Let’s start with the obvious: being a woman in music is hard. One of my first memories upon entering my local scene was one guy screaming at the (all-male) performing band that “boys do it better.” That moment stuck with me when I started up my own band not too long after.
I have been lucky enough to gain the support of some of the most talented bands in my area. I’m proud to call these musicians my friends and love supporting their work. My issue begins with the fact that I can count the number of popular female-fronted bands in my scene on one hand, maybe even two hands if I’m being generous.
Let’s circle back to “boys do it better”. I could write a whole dissertation on why that isn’t true, but I’ll save that for another post. The big point here is that rock has always been a male-dominated genre. Coming into male-dominated spaces as a woman has never been an easy task, so the few who were able to break through made waves with their talent and determination. This, my friends, is also the next problem.
In all my years of going to shows, local and not, I have seen my fair share of mediocre male-fronted bands. This is not to say their art is worth less or that I am the one setting the standards for a “good band,” I am just of the belief that you can tell when a band isn’t making music for the sake of loving it. Even so, these types of bands seem to be able to garner a decent following in their respective areas whose favorite activity is ego stroking. All this is to say that women are not allowed to display mediocrity.
One of the ways for a female-fronted band to gain a following is that they need to be excellent at what they do. A woman is not given the same kudos if she has, let's call them, “Midwest emo vocals”. A woman cannot be a beginner guitar or bass player, and God forbid she is not a savant on the drums. You must be 10x better than your peers, or else you will be looked down upon. This is textbook misogyny at play.
The most prominent example of this is the hatred of the riot grrrl genre. Women formed bands with gritty vocals, blasting drums, and punk riffs, and men did not like that at all. Riot Grrrl had cultivated a cult following and is now considered a historically defining genre, but that still doesn’t make it any more popular.
“But Thalia,” you may ask, “some of those bands like Bikini Kill became huge. There are bands in different genres like Paramore and Evanescence that came out of the 2000s that hit the charts. What made them an exception?” This leads me to my big elephant in the room and the reason I started this post. “Well,” I say, “they were hot.”
I could drone on about the Eurocentric beauty standards within society, but I think it would be more relevant to focus on the rock bubble. Alternative subcultures have made their way into the mainstream with the rise of e-girls and goth mommy girlfriends. Many of the women who gain online popularity with this aesthetic usually have a few things in common: they are white, skinny, and hot.
