Being a fan means doing life in a certain way. It means being passionate. It means being playful. It means being creative and engaged. It means obsession and flailing. All of these perceived affordances of fandom are tied to norms, ideals, and practices, and these are again tied to self-reflections about age and their associated appropriateness. I argue that fandom, as a mediatized cultural practice, is transformative and thus has the potential to shape understandings of subjective age for its participants.
Petersen, Line Nybro. 2017. “‘The Florals’: Female Fans over 50 in Sherlock Fandom.” In “Sherlock Holmes Fandom, Sherlockiana, and the Great Game,” edited by Betsy Rosenblatt and Roberta Pearson, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 23.