Last month, the Korean boy band BTS launched their new album, Love Yourself: Tear, to the top of the Billboard 200. They are the first K-pop group in history to crown the chart, a feat accomplished in no small part thanks to the devotion of their fans, known collectively as “the ARMY.” That a Korean group has topped the American albums chart with the equivalent of 135,000 sales in its first week may point to K-pop's long-simmering influence on Anglophone popular music. Artists like Nicki Minaj, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Justin Bieber have embraced the genre's futuristic sheen in their production styles, in some ways priming North American audiences for an intercontinental crossover hit. But BTS's arrival in the States also indicates another trend among music consumers: boy bands can score hit albums in 2018.

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So where are the girl groups? Where are the pop vocal acts comprising three or more women, each with a signature singing style and a talent for relatable hooks?

The disparity between all-male pop groups and all-female ones dates back decades. The early 1960s abounded with influential girl groups like The Ronettes and The Marvelettes, yet none has endured so vividly in the cultural imagination as The Beatles, who, with the help of a savvy marketing team, effectively broke ground as pop music's first boy band. In addition to projecting a boyish sex appeal, each member had a distinct personality and voice, making it easy for young fans to align themselves with a favorite. The fans, as the band's 1964 Ed Sullivan performance showed, were rabid, and Beatlemania still remains the standard to which fan devotion is held. When BTS spoke with Ellen Degeneres for the first time last fall, she commented on how the group was greeted by their fans at the airport: "When they got to LAX, it was like the Beatles were here."

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BTS, with their distinguishing nicknames, hairstyles, and personalities, model a dynamic homosociality in the same mold set by The Beatles over fifty years ago. Like the now-hibernating U.K. group One Direction, they present an array of types from which young fans can choose a favorite member. When a straight or bi teen girl undergoes the process of finding out what kind of boy she finds most attractive — a clean-cut beach blond like Niall Horan or a tattooed enigma like Zayn — she also begins to construct her own personality. Boy band fandom has served as an easily accessible identity-building exercise among teen girls for decades. There is no equivalent for straight teen boys, who may identify with male musicians but are not expected or encouraged to empathize with women in any way. Girls experience attraction and affinity simultaneously, while boys are conditioned to differentiate themselves from the objects of their attraction: It's good to like girls, but not to be like them.