardrobe choices point to this tendency, as Black groups were more often sexualized with revealing clothes like tank tops or shirtless looks much more often than their white counterparts. Straying from this norm, Boyz II Men often dressed in suits, which, in a more conservative manner, is another form of adult presentation.

Perhaps the most direct comparison of characterization can be made between both B2K and *NSYNC’s hits “Girlfriend”; matching titles with little coincidence considering the limited subject matter afforded to the boy band genre, though prosperous in illustrating the individual groups’ differences. In their 2002 hit, B2K persuades the pursued girl of their eligibility with assertions and proof of their financial well-being and fulfilling lifestyle, albeit one centered around partying — “plenty ice, plenty cash”. Omarion and the squad want her to know that they are worth her time because they can provide security and sexual pleasure, that on all levels that they are prepared to be with someone; “She must be ready and steady for a grown man session”. Conversely, *NSYNC had alternative ideas of wooing just one year previously, selling themselves as more emotionally-supportive than the woman-of-interest’s current boyfriend; “And baby when you cry, is he gonna stand by your side? Does the man even know you’re alive?…Why don’t you be my girlfriend? I’ll treat you good”. What does good treatment even mean? JC Chasez isn’t telling, but one thing he and the group are conveying is immaturity and a lack of forethought by relying on feelings and desires alone with no evidence that they can provide in the the relationship holistically. The methodologies of each group are plainly mismatched, *NSYNC opening with Justin Timberlake grunting “I like you, right?” like a horny teen despite the group’s median age of 25 at the time, and the recent high school graduate Omarion proudly announcing “I’ve got everything I want in my life except a girlfriend” as if he was a 30-year-old with a mortgage.

Beyond the Band

The reality that boy bands are considered to be clusters of cutesy white boys is not inherently a harmful construction, as it actually is beneficial for the career of a group to escape from such a polarizing and mocked genre. As Johnny Gill of New Edition fittingly backtracked in an interview after calling the group a boy band, “That’s not to be derogatory — that’s what the perception of the group was.” What specifically the 1990s to 2000s Golden Era does present, though, is a disquieting discrepancy in the manufactured maturity levels of black and white boys; while white youth are afforded the luxury of clinging to a teenage mentality and are therefore granted public perception of youthfulness into their 20s and beyond, African American young men are forced to grow up rapidly in order to address more adult-themed subject matter and compete with senior-level professionals in the music industry.

Even with the prevalence of American boy bands currently in a dry spell, this trend continues in solo acts; consider the rise of Chris Brown and Justin Bieber just a few years after the boy band era. Both were teenage acts that blew up only three years apart, with Brown’s “Run It!” pushing the idea that women will be so impressed by his sexual prowess that they won’t believe he’s 16, while Bieber’s “Baby” has Ludracris mentioning playgrounds. Even as Hip Hop and R&B have blended more seamlessly into Pop in recent years, this trend still survives such as in the comparison of teen breakout performers Khalid, who sky-rocketed into the mainstream with his single “Location” about wanting clearer communication and honesty with a lover, and Shawn Mendes, who started as part of Viner conglomerate Magcon (a new age boy band of sorts), and whose first hit “Life of the Party” is the devil-may-care call of a teenage love affair.

It is easy to fall into blind admiration and accolades of this advanced maturity, but the implications of this fact are more sinister than they appear not only for the idols themselves but teenagers and preteens at large. The erasure of childhood and perceived adulthood of youth robs Black boys not only of developmental experience, but ultimately a facet of vulnerability that should be afforded to everyone. As insubstantial and frivolous Pop music may seem, this phenomenon is yet another head of the same insidious, systematic hydra that keeps Black men unable to safely express a spectrum of emotions, sexualizes them to grotesque proportions, and deems Black boys as young as five as dangerously violent. The cursory rejection of the boy band label of African American performers may be coveted in the music industry, but to have the white Peter Pan privilege is to live without consequences.

Full illustration: https://www.instagram.com/p/CBrui1IBKs9/