teenage girls

Teen girls.

Their taste in music is crazy and inscrutable, what with their boy bands and their InstaSnapTunes and their Eds Sheeran.

Should they get off our lawns?

Not according to teen heartthrob Harry Styles, who came through with a stirring defense of his young female fans in interview with Rolling Stone.

The question? Whether he'll ever ditch his teen-friendly stylings to seek out "credibility" with a more serious audience.

Styles thinks not — and furthermore, shut up forever.

"Who's to say that young girls who like pop music – short for popular, right? – have worse musical taste than a 30-year-old hipster guy? That's not up to you to say. Music is something that's always changing. There's no goal posts.

Young girls like the Beatles. You gonna tell me they're not serious? How can you say young girls don't get it? They're our future. Our future doctors, lawyers, mothers, presidents, they kind of keep the world going.

Teenage-girl fans – they don't lie. If they like you, they're there. They don't act 'too cool.' They like you, and they tell you. Which is sick."

It's not that teenage girls like bad music. It's that idiots label a lot of good music bad because young girls like it.

Consider, as Styles urges, The Beatles.

The Beatles didn't just magically become a good band when they wrote "Revolver."

Those screaming teen girls with posters of The Fab Four on their bedroom walls that everyone made fun of? They were on to something way before their older brothers were wasting countless hours getting high on oregano fumes and spinning "Revolution #9" diagonally.

(Not that it needs to be said, but "I Want to Hold Your Hand" is a way better song than "Revolution #9." Don't @ me).

This tendency to dismiss things teen girls like isn't restricted to music, either!

Remember when everyone was surprised that Teen Vogue was doing good journalism? That was because people couldn't believe it was possible that a magazine for "vapid" 12-year-old girls could have anything "real" to say.

Also, remember when Cosmopolitan's hard hitting interview with Ivanka Trump in September shocked the world? That was because how could a magazine that features makeup tips and stuff ever be serious? (Unlike, say, Playboy, whose very serious, very credible political writing has long been featured alongside very serious, very credible photos of naked women).

Teen girls do a lot of cool stuff in the world.

When they're not listening to Harry Styles' music, they're writing classic novels, standing up to their elected officials on reproductive rights, and sometimes risking their lives to defy religious extremists.

Styles is insisting that we re-evaluate the musical taste of teenage girls, long mocked as immature, shallow, and frivolous, and recognize that it's actually pretty good.

More importantly, though, he's insisting that his young female fans be taken as seriously as any other person on planet Earth. And that's true and awesome.

The rest of us should log on to InstaSnapTunes and listen to boy bands more often.