Groupies vs. Critics
| July 9, 2010 | Filled under Blog, Internerd |
I wrote about this essay briefly on the music blog*, and though it’s kind of old, I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I first read it.
The reason why so many people are hesitant to admit that sexism exists, and the reason why so few young women are willing to self-identify as feminists is because the sexism inherent in our society is so ingrained that half the time *I* don’t even realize it’s happening.
I remember one WTF moment when a lady acquaintance hung out for hours after a show trying to meet the band. Years later, I would meet the infamous groupie, Pamela Des Barres, who shared with me her philosophy on what it means to be a muse.
Case in point — little girls groomed to be groupies while boys are groomed to be critics. Like there isn’t enough wrong with the music industry’s treatment of and respect for women.
But one thing I’ve noticed since I started writing about music is the number of people who seem to think I have no authority to espouse opinions. When I wrote about Kinky Friedman I had a guy try to tell me how to vote. When I gave Patti Smith an honest review for what I felt was an uneven appearance, I got slammed not only by commenter but also by people in real life.
I’ve suffered momentary doubts and been called plenty of names but one thing I’ve never done is question my own right to write about music — or anything — critically.
So the post is worth a read, but then the writer completely undoes all the mental gains she’s made with this self-deprecating line:
You might also want to look for Anwyn Crawford, whose essay — not fully available online — started this conversation. You are probably better off listening to her about this stuff than listening to me.
And then the title! The title, which apologizes for having an opinion in the first place. C’mon girl! Where’s your resolve?
*It’s always nice to have readers stand up for me in the comments.
agreed, and the timing of this post is kinda funny because The Carpenters’ “Superstar” was stuck in my head this morning.
You know, it’s funny, but I realized you left off the other option for women (in this realm): the rock stars themselves. In my [brief] fling with groupiedom (involving making out with rock stars and driving them around to the aftershow parties – or cooking them dinner and taking them to church, as Miss Pamela chronicled about me), I was really more interested in being onstage myself. *
So I got onstage.
Now I was playing with the bands I’d been making out with before! (Ok, and sometimes still made out with some of them! What can I say – I like talented men!)
Never parlayed the friendships with the rock stars into helping my career, though. But I much more enjoyed having [cute guy] musicians’ praise for my musicianship than for being a cute backstage girlie, that’s for sure.
So sometimes one thing leads to another. (I even went on to write reviews later – and I may turn my memoirs into a book someday, too.)
Lord knows how many rock critics are frustrated musicians themselves but *finally* realize they can do that too – and they *do* do it.
So when ya startin’ a band, Brit ;)
(Totally kidding. You write better than I ever played! But I still bet you would totally kick ass in a band!!)
This is ignoring the whole differences-between-men-and-women-in-bands thing, though, of course. Most guys will tell you they’re in a band to meet chicks. Girls don’t need to be in a band (or to be a good rock critic) to have guys hit on them. (Breathing and having most of her teeth is usually good enough.) But in defense of groupiedom, I admit I loved the whole nurturing thing that Miss Pamela has addressed. I’ve always loved making people feel welcome in my town and helping them out, so it was really pleasurable taking bands around town to the music stores to replace some equipment, or cooking them dinner, or helping them save money on the road by letting the whole band stay at my house. (I’m doing the last one next week! You gonna be here for the show, Brit?)
It all came back in a karmic circle (besides my still getting into these bands’ shows for free:
I relied for years upon the kindness of strangers in other cities, who let *my* band stay on *their* floors and took us out to the cool BBQ joints in their town.
Have I randomly hit on enough points by now? Time for bed…
*This part of my past was when I was in my early 20′s. I make no excuses other than that I was 22/really stupid/insecure.
But damn- I had fun!
Ok, one more thing.
From the essay to which you linked:
“The difference, in this discussion, is that a lot of boys and men have been inducted into a framework — a way of talking and thinking, a set of codes and habits, possibly called “criticism” — that allows them to talk about their gut instincts in a way that feels rational and analytical. It’s a language that some people get lots of chances to pick up and others don’t. The language is different from the instincts it’s used to talk about. And when you start saying that teenage-girl instincts are just inherently different — more physical, beyond articulation — you are basically creating a rationalization that tells them to give up.”
Ok, this touches upon an aspect of so-called feminism that drives me effing crazy: the whole thing about how women’s way of thinking is superior to men’s – how “women are more intuitive, whereas men are rational and too into facts.”
AAgh!
With one fell swoop, women who talk like this UNDO everything that the rest of have been fighting for centuries!! (E.g., you don’t have a right to critique rock shows, because you don’t think like men.)
It drives me crazy when *women* actually say that women don’t think rationally – that we think with our feelings (WTF?) and that it’s actually better, therefore let women run things!
NO!
Let the intelligent, rational people run things, genitalia be damned! I don’t care what your plumbing looks like (or your skin color, etc.).
Ok, I’m getting off my soapbox now and actually going to bed.
I obviously need to…
One thing that annoys me though is that a lot of women in bands seem to fill a kind of token position — they play bass in the background, or tambourine, and at some point in the 90s it seemed like every single band had to have at least one girl in the lineup in order to qualify as “cool”, regardless of what role that woman played.
And there are some people (not necessarily me) who would argue that the nurturing role you love is exactly the kind of work women were “created” to do.
I don’t think the original essayist was saying that women are superior thinkers to men, just that our systems of thinking are often different. In fact, I think she’s saying that they aren’t *inferior*, not that they’re superior. And whether that’s a result of nature vs nurture is up for debate, but the way we’re often raised certainly doesn’t help even out the stakes.
I’ve been told my whole life to keep my mouth shut. That I’m too loud, too opinionated, too cocky. Few adults would say that to a boy.
Yeah, I don’t think the author I was quoting was pulling that bit; but it made me think of it and I just had to rant.
That’s an interesting point about the token chick in the band. Maybe some of it came from a good place – guys wanting to give gals a shot so as not to seem too sexist (just like trying to have a black dude in the band!). Sort of a self-imposed affirmative action, but in the case of the women, placement be damned – you’re right. Tambourine was often good enough! Not enough Kim Deals or Kim Gordons.
But then that goes back again, I think, to not as many gals wanting to be in bands in the first place. Again, I’m not so sure it’s because they were being kept out so much as they didn’t have the same [sexual] motivation as guys: to meet members of the opposite sex who might therefore give them the time of day, just because they were in a band.
The nature/nurture thing. I’m actually coming down more on the nurture side myself these days, after seeing enough of my friends’ children play. The boys want to fuck shit up, and the girls want to play house. I even read a study by Mattel or Hasbro or somebody that tried to disprove nature. They gave little boys and little girls the same toys and watched. With the “house” stuff (a playhouse, baby carriage, etc.), the girls immediately took to playing house.
The boys took the baby carriage up on the roof of the playhouse and took turns launching it.
This was consistent.
It completely fits in with every little kid I’ve watched play. Sure, the girls can get aggressive and the boys can be sweet, but their early play really is markedly different. I played with my neighbors GI Joe’s, but only because I didn’t have a Ken doll and I needed someone for Barbie to marry…:eyeroll:
Fortunately, my parents never told me to keep my opinions to myself or that mine didn’t matter as much as my brother’s (even in subtle ways), so I never was under the impression that men were smarter, etc. In fact, my dad always said that women were smarter than men, and harder working. And he walked the walk; he hired only female lawyers when he retired from his big firm and started his own small practice.
I guess too, I’ve been in education so long and have always treated the kids the same (I like to think), that it’s hard for me to imagine that. (But I KNOW it’s out there, bigtime. You’re right – boys aren’t told to act gentlemanly and keep quiet as little boys (unless they’re in dress clothes and/or at church!),but girls sure get the “ladylike” thing.)
In fact, it actually surprises me (and HUGELY pisses me off) that you got grief, Brit, for critiquing bands (with some negatives) like Patti Smith’s show – because “you’re a girl”! Aagh!
That makes we want to fuck shit up!
Where’s a baby carriage I can launch off my roof?!
This motivated me to write something longer on my blog, but I’m not finished yet.
But it also reminds me of a radio show I listen to several days each week. I noticed at one point a couple of months ago that the (male) DJ plays an unusual number of songs by women.
The more I thought about it, however, and paid attention to other shows, I realized that OF COURSE I was falling into the trap of not noticing everyday sexism. It is only because songs by women are played so rarely on other shows that I noticed something that might not even be a 50-50 split on this guy’s show.
I’d love to talk to him about it, but I’m afraid to, too. I want it to be the case that he just automatically plays good music and half of it happens to be by women. I want it to be the case that girls can turn on the radio and hear women singing and think duh, of course I, too, can do that.
Sort of thinking half-formed thoughts this morning. I should’ve just admitted my weakness and had a damn coke this morning with breakfast instead of trying to be all healthy about not having soft drinks. Ugh.
Two things:
One:
Crap, I just noticed I mis-typed in my last post; I meant to write that I’m coming down more on the *nature* side now (which the toy story illustrated, and which hopefully, you, Brit, and any other readers figured out that I meant anyway).
Two:
Nonsequiteuse, radio DJ’s are *instructed* to never play two female singers back to back. I learned this while guest DJ-ing in college radio back in Athens, GA in the ’80′s and ’90′s. Thus, they are very specifically told to play more male than female singers.
I have to assume this is because people would complain that they’re playing too many chicks. I cannot believe it’s because of some conspiracy where “The Industry” wants to keep women from succeeding.
I think it’s more the thing that Disney discovered – the hard way; boys and girls both love male heroes, be they “super” or not. Not so much the girl hero. Remember Mulan? Bomb. The boys did NOT want to see it.
Maybe females are just better adjusted – we see male musicians and male heroes (and sometimes female ones) and we think, I wanna do that! I can do that! Males just take their cues from other males, I believe. Boys AND girls want to be Michael Jackson (all jokes aside). Boys do NOT say they want to be Britney Spears (unless – let’s face it – they’re leaning homosexual, but that’s opening up a whole ‘nother subject). We women are omni-inspired! When I was a little girl, I wanted to be President, an astronaut, fire chief, etc. This was the ’60′s; there were NO female predecessors in those fields to inspire me. (Admission: I also wanted to be a bride, a princess, a mommy, and a singer. Hey, I succeeded at at least *one* childhood dream!)
Anyway, so maybe in the same way as the superhero thing, women might be happy hearing half and half, but men are not. But men AND women are happy 25% F, 75% M (or whatever ratio), so if everybody’s happy THAT way, then why not keep everybody happy? This is what I think the industry’s thinking and motivations are.