a woman's "place" in the music business

I have considered myself a big music fan since I was 12, and I got my first juvenile favorite band. It was a freeing sort of counterculture for me, as back in those days the mainstream genre was Rap and Hip-hop and the like, and my preference was for Rock. You know, "Alternative" Rock. Adolescents usually gravitate to one of two extremes: going to great lengths to fit in, or going to similar lengths to stand out.

I definitely belonged to the second camp.

Thankfully, I am now over myself and no longer think of myself as a Tortured Special Snowflake. But I am still a huge music fan. My taste in music defined me once I went to my first concert when I was 14, until I went to college and got a life. It was a form of escapism, for those horrible high school days. I could throw myself into this amazing thing that moved me, and idolize these dudes who were like heroes to me, and then I could go see them play in person, and even meet them! Fancy that.

That was all well and good. But then my admiration naturally evolved into idolatry, and I wanted to be like them. And that's when I began to feel pretty alienated. Sure, it's fine for a girl to like music. It might even be okay for her to think about it critically. But for her to want to make it? And earn that same respect? Much more difficult to fathom.




I still have the desire to perform, but now I gravitate more towards slam poetry, a much more forgiving medium. It was so difficult for me, back when I was more into music, mostly because I completely lacked a role model who was like me. Sure, I had my male role models--there were plenty of those. But I looked at my posters of all these bands I loved, and I saw male face after male face staring back at me. Sometimes these bands had the odd woman here or there, but she was no superhero. And I wasn't about to look up to someone who was just okay.

In my Junior year of High School, my then-girlfriend lent me the Dresden Dolls' first album. I listened to it here and there, and I liked it, but it didn't stick. In my senior year, a song from Yes, Virginia came up on shuffle ("My Alcoholic Friends"), and I loved it. So I listened more. And I loved everything, suddenly. And the rest is history.

This is Amanda Palmer:

She is not dainty.
She is not demure.
She does not behave.
She will kick your ass.

She was my first female role model. Ever.

I still adore her, beyond all reason. But the fact remains that women like Amanda are few and far between. I listen to a few other female musicians and female-fronted bands (like Regina Spektor and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs... awesome), but I think Amanda really is one in a million when it comes to... well, not pissing me off.

I was going to write about why, in particular, I love her, but I decided to do another post about that, another day. This is already getting long.

But anyway. Amanda is the exception, not the rule. For the most part, women in music are put into sexualized roles. Their bodies are exploited in music videos, and they wear lingerie unironically on stage. (Amanda wears lingerie, but it's different. Check back for a post about that, some day.) Either that, or they are sweet and wimpy. It's the virgin/whore dichotomy at its finest. Today's audiences want their female musicians naughty or nice, and either way it's sexual. There is no in-between in the mainstream. Or, the in-between is perceived as "one of the boys" (a la Hayley Williams of Paramore, about whom you should not get me started), which is no way to identify as a woman at all.

The reason I bring this up now is not only because I think about it a lot, but because I went to a concert tonight. I saw Arcade Fire at Madison Square Garden with my dad, and that band has 3 women in it (out of 7 band members). One of the women is a prominent singer along with the guy who fronts the band (I apologize, I know no names). She was wearing a sequined dress. Her stage presence was actually pretty good, but there was still something that bothered me about her. I know I'm sensitive about this subject and I was probably overreacting, but for the large majority of the time when I'm watching a female musician do her thing on stage, she just comes off as too wimpy, and too restricted by the gender roles that society has placed upon her. I want more charismatic, uninhibited women up on that stage. I want to see them jumping into the crowd. I want to see them snarling.

I subscribe to Alternative Press magazine. While now I find it kind of depressing, I used to read it with enthusiasm every month. Now I leaf through it looking for my favorite acts. I also receive emails from them. In the one I got today, out of the nine bands pictured and/or mentioned, only one of them had a picture of a woman in it. The band was Versa Emerge, and I have unfortunately seen them. They suck (IMHO).

Aside from that, the only girls in the mailer were these:

The caption read: "Front Row Center: An Evening With The Maine fan pictures." 

I can't even begin to express how much this upsets me. It might seem like an overreaction, but as a woman who is an avid fan of some bands that have majorly-female fanbases, I know that these girls aren't taken seriously. Now, I don't know these girls. Maybe they don't deserve to be taken seriously. But maybe they do, but regardless, they're just being seen as mindless groupies. When people see that mostly girls like a band, they instantly discredit that band. Girls' opinions don't matter. 

I like Fall Out Boy. This is met with open scorn by most people. I also like Brand New. These bands are perhaps equally shitty by certain people's standards, but I get 100 times more flak for liking Fall Out Boy. Granted, FOB are more popular than BN, but still. The only big difference is FOB's fan-base is mostly female, and BN's is mostly male. Try to think of a band with a mostly-male fanbase that people get made fun of for liking.

Exactly. 

Okay, you may have thought of some, but they're not met with quite the same derision as the mostly-female fanbases.

This tells a scary narrative about the state of women in the industry: women are fans. Not critics, not musicians, but fans. 

When I was 16, I met Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance. He is my male hero (and he breaks gender barriers and he's fucking awesome). I find it very disturbing that when I told people that I met him and got to give him a hug, they asked me how he smelled. As in, more than one person asked me this. As in, at least three people asked me how he fucking smelled. They expected that I sniffed him, which I think would be creepily obsessive and pretty sexual. I don't have a sexual interest in the man by any stretch of the imagination, but everyone assumes that I do. Why can't I give my favorite musician a hug without it being sexually charged? These assumptions hurt me. I'm sure they hurt him as well. He probably doesn't appreciate everyone assuming that his female fans just want to get in his pants. 

Women are not taken seriously when it comes to music, whether it be as fans, as critics, or as musicians. A friend of mine in the 'biz claims to have come up with the phrase that making it big in music is "beyond talent." I think he's right. In very disturbing ways. (But I'm sure he's not the first to say it.)

I am completely disgusted, and I am done with this shit. I want no part of it until it changes.