A Blank Space Where Justin Used To Be

Justin Bieber, there's a blank space on the wall where you used to be. Several blank spaces.  The wall in question is in my daughter's room.

On that wall is a collection of posters reflecting her various pre-teen and early teen interests, from victorious to Big Time Rush, from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, from Cody Simpson to Katy Perry. And holding a number of places of honor on that wall were posters of Justin Bieber.

Justin's fall from my daughter's grace began about a year ago.  But the posters stayed up on the wall until recently. Why? Because she really didn't want to let go. Justin Bieber was her first major pop star fandom experience. She bought the music, the books, the magazines, the t-shirts.



Her first pop music concert was to see Justin Bieber. The day she got those tickets as a birthday gift, her screams of delight shook the rafters. That giddiness had not worn off by the night of the show as she and 15,000 other screaming girls packed Greensboro Coliseum to see the object of their affections perform.


Within mere months of that show, the bloom was coming off that rose. There were too many stories of obnoxious behavior; Justin Bieber may have thought he was cultivating a "bad boy" image but all he wound up doing was looking like, as my daughter put it, a "douche".

And now the posters are gone from her wall. I guess part of her just did not want to admit she had invested all that time listening to the songs and pouring over the magazine articles of a young performer who ultimately came to disappoint her so.




But Justin seems determine to take the express elevator from teen pop idol to national punchline so hope was abandoned followed by the opening of spaces on her wall. 

Of course, maybe it's OUR fault that Justin Bieber is the way he his. (Click here for Leonard Pitt's tongue in cheek observation of the Bieb.)


So, Justin, while you cluelessly flush away whatever's left of your fame and fortune, there's space on a girl's wall, not because she outgrew you but you pushed her away.

Make no mistake: she was going to outgrow you, sooner or later. It happens. But perhaps you could've grown as well and she would rediscovered your talent in a new light. Or perhaps you would be someone she would revisit fondly as nostalgia. Instead you've relegated yourself to an embarrassment to her.

And trust me, there's no bigger sign in the world that you, Mr. Bieber, are done.