But more, they made a point of taking those mostly female, mostly teenage fans seriously, bringing a sense of allyship to pop stardom that felt both refreshing and necessary. They knew how to write toward their mostly female, mostly teenage fans, of course. (An orange!) So, yes, a big show-but also five kids who won life’s lottery and were just as much along for the ride as everyone else. The goofy videos, the way they cracked up in their interviews, the way you could see Harry sitting behind Rihanna at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards and casually peeling an orange. No matter how crazy things got around them-95,000 fans packed into a South African soccer stadium, the Directioner who forced his way into Liam’s hotel room to steal his boxers and wear them around for a day, the shrine to where Harry got sick on the side of the LA freeway-the boys retained an air of approachability that made them seem a little different. He eventually came back to the stage, but not before setting a precedent: One Direction might be a boy band, one of the biggest in pop history, but that didn’t mean they were gonna dance. In a formative moment in 1D history, Zayn Malik ducked out of the dance segment on The X Factor, because dancing just made him feel weird.
