Written by Sarah Arcella
Relevance is like gold in the music industry. So why do women in music reinvent themselves more than their male counterparts? They have to become shiny and new more often than their male counterparts. These women are held to different standards than men. Women in music face extreme scrutiny as soon as they think for themselves, own their bodies, and make their own decisions--all things that should be celebrated, not used against them.
As soon as female pop stars are no longer young and naive their record labels often try to switch things up. We can see this in the early years of Taylor Swift’s career. She explains in a Vogue article that she never noticed the lopsided gender roles in the industry until she was no longer a “...scrawny, overexcited young girl who reminded them more of their little niece or their daughter than a successful woman in business or a colleague.” She goes further to say that until she became a woman in the eyes of society, she started to see and understand the different rulebooks men and women subscribe to in music, referring to how women in music are treated as things to be discarded when they stop pleasing the public. This is where reinvention takes hold.
Women grow up believing they have to please people to hold worth. Walking past a stranger, you are taught to smile. Women are assumed to be soft and welcoming, with no sharp edges--something digestible. A Bustle article about women’s worth lying in pleasing it explains that women, more often than not, cannot just be, they have to constantly uphold this societal checkbox for what it means to be perceived as a woman: be soft, smile, keep your head down, and be pleasing to us. This relates directly to women in music; their worth lies more in how they are perceived as women rather than their talent and music.
Now one may argue that women in pop music have been in the spotlight recently, topping the charts and breaking streaming records. The past year in music has nearly been led by female pop stars like Dua Lipa, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Doja Cat, and Taylor Swift all having popular albums. But when you look deeper, each of those albums have songs about misogyny they face. People may see this and think the argument that women have to reinvent themselves is nonexistent--how can this be the case if women are seemingly leading the industry? If they are at the top now and certain men aren't, how can you say they are treated differently?
You do not have to look far into these albums until you hear lyrics about how difficult it was to get where they are because of men putting them down (Frost) Taylor Swift’s “The Man” talks about how if she were a man the world would lift her up and not pick her apart. Dua Lipa’s “Boys Will Be Boys” talks about how men assume they deserve everything and more, and that as women we must be strong and challenge this by saying “..but girls will be women”. Miley Cyrus’s “Golden G String” talks about the battle she faces between being sexy, shiny, and loved versus being the true woman artist she is and owning her body for herself. (Frost) All of these successful women speak directly to the idea that in music, women have to be fresh, new, and sexy. Men on the contrary don't. Men can be well-respected musicians who are just that: musicians. Society still does not hear the battles of these women. Women always have to be more than just artists, more than just singers and songwriters. Women in music have to be everything to society.
‘Everything’ meaning more than just a musician or lyricist. Women in music have to be visually stimulating, trendy, new, and good musicians to stay relevant and build popularity. Even so, there is an expiration date on what they are doing. Taylor Swift speaks to this in a Genius interview stating, “Be new to us, be young to us, but only in a new way and only in the way we want,” she said. “And reinvent yourself, but only in a way that we find to be equally comforting but also a challenge for you. Live out a narrative that we find to be interesting enough to entertain us, but not so crazy that it makes us uncomfortable.” This is coming from a woman who has been in the industry since she was 14 years old. Compare this to a popular male musician like Justin Bieber, who has only changed his haircut every few years, and you start to see the vast differences between men and women in music.
Taylor Swift through the years has had to change her looks drastically multiple times to please the public compared to Justin Bieber who has had minor style and hair changes.
Understanding that women musicians are under a man-made microscope is the first step in solving this issue. When watching your favorite female artist perform, ask yourself how many times she has reinvented herself and compare that to your favorite male artist. See that female musicians are held to the highest standard in all aspects--artistry, relevance, and appearance--and recognize that this speaks directly to the issue of gender equality across all fronts. As listeners and fans, we must do better to recognize the sound of misogyny in music and spark conversation around it. It is much deeper than just the music industry, so by peeling back these layers of gendered tradition in music we can hopefully bring light to why women in music have consistently reinvented themselves.
Bibliography
ByOTCUPTV. “The Art of Reinventing the Female Pop Star.” On The Come Up TV, 17
May 2015, https://www.onthecomeuptv.com/the-art-of-reinventing-the-female-pop-star/.
Frost, Ilana. “Misogyny Still Defines the Music Industry in 2021.” Misogyny Still Defines
the Music Industry in 2021 – The Miscellany News, 10 Mar. 2021,
https://miscellanynews.org/2021/03/10/arts/misogyny-still-defines-the-music-industry-in-2021/.
“Taylor Swift Speaks on Double Standards for Female Artists in the Music Industry.”
Genius, https://genius.com/a/taylor-swift-speaks-on-double-standards-for-female-artists-in-the-music-industry.
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