"The president of the United States is Zac Efron."

"The prime minister of the United Kingdom is Robert Pattinson. Praise be to Robert Pattinson."

So reports Step Hen Fry on his mock transmission from the futuristic year 2034, in honor of his acquiring his millionth follower on Twitter last weekend. It's a pretty standard joke, but it is still funny because oh, it is so true. With the theatrical release of the next Twilight monstrosity and the opening of Efron's newest film in the UK, the rabid brainwashed hoards of crazed fan girls are being unleashed in unprecedented droves.

Some of us women like to think we belong to the more reasonable gender. We are not handicappingly obsessed with sex, horribly lookist and shallow, emotionally repressed, violent and mesmerized by explosions and physics-defyingly ludicrous fictional cars. And yet, at times like these, it seems like girls are willing to gun down their grandmothers and eat their best friends just for a chance to have a 5 second interaction with a handsome man. Caution is thrown to the wind, any rules or guiding principles of logic dissolve. Robert Pattinson recently expressed his remorse for jokingly telling a fan girl that stripping would be the best way to get his attention. Reprehensible statement, as he admits, but the worst part of the story is that the girl actually does it. "She stood there and frantically started taking her clothes off and got dragged out of the room by security," Pattinson recalls.

This is absurd. This cannot go on. Do these fangirls check their self-respect at the door as well as their sanity, manners, and self-control? Swarms of these fan girl mobs follow RPattz, Efron and others around like a plague of locusts, leaving devastation in their wake. Is there really call for such desperation? It is as if girls think that maybe, just maybe, if they can get Pattinson or Efron or Lautner or whoever to see them for even a slit second, it might be love at first sight, the moviestar might take her in his arms, declare to the world that she is someone special and truly unique from the mass of other screaming girls, extract her from her humdrum and dissatisfying life, give her a new one where she is important, take care of all her problems, and live happily ever after. All they want is a chance for a miracle. And this is worth any degradation or harm they might be asked to endure or inflict on a competitor.

This hardly bodes well for feminism. Girls are better educated and have far more opportunities open to them than ever before. Yet, mobs of them are still throwing themselves at the feet of men, begging for salvation. And most reprehensible, we seem to tolerate it as some sort of endearing side-effect of girlhood. It is not! It is a deeply troubling orientation toward not only romance and relationships, but toward self-esteem, self-value, intimacy, achievement, and let's face it, girls' grips on reality. Not only that, it fulfills every stereotype about women unable to survive without men, unable to form independent thought without men, and unable to accomplish anything without the promise of love and romance. This mentality runs rampant among the young (and even older) generations of females--- but we do nothing about it.

The situation is also not helped by the consumer economy, who jumps at the chance to merchandise anything. Already 10 years ago, clothing stories were stocking 'Mrs. Kutcher' bags. Hardcore fandom is now more than ever defined by the amount of purchasing one is willing to stomach--- with fan memberships, calendars, pre-orders, special additions, action figures, dolls, stickers, pins, costumes, hats, t-shirts, magazine clippings, posters, bookmarks, special edition magazines, book signings and appearances in other cities, states, and countries, and the list goes on and on and on. Hardcore fans are also expected to be up on the latest news and therefore to vigilantly update themselves on news, blogs, photo galleries, websites, fansites, radio shows, podcasts, gossip sites and that list goes on and on. Merchandising and media companies can milk these confused girls out of copious amounts of time and money. They encourage the crazedness, which in turn encourages the merchandising. If they'll buy it, we will make it. If they'll make it, we will buy it. Round and round it goes, slowly skewing the entire world.