Your Opinions

This article is NOT about the "prices of fame" or how sweet the Backstreet Boys are with their fans. Nor is it the opposite (what fans do for the Boys). My point here is that "The Backstreet Boys" is a musical dance group. Period. "Backstreet Boys" is made up of five guys who sing, dance, and tour together. But I think that a mistake of the media and public (yes, us fans too) is that we tend to think of Nick, A.J., Brian, Howie, and Kevin as Backstreet Boys. Even when we speak of one of them, we think of them as "A Backstreet Boy." In reality, being a "Backstreet Boy" is a part of them, a facet of their personality, a part of their life, but it is not THEM.

For instance, I am a daughter, a sister, a student, etc. I am not just ONE of these things. Even the combination of all those things does not make up ME. In the same sense, being "The Backstreet Boys" or being "A Backstreet Boy" does not make up the guys.

I am not accusing anyone of any wrongdoing. By we, I actually mean ME, but I'm pretty sure many people make that mistake, from what I've read in magazines and web sites. But I think that thinking the guys are "The Boys," is creating an illusion that strains the guys as well as their fans. When "The Boys" don't fulfill or do whatever it is we think they will, or if they turn out not to be what our picture of them was, we are disappointed.

While I haven't yet HEARD of too many examples of fans being disappointed with the guys, I for one know that they all enjoy Jerry Springer and McDonalds. When I first heard of this I felt disappointed, then angry at being disappointed. So they like something that I dislike. That isn't their fault or mine. The reason why I felt betrayed in a sense was because I had a picture of them, and in that picture I has created personalities of "The Boys." Learning various tidbits about them served to shatter my illusion of "The Boys. But I'm not saying this was a bad thing. I (hopefully) have gotten past looking at the guys as "The Backstreet Boys," all the time, in every way, no matter what, and realized that being part of this group is a PART of who they are, but being "A Backstreet Boy" does not represent each of the guys.

However, it is true that the majority of their time is spent being "Backstreet Boys." In that sense, they are pressured to uphold the "Backstreet image." Fortunately, with their new managers the guys are getting more freedom to act the way they want (in other words, they get to be themselves more). When the guys were on the covers of the usual "teenybopper" mags they had a narrow image that they had to fit into. But in the past year "The Backstreet Boys" have been allowed to show their mature side, and hopefully they will be able to "be themselves" more than just being "the BSB" in the future to come.

Thanks for reading my little say about the fellas.

Tenzin- tenzinfreestyle@hotmail.com