Breyer and Stone

Feed the Horse

Abstract

This qualitative study is about model horse fans, the ways fans interact with fan products, and how those products help facilitate the boundaries of the horse girl identity. This work takes place in the US and is about a small fandom that collects, displays, and participates in shows of plastic scale model horses, whose fans produce their own stereotype that is replicated in popular culture as the iconic horse girl. My data was gathered through eight interviews with adult horse fans who are active in this fandom and through extensive analysis of content in 2,553 social media posts and 42 product catalogues for the models. My participants spoke of their fanship in interviews and through these posts. They spoke of their movements and changes in their perceptions over time within the fandom, as well as their perceptions on how to navigate both corporate and fan spaces to practice being a horse girl. In this sense, the model horse as a product is also a proxy for both ideology and identity. These participants identify as horse girls, among other fan identities. Fans navigate their own ethical values through such identities, which are challenged by the stereotype of the horse girl in mass culture. This transcendence of participatory culture (cf. Jenkins 2016) infers a cyclical dynamic to fan identity where fans influence fan culture through the use of fan products from corporations that market specifically to that fandom. My findings in this paper expand the preconceived notion of what a horse girl is and how they use the product to facilitate and express identity to the point of leveraging their own moral values to move corporate decisions. This kind of identity work shows how, along with the capacity to navigate fan networks, fans make a stand for their values to shape the meaning of fanship. As an expansion in the understanding of fan identity, I find that such an identity can also be built in response to products and as a practice of navigating fan-corporate spaces using constructed forms of value to promote the boundaries of the horse girl identity.