Women in Music

Feminist politics in music are much, much more complex than just dressing racily and singing about sex versus playing a guitar and complaining about social corruption. Beyoncé, for example, is ostensibly eye candy, but she's also incredibly dominant, defiant, and in control of her image and voice. Regardless of what you may think of her, she's incredibly inspirational to tons of women everywhere.

A big reason why I enjoy Rachel Stevens so much is that even though she was marketed primarily as a hot diva, she always held a lot of endearing-yet-friendly authority in her performances while not really giving off any desperate vibes. She didn't hesitate to model for magazines or even utilize her sex appeal to get men to check for testicular cancer, but I can say from my own experience, looking up to her has not made me weaker at all, it's only made me more confident and honestly less unhealthily dependent on a romantic relationship.

Also, are singers like Rihanna, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande and such really the only women in music you can think of with any relevance? What about Adele? P!nk? Amy Winehouse? Amy Lee? Hayley Williams? Lorde? Rock frontwomen, singer-songwriters, and independent musicians in general?
Is Madonna really that much more positive a role model than the pop starlets of today? Yes, she recorded a ton of great music, but she was also one of the most desperately sexual singers of her time as well. In some respects, her raunchier endeavors were power plays in the Beyoncé fashion, but in many others, such as "Justify My Love" and the Erotica album, she was mostly putting sex in front of everything else.

I'm going to state it again, but as far as "role models" for women go, you can't just narrow the definition to the folksier and rockier artists, while treating those with a glamorous pop image as inherently anti-feminist and toxic. I don't think that's totally what you intend, since you brought up Madonna as an example of a positive role model, but really, positive and negative inspirational figures can be quite relative, depending on your personal sense or style. I really enjoy Alanis Morissette and Jewel as musicians, but I don't see them as positive role models just because they present themselves more as rock and folk-oriented songwriters than elegant beauties.

For me personally, I feel more individualized and empowered thru the examples led by Louise and Rachel Stevens, both popular largely for their beauty but also resonate with me on so many more complex layers. A lot of gay men also feel a strong sense of relief and emancipation in their connection to flashy pop starlets. By contrast, I actually feel uncomfortable, threatened, and pressured whenever others are trying to drill into my head the idea that only rootsy, spare, indie-types of singers are genuine beacons of "individuality" and that I'm basically alienated from myself if I prefer pop images This mentality is very prominent in the lesbian community especially, which is a major reason I don't really consider myself a lesbian and prefer to just associate with women in general instead of self-identified queer ones specifically.

She can be marketed based on her sexiness, but she isn't just some corporate shill because her executives find her hot. Having stunning looks is just part of the territory in the pop world, and it isn't just a male versus female thing. I don't think Justin Timberlake, for example, would have found nearly all the success he enjoyed for several years on his own had he not been so attractive to straight and bisexual women over the years, even though he has also recorded a lot of the most well-regarded pop music of the 21st Century, not unlike Beyoncé.I suppose if we're focusing primarily on the types of musicians who get exposed on pop radio the most, the majority of them have used their sex appeal to a certain degree. That still doesn't mean plenty of of mid-late 20th Century female artists haven't done the same. The '80s are an especially prominent example, since that was when MTV got popular and image literally became a serious selling point for the industry.

I notice, too, you skipped over my points about how much I get out of my appreciation of Rachel Stevens. Is that because you're afraid to tell me that I'm being oblivious to what a supposedly shallow performer she was, that liking her is brainwashing me into being a man-dependent tease? Should I throw out her music and instead stock up on as many folk and indie female musicians as possible, such that I will unravel my "real" self more than ever before? Just because somebody rides off their glamour in order to achieve fame and fortune doesn't mean that's all they are.There are a fair number of female musicians who invoke their sex appeal on purpose and on their own terms, not just because they have label executives pressuring them into it. Some women are just flirts, even though they may have far deeper motivations than just giving themselves to a man. It's likely they want far more than just sex, perhaps wholesome experiences as well. Most "image-driven" albums by female singers I own have songs that either mostly affirm how important the woman's say in a relationship, not simply how much they fantasize about how much some hunk is taking control of them. There are certainly some pop songs of a damsel-in-distress nature, but they're hardly the majority, and many of them are semi-parody, such as Nicki Minaj's "Hey Mama", which Todd in the Shadows noted is really un-PC at face value, but he still realizes that because of who she is, Minaj doesn't expect everything she says to be taken literally and that she'd kick his arse if he actually told her he was the boss of her.

Horny boys and men are certainly not the only market for female-led pop, a vast chunk of it – in fact, probably the majority – is other females. Some are trend junkies, some are desperately sexual, but at the heart of it, female pop still needs something that can speak to them, and in general, my records by Louise and Rachel Stevens speak, on a content level, more to women like myself than just men hungry for porn."Trashy" and "sexualized" was exactly what a huge number of people considered Madonna's early '90s output to be. In part, people's perceptions change over the years, but even though "Erotica", "Justify My Love", and the ilk are a million times better than "M.I.L.F. $", they tried to provoke pretty much the same types of reactions from the public during the context of their respective releases.

I'm going to state it again, but as far as "role models" for women go, you can't just narrow the definition to the folksier and rockier artists, while treating those with a glamorous pop image as inherently anti-feminist and toxic. I don't think that's totally what you intend, since you brought up Madonna as an example of a positive role model, but really, positive and negative inspirational figures can be quite relative, depending on your personal sense or style. I really enjoy Alanis Morissette and Jewel as musicians, but I don't see them as positive role models just because they present themselves more as rock and folk-oriented songwriters than elegant beauties.The mid-late 20th Century really didn't have any fewer sexual innuendos. Plenty of songs from generations ago were implicitly about sex, like the Chordettes' "Lollipop", or "I Want Candy", or even "I Love Rock and Roll". Heck, the term 'rock and roll' itself is a euphemism for sex. Back in the '50s, the emergence of sexualized musicians and performers was seen as a rebellious gesture of freedom against a pasty dystopia, not middle-aged pigs greedily exploiting the sexual impulses of impressionable youths. It's true not all musicians since get raunchy for precisely the same reasons, but a lot of them do still follow that same narrative, regardless of what genre they're representing.

The main difference now is that singers are far more explicit in their lyrics about having sex. Because censorship has loosened tremendously over the past several decades, it's now possible for pop singers to cut the crap and glorify sex without any shame. Back in the '70s, Steve Miller Band's "The Joker" had a line which goes, "You're the cutest thing that I ever did see / Really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree." Steve Miller here is no less hungry for some in and out than your run-of-the-mill 2010s pop star, but pretty obviously, a lyric like the above would never make it into a song from today, as it's just too darn corny.In a general sense by the public? The charts don't exactly reflect that, not now, at least. Really, whether or not somebody is going to take better to a sassy, flamboyant pop starlet or a scroungy, unrefined folk singer depends primarily on their own personal experiences and how their sense of style is shaped by them. It's actually pretty condescending to suggest that somebody's appreciation of a modern pop starlet is wrong just because some people see them primarily as sex objects, not realizing that those supposed "sex objects" may be reaching out to them personally in ways that acoustic singer songwriters simply cannot. I certainly feel more comfort and intimacy listening to Louise and Rachel Stevens than your average coffee shop singer-songwriter, and that's because their appeal goes far beyond the mainstream discussion of "deep" lyrics versus flashy sex appeal.

I'm not trying to scold you because I'm personally offended or anything – I totally get where you're coming from with your points – but I think it's really valuable for you to consider this perspective on the sexualization of females in music. I'm guessing you're a freshman in college right now, so these types of intellectual debates should be a great opportunity for you to forge an argument. In general, you already offer lots of insightful thoughts to topical conversations, so I wanted to go deeper here especially.

What in the world separates Madonna from Kylie? Aren't they both pop queens with illustrious careers of widely varied and ambitious hits? Unless you're focusing on the S/A/W era, I don't see how you can compare Kylie to Britney.