Frankly Outraged

I am not exactly a Justin Bieber fan, probably because I am not a 13-year-old girl.  Thirteen-year-old girls are CRAZY about him, though, because he's the teen idol du jour.

A couple of weeks ago  Bieber visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam while on tour, and wrote the following in their guestbook:

"Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a 'belieber," (which I understand is what Bieber's fans call themselves).

People around the world were outraged - yes, I tell you- OUTRAGED- by this.  Bieber was accused of making light of the Holocaust, of trivializing an "important historical figure," and of being selfish. (http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/14/showbiz/bieber-anne-frank).

So, I am going to court controversy and brace myself for the backlash and just say it.  If Anne Frank had been 13 years old in 2013 instead of 1942 she very likely would have been a "Belieber."

I read - and reread- "The Diary of Anne Frank" when I was 13 years old, the same age Anne was when she started writing it.  The thing that immediately struck me is that Anne was someone just like me - a typical teenage girl.  She wrote about "hating" her mother, and fighting with her sister, and having a crush on Peter, the son of the other family hiding in the loft with her family.  And she was totally starstruck by teen idols of the early 1940's.

Suddenly, because of Anne Frank's diary a 13-year-old Italian Catholic schoolgirl growing up in the 1960's in Swissvale, Pennsylvania really understood on a personal level the horror of the Holocaust. It was no longer some far off historical event. This terrible atrocity happened to millions of real people.

So, I have to believe that that is what Justin Bieber, who is just 19 himself, was feeling when he wrote in the guestbook at the Anne Frank House that day.  He was feeling that real connection to Anne Frank that I felt so many years ago when I read her diary.  He was inspired by her spirit and her story, just as I had been.  He hoped that if she had been a teenager today that she would have been a fan of his.  He was relating to Anne Frank as the real girl she was, not a "historical figure."

It was really quite a lovely message.