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.