Week Ten: Cultural Conflict & Credibility

Many of the conclusions drawn from Schmutz’s and Faupel’s study, “Gender and Cultural Consecration in Popular Music,” hit that nail on the head when it comes to female inclusion into popular music. They begin by stating that “less attention has been paid to the ways in which cultural fields have opened to women, and the implications of these openings” (p. 704), which means that while we notice more women in popular music, we are looking past the fact that they are there and ignoring how they are presented. As we saw in a number of music videos a few weeks ago, women are portrayed in very different ways than men, even when they are the artists themselves. They are in scantily clad clothing, sing and dance provocatively, and have the burden of maintaing the balance between being in control and being portrayed as merely a sex object. Schmutz and Faupel support this claim. “Nevertheless, a focus on numerical increases of consecrated female artists overlooks the equally important process of how women are included in this canon. Even where women have achieved conse- cration in popular music, the ways in which their inclusion is legitimated draws on existing frameworks about gender that emphasize female dependency in contrast with male agency. In subtle ways, this gendered discourse limits the amount and types of critical legitimacy female artists can accrue” (p. 704). Women in popular music are forced to adhere to the characteristics of traditional femininity and what women are expected to do and be as popular figures. A female artist who is unwilling to show some skin or dress provocatively will not go far in popular music.

The vicious cycle of popular music makes the role of female artists a difficult one to break. When we expect women in music to dress and act and sing a certain way and they choose not do to so, the general popular will boo them and not support their career, because that’s what we expect and what we have come to want. Should an artist not take part in those actions, she will find herself in the corner of rejection. It’s an unfortunate path for women to have to choose, but it’s what our culture has developed.

Week Nine: Women’s Voices

There were several things about the Riot Grrrl movement and subsequent generations of girl music that interested me. First, it struck me that the Riot Grrrls received a significant amount of criticism surrounding their age. I believe one of the quotes in the film on Wednesday addressed that “they were such young girls, what could they know about feminism theory and rape, abuse, etc.” While this may be a valid argument, I think it also says something about dominant culture valorizing adults and neglecting the opinions of young people, which is nothing new -- that’s why we have rock n roll. Beyond this, though, I think it’s important to recognize the voices of young people, since we’re always told that they are the future. By creating these musical forums to generate discourse about feminism in general, the Riot Grrrls were creating a revolution beyond their music and to the true ideologies of our society. Because of their music, feminism became a fad in the eyes of the media. This seems really dangerous to me. By using music as a vehicle to reach more people and focusing the importance of their music on the message rather than the actual music, the Riot Grrrls fizzled out due to media sensationalism following their message.

Following the Riot Grrrls we saw the emergence of girl groups who promoted similar messages with far different appearances and goals, such as the Spice Girls. Whiteley explains that “Sex appeal equated with commercial viability, and commercial viability revolved increasingly around a girl-pop ideal of slimness, youth and glamour” (p. 171). I think the expectation to be both sexy and independent definitely played into this new line a female artists around the time I was a kid. Although they gained their influences from the Riot Grrrls, they assimilated the concepts into easily digestible songs for a mainstream audience. Babes in Toyland, another girl band regarded as part of the Riot Grrrl movement was possibly one of the first to see a shift in the don’t-give-a-fuck ideology to concerns about appearance, the production of music videos, and the shift from girls in punk to girls in pop. Their video is below. It’s probably fair to say that all of those girls don’t casually wear makeup, for one thing. And secondly even in a video made by a feminist band, the girls are still subjected to being reduced to only body parts as shots of their legs and chests are shown very briefly. Therefore, it could be interpreted that some of the more willing Riot Grrrl bands were the mere stepping stones to the introduction of the Spice Girls and the like.

Week Eight: Sexuality & Identity Politics

After watching the “What A Girl Wants” film, it’s extremely shocking how so many girls are aware of media influences on them as well as their peers. The thing I find interesting about these acknowledgements influences is the negligence of their lasting effects. I think there are many times that young girls listen to music, acknowledge that there is sexism present in it (or something of that sort), and ignore those issues because music is catchy. Because of this, I think the age at which girls in particular are being influenced by music is decreasing. For instance, I remember my sister, at the age of 8, being able to explain what sex was. She didn’t learn this from family interactions, so it must have come from outside influences, such as media. I remember being 12 years old listening to Britney Spears, which puts me at the same age as the girls introduced in “What A Girl Want” (aka. that was my generation). If my little sister is understanding adult concepts such as sex at the age of 8 and I was 12 at the time, I think that says something very serious about the state of our youth and the images and concepts we’re throwing at them. After all, kids absorb everything at such young ages. My mother works in a middle school, so I also know of several stories of these young kids(ages 10-13) being sexualized and feeling the need to be sexually active.

The contemporary perfect example of this is Kesha, as we discussed in class. Kesha’s public persona and the character she plays for her audience is a party girl who is highly sexualized. I know a girl who is now 18 years old and graduating from high school who for the past two years has notoriously said that Kesha is her role model. This girl is absolutely nothing like Kesha and believes that she is able to remove herself from the ideologies that Kesha portrays through her character and her music. However, I think music that promotes sexual activity of this nature encourages its audience to follow suit. I’m not saying that Kesha is to blame for teen pregnancy or anything of that sort, but I have to wonder why no one thinks there’s something morally wrong with work of artists such as Kesha when they are socially constructed children to engage in negative behaviors.

Whiteley talks about Madonna’s portrayal of femininity by saying, “A rejection of the discourse of irony would suggest that Madonna’s portrayal of femaleness and femininity (whereby bodily attributes can be reduced to a sexuality which is simply displayed for pleasurable looking) online confirms a masculine definition of femininity” (p. 137). She goes onto explain how Madonna used shock tactics to maintain audience attention, but I think part of Madonna’s use of her femininity and sexuality within the traditional male gaze results from a reclaiming of her sexuality. From the 1980s we have seen more an more sexuality from women expressing themselves and feeling as though they have the right to flaunt of cover their sexuality any way they please, and sometimes this comes out in the form of “confirming a masculine definition of femininity" as being a sexy woman with certain physical attributes. At the end of the day, though, sex sells and men are roughly half of the popular. I would take into consideration this is change in female liberation regarding their own sexuality and femininity, however, since we see the rise of women taking this further and further through the 90s and 00s.

Week Seven: “Tough Chicks”: (Re)Constructing Femininity & Masculinity

One of Whiteley’s most intriguing arguments regarding Patti Smith is her comparison regarding her love of Virgin Mary. Whiteley states, “As the masculine feminine ideal she is this analogous to the Lady, the imaginary addressee of the troubadours, who is purely the pretext for songs of love” (p. 99). This is either the biggest stretch I’ve heard regarding a musician as comparable to a religious figure, or one of the most solid arguments. It makes sense in that Smith created herself as a masculine female going against the grain of the hegemonic feminine roles within punk music. Just as the Virgin Mary, who bore a child without the help of a man, Smith created herself among the punk scene by disregarding herself as the “other” in reference to the male figure. By removing herself from being a woman as in direct relation to a man, Smith created her identity in a manner similar to Virgin Mary. Under these circumstances, we could say that Virgin Mary was the first feminist, stepping outside the bounds of the “other” in relation to a man by bearing a child without male aid.

Whiteley goes on to explain, “Women performers stressed both a new muscularity and a confrontational glamour that was far removed from either the introspection of Joni Mitchell, or the blues influenced rock of Janis Joplin” (p. 98). This progression of femininity among female performers is interesting to me because not only does it show the changes of ideologies among women, perhaps from the stance of feminism moving through various waves, but also the balance between men and women in the music industry. As Smith mentions in her interviews, these female artists were taking the reigns away from men in the music industry and creating their own space for music.

Other artists such as Suzi Quatro took this on in terms of their physical appearance and its opposition to male musicians of the time, such as in glam rock. As Arthur Davis explains, her persona could readily be understood as female response to glam’s transvestite males images: “Since many male glam rockers wore mascara and dresses as women ... Suzi would wear very little make-up and -- from a distance -- looked somewhat like a man in her leather catsuit” (p.195). I find it interest, however, that no matter what the hegemonic role is at the given time, women feel the need to go against it. If men are dressing very traditionally masculine, women will be very feminine, and in the case of glam rock when men are dressing feminine, women choose to dress masculine to counter-act them.