Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a Democratic candidate for congress in Florida, made history today when he became the first zoomer elected to the US House of Representatives. Born in 1997, Frost is 25, making him an Elder Zoomer, and he comes to politics from March for Our Lives, where he served as the national organising director.
Of particular interest to me and other pop culture obsessives on the internet, however, isn’t Frost’s political history, but his cultural history; that is to say, his history as an unabashed One Direction fan.
In a beautiful display of solidarity previously unheard of in most stan communities, fellow Styles fans have been sending Frost messages of support since the news of his election broke.
More recently, Frost dressed up as director Greta Gerwig on the set of her upcoming Barbie movie for Halloween, making him the first open Greta Gerwig stan in Congress, per Alex Naser-Hall.
I’m not one to identify with politicians or place much hope in them, but I would probably sleep a bit better at night if I knew more elected representatives have seen Lady Bird.
I’m reminded of the rumours that dogged Lil Nas X as he quickly skyrocketed to fame that eventually turned out to be true; namely, that in another life, he ran an incredibly popular Nicki Minaj fan account. He initially denied the accusations, but eventually relented, explaining that he denied being a Barb because he didn’t want people to know he was gay. Minaj responded to his confession, saying, “It was a bit of a sting when you denied being a barb, but I understand. Congratulations on building up your confidence to speak your truth.” Am I the only one having visions of Jesus telling Peter he would deny him three times before the rooster crows right now?
That Lil Nas X was a stan before he was famous shouldn’t be interesting, but it kind of is, to me at least — while many musicians and other creatives are fans before finding success themselves, very few have been ‘stans’, which I would argue is a completely different kind of beast to a casual fan. At its most popular, Lil Nas X’s stan account had a six-figure following, meaning he was fairly influential as Barbz go. For those interested, Intelligencer did a thorough job documenting some of his most popular tweets on the @NasMaraj account back in 2019. Meanwhile, others have kept receipts of his messier and more potentially offensive tweets, and have sought to hold him accountable, with little success.
I suspect that stans becoming famous in their own right will only become more common as more of Gen Z ages into adulthood. Surely there are K-pop stans out there who were inspired by the mobilisation we saw in 2020 (and in the years since) to enter politics, for example. Only time will tell!
ETA: While I was writing this, Frost tweeted out an incredibly apt celebratory message:
Knowing that he likes Harry and the 1975, I had to check to see if he was also a Taylor Swift fan, and lo and behold:
A song that wouldn’t even make it into my top 100 Taylor songs, but he specified Taylor’s Version, so his strange taste can be excused.