by Stephanie Pang

Music is seen as an expressive tool where individuals can express their emotions. We often use music for many different purposes e.g. aesthetic appreciation or religious worship. However, music is often a battlefield for gender and inequality issues. Gender stereotyping is not a new phenomenon in music. During the 1980s, the majority of women in music videos were dressed sexily (Gow, 1996) while men  are seen as masculine figures and carry hegemonic masculinity.

How Males are portrayed in the songs sung by artists

When listening to music, especially songs sang by female singers, it comes as un surprising that men are portrayed as having all the power. The lyrics “I’ll be a  fearless leader and I’d be an alpha type’’ (The Man, Taylor Swift), shows that the  image of a top manager in society includes a successful man with a strong  masculine presence (Acker, 1990). Messner (2000) supported this view stating that  men usually hold position e.g. head coach and assistant coach.

Male are also seen as more privileged than females, as they are usually ‘’ranking in  dollars, and getting bitches and models’’ (The man, Taylor Swift). This shows that  men are like free spirit animals who constantly search for dreams and living the best  of their life (Hyden & McCandless ,1983). And, lyrics ‘I’d be just like Leo in Saint  Tropez’ (The Man, Taylor Swift) shows that men are like playboys, and Leonardo  DiCaprio (fun fact… Leo has a reputation for flirting with different girls, he always  takes his girl friends to have fun in Saint Tropez).

Aside from that, men are portrayed as capable of breaking women’s hearts (shame  on them….). This is demonstrated in lyrics “How’s your heart after breaking mine?” (Taylor Swift, Mr. Perfectly Fine), the female singer was devastated after being left by a guy. Similarly, another lyric ‘’Pretends he doesn’t know that he’s the reason why you’re drowning….’’ (Taylor Swift, ‘I know you were trouble) conveys the same  message. Men being a heartbreaker can be linked to Click and Kramer (2007)’s view  that women are perceived to be the ones who constantly have their hearts broken  and wish for shooting stars.

How females are portrayed in the songs 

If men are usually seen as powerful and masculine? Does that mean women are  being seen to having the same characteristics as well??

Well… the answer is probably not. Women are typically portrayed as fragile and  weak in songs sung by female singers, as they tend to break down more than men  after a relationship ends. This is evident in lyrics ‘Everything that I do reminds me of  you, and the clothes you left, they smell just like you’ (Avril Lavigne, when you’re  gone). This showed that women were unable to let go of the men and she still  believes that the clothes he left smelled like him. Therefore, women are seen as  weak and needy (Lisara ,2014).

Other than that, in songs sung by male singers, women are viewed as objects that  are constantly being view by men. Sexual objectification occurred through body  representation e.g. sexy clothing, body parts (Flynn et al, 2016). This can be seen in  lyrics, ‘’Missing more than just your body’’ (Justin Bieber, sorry), ’Everyone else in  the room can see it, everyone else but you’’ (One Direction’s What makes you  beautiful). These lyrics have shown that man has missed the body of the female he  is speaking of ,and it also indicates that a woman’s body is still meant to be touched, even if the man doesn’t deserve it due to his mistakes. Once again, female is being  seen as object more than male artists (Flynn et al, 2016).

However, women are not always seen to be portrayed as weak and sexy figures.  Songs that are mostly sung by female artists themselves try to fight against  marginalization and push for equal rights as well as empowering women (Nwabueze,  2019). Lyrics ‘’I don’t need a man to be holding me too tight’ (Kesha, women) ‘’She’s  on top of the world, hottest of the hottest girls’’ (Alicia Keys, Girl on fire) showed that  women can live a better live by themselves. This is in consistent with Nwabueze  (2019)’s findings that women are seen to be able to rule and bring positive changes to the world. Yet, we can also argue that only songs sung by female artists are able  to portrayed woman in a positive way.

 

 

To our future☺

Men and women are portrayed differently as we live in a world where certain  activities are classified as masculine or feminine (West & Zimmerman, 1987).  Therefore, we can see that gender is socially scripted and that men and women  must perform a set of performances in order to fit into society.

I think it is crucial for us to achieve gender inequality in our society as young adults  always listens to pop music. Music will influence their perceptions of relationship, sex and gender roles. As a result, the music industry has a big impact on gender  construction. To achieve gender equality, I believe more female composers and  singers as well as more positive lyrics about women are needed.

(life is not only about competition; it is also about  collaboration between men and women, therefore, men and women must be treated  equally)

Reference:

Acker. J (1990). Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of Gendered organization, Gender & Society, 4(2),  pp.139-158,

https://doi.org/10.1177/089124390004002002

Click. A. M & Kramer. W. M (2007) Reflections on a century of living: gendered differences in  mainstream popular songs, Popular Communication, 5(4), pp.241-262,

https://doi.org/10.1080/15405700701608915

Flynn. A. M & Craig. M. C & Anderson. N. C & Holody. J. K (2016), objectification in popular music lyrics: An  examination of gender and genre differences, Sex roles, 75, pp. 164-176, DOI 10.1007/s11199-016-0592-3

Gow. J (2009). Reconsidering gender roles on MTV: Depictions in the most popular music videos of the  early 1990s, Communication reports, 9(2), pp. 151-161, DOI: 10.1080/08934219609367647

Hyden. C & McCandless. J (1983). Men and women as portrayed in the lyrics of contemporary music,  Popular music & Society, 9(2), pp.19-26, DOI: 10.1080/03007768308591210

Lisara. A (2014). The Portryal of Women in Katy Perry’s selected song lyrics, Passage, 2(2), pp.61- 68, Available at: file:///Users/pangwingtakstephanie/Downloads/21156-47562-1-PB%20(2).pdf (Accessed: 18 March)

Messner. A. M (2000). Barbie girls versus sea monsters, children constructing gender, Gender &  Society, 14(6), pp.765-784, Available at:

https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/2414056/mod_resource/content/1/Barbiegirlsvsseamonsters.pdf (Accessed 14 February)

Nwabueze. C (2009). Pop Music, literature and gender: perceptions of womanhood in Grande’s ‘’God  is a woman’’ and Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Litinfinite Journal, pp.23-33, Available at  :10.47365/litinfinite.1.1.2019.23-33 (Accessed 15 March)

West. C & Zimmerman. H.D (1987). Doing Gender, Gender and Society, 1(2), pp. 125-151, Available  at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/189945 (Accessed 7 March 2022)

by Johnny Hurst

Following CPB-London’s recent ‘imagine a’ campaign:[1] picture a guitarist. Are they a man? They shouldn’t be. Not only should you not assume a man – historically, you should assume a woman. So why has this changed? And how does this relate to the accusations of Wet-Leg being ‘industry plants’? Let’s start at the beginning…

The Guitar and femininity

The association between masculinity and guitars is a relatively recent phenomenon. Originally, the guitar was a paradigmatic feminine instrument. In 1783, Carl Junker named the guitar’s predecessors[1] as one of the 4 women-appropriate instruments (Stenstadvold, 2013). In the early 1700s, Roger North echoes this judgement (ibid). These pro-women guitar stances weren’t a stand against sexism: the guitar’s slender frame allowed women to remain elegant whilst playing. The guitar was also not a professional instrument[2] – it was an amateur instrument, played at home (Stenstadvold, 2013), accompanying[3] another instrument (Jackson, 2020). Thus, the project for modern women guitarists is not to create a feminine space in the guitar-world, but to reclaim it.

So, when did guitar’s feminine-status decline? Pinpointing a date here is difficult. Whilst the well-known Delta-Blues players of the early 20^th Century are all men,[4] we have to recognise that history might be filtering out women-guitarists of this time through looking backwards with a guitar-as-masculine lens. Elizabeth Cotten writes Freight Train 20 years before Robert Johnson steps into a studio. Cotten even used a left-handed-upside-down string technique,[5] later used by[6] male-guitarists Albert King and Jimi Hendrix. Sister Rosetta-Tharpe could be seen ripping on an SG Custom in the early 1960s. So when did the change occur?

Strohm points to the invention of the electric guitar (Weinstein, 2013). This makes sense: before amplification, the guitarist had the quiet role at the back of the Big-Band. Once amplified, the guitar could take the lead role (ibid).

 

Enter the men. Amplification permits distortion: the aggressive sound of rock. Here we start to see the masculine paradigms work their way in. Then comes the virtuoso; the fiery and phallic displays in the late 1960s.[7] This trajectory continued: think 1970’s and 1980’s “masturbatory” (Weinstein, 2013, p. 144) guitar solos[8] – the guitar was cemented as a masculine domain.

So how did this affect guitars?

Firstly, once the guitar had been made masculine, the unspoken rule of ‘standard’ coming to mean ‘masculine’ instantiated itself.[9] The masculine way of playing guitar became the standard way of playing guitar. Deviation from this standard was/is seen as a mark of the amateur. Look at how Jett, St. Vincent and Millington[10] stand in powerful, assertive, masculine poses when performing.[11]

Masculine-as-standard worked in another way: guitars were now made for male-bodies. A standard-size guitar today is not a standard-sized guitar for a human body; it’s the standard-size for a male body. Perez (2019) talks about this problem for pianos: the keyboard was designed with only male hands in mind.[12] This can be seen in the size difference between guitar brands like Teisco in the 1950s[13] and the larger Gibson and Fender guitars that continued from the 50s onwards. Teisco guitars are shorter, so are retrospectively dubbed as student/3/4 sized[14] guitars. Perhaps they’re not smaller versions of ‘standard-sized’ guitars, they are just guitars not made for men! Moreover, guitars such as Teiscos had a revival in women-driven punk-bands. Perhaps they wanted to use a guitar that fits![15]

Thus women in the modern-age are faced with a dilemma: they must play guitar like a man[16] on an instrument that is too big for them to do so. Here enters Wet-Leg.

Wet-Leg and unapologetic rejection of normative-masculinity

Wet-Leg are a new alternative band. Neither Wet-Leg guitarist plays with the violence, aggression or domination of the instrument that the male-standardised perspective insists on.[17] Wet-Leg doesn’t need to perform masculinity to perform the role of guitarist; they perform the role of ‘guitarist’ continuously with their performance of femininity.

Against the masculine-as-standard backdrop, Wet-Leg’s deviation from masculine-styles of guitar-playing is viewed as a deviation from ‘good’ guitar-playing. One video that centres Wet-Leg’s guitar-style is riddled with comments expressing their disgust for it. So Wet-Leg refuse to play guitar like men. And thus fuels the fire of ‘industry plant’ accusations.

Inference to Industry Plants

Innumerous Tiktok comments accuse Wet-Leg of being ‘Industry Plants’.[18] Whilst there’s no single reason why, I think their rejection of masculinity-as-standard is a strong factor.

Viewers see Wet-Leg’s non-masculine style of playing, and because non-masculine is seen as bad, Wet-Leg’s guitar-playing is seen as bad/amateur. If Wet-Leg are amateur musicians, then how have they had viral hits? The answer is simple! Wet-Leg’s success is the industries work, not theirs! Thus the apparent inability of Wet-Leg’s guitarists is squared with their commercial success.

Only, the viewer is wrong; they’ve mistaken non-masculine guitar-playing for bad guitar-playing. Wet-Leg aren’t amateur guitarists, they are women guitarists who have succeeded on their own merit! It turns out, Wet-Leg are actually just a decent band!

 [1] The Lute and Zither

[2] The guitar not being part of the orchestra

[3] Read: being subservient to

[4] Think Robert Johnson, Son House, Lightning Hopkins…

[5] Seen being used by Cotten herself here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUK8emiWabU

[6] And often incorrectly credited to

[7] Think Jimi Hendrix’s wild onstage movements, and sitting his guitar on fire at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967

[8] Think Van Halen, Guns ‘n Roses, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard…

[9] For a more detailed discussion of male-as-standard phenomena across historical data and modern society, see Perez’s “Invisible Women” (Perez, 2019)

[10] Of the 1970s all female rock group ‘Fanny’ who I recommend. Especially their cover of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Ain’t that Peculiar’

[11] I’m not saying here that these fantastic female guitar-players are ‘pretending to be men’, but instead pointing out that we seem to celebrate and hold in higher acclaim female guitarists who play guitar ‘like men’.

[12] See Perez (2019) Chapter 7: One-Size-Fits-Men

[13] Production ending early 1960s

[14] Presumably ¾ the size of a standard male body

[15] Where more standard brands of guitar were used, female alternative rock bands often use guitar models with shorter scale lengths, such as the Fender Mustang, or Gibson Les Paul Jr (notice the ‘Jr’: it’s the smaller, younger and inferior guitar to the flagship, men-in-mind Gibson Les Paul).

[16] With deliberate reference here to Young’s (1980) ‘Throwing Like a Girl’

[17] See an example of Wet Leg’s Teasdale playing guitar here: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLf7ybTN/?k=1

[18] An Industry Plant is a band/artist manufactured by a record label to be commercially successful, though presented as a grass-roots musician.

[1]https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Fp%2FCa2WkCbsudA%2F%3Futm_medium%3Dcopy_link%26fbclid%3DIwAR3iZduqT2x-_4NxUQh8dpByUrmBDp4oEZSO8rMILcTnFF0izCVKOsEaqKc&h=AT1E5QZMoawxA48ZUgQKnVYYJ8BIHSzamX_oSsYbj-5sfjThHBbQKbPLBFvWs-LiavMUA3l_LK3BvvD2SGtZoysUaNVpsb7hKe9A65MOdqx1V0IFILn4mQKJTkYi7TENzmspfg

Further Reading:

Industry Plants – Another Form of Sexism in Music – Amika Moser

A nice short piece by Amika Moser on how accusations of industry plants are linked with sexism.

https://www.unpublishedzine.com/music-1/industry-plants-another-form-of-sexism-in-music

At First, the Guitar was a “Women’s Instrument” – Ashawnta Jackson

A short article from Ashawnta Jackson on the historical relationship between women and the guitar, which served as the inspiration for this blog post

At First, the Guitar Was a “Women’s Instrument”

“Women and the Electric Guitar” – Mavis Bayton (Chapter 3 of ‘Sexing the Groove”, edited by Sheila Whiteley

A moderately long piece on the Electric Guitar and women, touching on Gender Performance à la Judith Butler

https://womeninmusic.voices.wooster.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/123/2017/12/Bayton-Women-and-the-Electric-Guitar.pdf

 Rock’s Guitar Gods — Avatars of the Sixties – Deena Weinstein

An academic article discussing the image of the Guitar God in the 1960s – see page 151 onwards for Weinstein’s discussion of masculinity!

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24467204

 Wet Leg’s Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2TwOrUcYnAlIiKmVQkkoSZ?si=vI5Hbi0mR6imstryitFlhg

Chaise-Longue is currently their biggest hit

 

Works Cited

Jackson, A., 2020. At First, the Guitar Was a “Women’s Instrument”. [Online]
Available at: https://daily.jstor.org/at-first-the-guitar-was-a-womens-instrument/
[Accessed 12 03 2022].

Perez, C. C., 2019. Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men. London: Chatto & Windus.

Stenstadvold, E., 2013. ‘We hate the guitar’: prejudice and polemic in the music press in early 19th-century Europe. Early Music, 41(4), pp. 595-604.

Weinstein, D., 2013. Rock’s Guitar Gods — Avatars of the Sixties. Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, Volume 70, pp. 139-154.

Young, I. M., 1980. Throwing like a girl: A phenomenology of feminine body comportment motility and spatiality. Human Studies, 3(1), pp. 137 – 156.