ABSTRACT
In everyday conversation, we often hear sports fans, journalists, and pundits talk about bandwagon fans, fair-weather fans, super fans, diehard fans, true fans, devoted fans, casual fans, psycho fans, and the list goes on. We seem compelled to categorize the quantity and quality of one’s fandom, often drawing distinctions between those who are authentic fans and those whom we dismiss for not suffering enough, knowing enough, or caring enough. The women that we interviewed were no different. They too tend to label fans, in part because we asked them to describe typical and super fans, but also because these distinctions simply came up when discussing their experiences having their own fandom judged, often by men. We make sense of the world around us by categorizing.
