What happened to revolution girl style now? Issue #33

With the 21st century well into its first decade, it’s time to take a look at where we’re at in the music industry — and what it means for women

By Amy Schroeder
Published: September 1st, 2007 | 12:00am

On Spin’s May 2007 cover story “Festivalpalooza!” about the summer’s music festivals, Jeff Tweedy, Perry Farrell, Davey Havok, Tom Morello, RZA, and Britt Daniel stand in line to take a leak at a Port-O-Potty. The pull-out cover featuring some of the festival acts is a lovely concept, but it looked as though the editors forgot to include the festival leading ladies. Where was Björk? Regina Spektor? M.I.A.? Amy Winehouse?

The Spin cover story triggered a hefty load of questions about the music industry and how women fit into it. Is the industry a good place for women right now, and how does it compare to, say, 10 years ago? Also, why did I start Venus Zine in the ‘90s, and why — in a sea of music and culture publications — does it need to exist more than a decade later? In a way, I wish Venus Zine didn’t have to exist. Wouldn’t it be amazing if women and men got equal amounts of coverage in music magazines — mainstream and alternative presses alike? In fact, wouldn’t it be awesome if there were just as many women in music as there are men?

At Venus Zine, we receive about 50 CDs in the mail per week — about 65% of them by male artists and 35% by female artists. This is particularly significant since our focus is on women in music. Some people might say it sucks when publications are like, “Check out this woman in music. It’s so interesting that she’s a woman and she’s making music, isn’t it? ‘Hey, what’s it like to be a woman in music?’” It’s a sort of a marginalization of women. But I don’t think Venus Zine does that. Yes, we focus — as any niche publication should on a particular topic — on women, but we don’t ghettoize them. Instead, we provide a space that focuses on women in the arts, and we give cred to the dudes too — in our Penus section. Funny — it’s kinda the reverse situation in other publications — it’s almost as if a number of music magazines are largely about and targeted toward a male readership, and then they carve out some space for the ladies, too. A good example is Rolling Stone’s annual “Women in Rock” issue.

This topic of highlighting female musicians because they’re female musicians was discussed in the spring on Girl Group, a Yahoo! forum for about 400 journalists, editors, and media types who e-mail about story leads, contacts, and what makes them tick. Ann Powers, music critic for the L.A. Times, took the e-stage:

I think that sexism is the reason many successful women don’t want to be thought of “as women.” Because as much as we want to celebrate women, usually when we are singled out, it is for negative reasons. This is the old “she’s good, for a girl” problem. Masculinity is assumed in most definitions of greatness. The generic great guitar player is Jimi Hendrix; the lawyer is Alan Dershowitz (that’s not an endorsement!); the writer is Michael Chabon (not his wife, Ayelet Waldman, who writes about “domestic issues”). Despite the existence of Nancy Pelosi, the fields are few and far between in which a woman is the exemplar rather than the exception. Therefore, successful women play down their gender in order to compete on “equal” terms.

As long as the standard is male (or white or middle-class, or in NYC’s media world, Ivy-educated), genuine equality is never achievable. A really successful woman will still be a woman. Her gender is a qualifier — and even if she pretends it doesn’t matter or (in some cases) doesn’t exist.

So grouping women together in a publication like Venus Zine doesn’t cause women to be considered “as women” — it’s a valid and necessary response to a situation in which women are already grouped together and marginalized.

To be that exception is a powerful feeling. I call it the “only girl in the room” phenomenon. It’s a thrill to be singled out as special and exciting to be in on information exchanges that others of your kind (in this case, gender) are excluded from. But it’s a risky position because if there’s only one slot, that position is harder to hang on to. There’s no room to move.

Music magazines, which are actually defined in marketing terms as men’s magazines, usually don’t go beyond “the only girl in the room.” Those of us who’ve held this position know it’s intoxicating, but it also can be perilous.

Furthermore, and it’s really important to acknowledge it, we’re living in a conservative moment when traditional values and images of women are coming to dominate the mainstream again. It’s paradoxical that in an era when there are more single mothers than ever — and women are more visible in areas like the military, police, and indie, if not mainstream, rock — there’s also a return to the idea that stay-at-home-momism is better than working. It’s a glamorization of early marriage, an anti-choice backlash, fetishization of conventional sexiness (boob jobs, high heels, big hair), and so on. There is no such thing as post-feminism.

THE ’90S MAY HAVE SUCKED FOR FASHION, BUT IT ROLLED FOR WOMEN IN ROCK
Judging by radio and MTV airplay, when women were at the forefront of the rock industry in the 1990s, the mainstream welcomed and applauded artists with pro-feminist politics. Hole, Veruca Salt, Liz Phair, PJ Harvey, Lunachicks, and Babes in Toyland were among those who paved new ground lyrically and musically. And prominent male musicians supported them. When L7 co-founded Rock For Choice to protect women’s abortion rights in 1991, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, Foo Fighters, and Fishbone among others, got on board. After “alternative rock artists” made feminism cool, Lilith Fair launched in 1997, hosting a tour of dozens of female artists, including Luscious Jackson, Queen Latifah, Cibo Matto, and Beth Orton.

Powers calls the ‘90s the era of women in rock — when feminism was a hip factor. “The combined influence of identity politics and punk empowered a new generation, and the need that those younger women felt to cast off the shadow of their elders and make their own statements led to some really exciting music — and art and writing and film,” she says. “Women’s studies programs, anti-rape and pro-choice activism on campuses and off, a growing interest in the welfare of girls among those who shape public policy — those were some of the forces that supported and extended the whole ‘girl power’ trend.”

Why did such a strong crop of female musicians emerge in the 1990s? Save for today’s legion of heroes like the Gossip, Lady Sov, Lily Allen, Joanna Newsom, and Regina Spektor, why does it seem as though female artists with similar sentiments remain largely in the indie or underground category in the 2000s? It appears as though American marketers are more willing to dump the dollars into branding pop tarts than they are to take a risk on rock or alternative talents.

Powers says the story of '90s women in rock was as compelling as globalization is nowadays. “The music industry — which always responds to the new source of novelty or ‘cool’ — saw forthright, expressive women as cool for a minute,” she says. “When something no longer holds that kind of popular attention, it doesn’t go away. It’s just not the story everybody wants to hear and tell.”

WHAT HAPPENED TO RIOT GRRRL?
Around the same time that female musicians were achieving success via mainstream avenues, underground artists were making headlines too — not that they necessarily wanted the attention. Riot grrrl was an incredibly valuable movement for feminism and music. “There are few things in my life that I am as excited about now as I was about riot grrrl then,” says Slim Moon, founder of Kill Rock Stars, who now works as senior director of A&R and artistic development at Rykodisc.

Originated in the Pacific Northwest and Washington, D.C., in the early '90s, the riot grrrl movement was based on a feminist and DIY philosophy that women can empower themselves by taking action politically and artistically. Though she wasn’t a riot grrrl, musician Mary Timony was inspired by the message. “There was an emphasis on anyone can play,” she says. “Riot grrrl was all about, ‘Just pick up a guitar!’ There was an emphasis on people not being professional musicians — it was about getting in a band because it’s a cool thing to do. That encouraged a lot of people, and there were definitely more girls in bands then, whether they were good or bad.”

Centering around a small but powerful army of bands including Bikini Kill and Bratmobile, riot grrrls were an organized community of women who hosted workshops, support groups, and self-defense classes in addition to making fanzines such as Tobi Vail and Kathleen Hanna’s Revolution Girl Style Now, also the namesake of Bikini Kill’s first release.

Marisa Meltzer, who writes for Venus Zine and other publications, says riot grrrl was a reaction to how boy-dominated the punk scene was at the time in addition to the fact that so much was happening politically at the beginning of the '90s. “Girls who were reared by '70s feminist moms were just coming of age, and Third Wave feminism was just beginning to coalesce,” she says. “We were on the verge of the 1992 elections, the culture wars were raging in academia, and people were feeling a new sense of activism from the Gulf War.”

Connected to the queercore scene of indie lesbian and gay musicians, riot grrrl evolved and is generally considered to have inspired a pack of similarly minded bands that emerged in the late 1990s such as the Gossip, Le Tigre, and the Butchies. The movement continues to inspire artists more than a decade later.

The girl-power messages that came from riot grrrl and popular alternative female bands eventually led to the commercialization of feminism as a marketable product, á la the Spice Girls, which released its first album, Spice, in 1996. “The fact that it was perceived as a trend ultimately weakened its impact in some ways,” Powers says.

Meltzer, who is working on a book tentatively titled Girl Power, says marketers caught on to the buying power of girls. “Empowerment in all of its forms was becoming cool again: feminism, safe sex, all-girl bands, reclaiming words like ‘slut,’ talking about taboo issues like eating disorders and sexual abuse in zines,” Meltzer says. “‘Girl power’ became an easy sound byte and a way to package female empowerment in a cute, glossy form. So you ended up with all of the ‘Girls Kick Ass’ baby tees and the Spice Girls spouting the message of girl power any chance they could.”

WHEN SCENES ENTAILED A SENSE OF COMMUNITY
One of the most politically significant and accomplished feminist bands to form in the 1990s was Sleater-Kinney. Launched in 1994 from the remains of riot grrrl bands Heavens to Betsy and Excuse 17, the trio was born at a moment when the commercial side of the music business allowed more freedom for creative expression. With critical acclaim from large and small publications and success on college charts, the band released seven albums on independent labels Chainsaw, Kill Rock Stars, and Sub Pop, achieving popularity primarily in indie circuits.

Guitarist Carrie Brownstein says Sleater-Kinney emerged from politically charged and close-knit scenes in Olympia, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. “And not just in terms of elections and government but in terms of how people went about things,” she says. “The scene was very community-minded and had a lot to do with sharing of resources and helping one another in terms of labels and shows.”

Brownstein says the Pacific Northwest’s community orientation still exists, but the way in which people connect is different now than it was in the 1990s. “There’s more technology with the Internet now,” she says. “Back then, people communicated with other scenes via fanzines, magazines, and letters. In some ways you were more isolated to your region.” In addition, she says, bands discovered what was going on by touring and becoming entrenched in other scenes. “There was definitely a close sense of community that fostered within each city — particularly in the Northwest. There was definitely a sense of purpose. We thought of the music as a tool for communication as well as for having fun.”

Timony says there are major differences with cultivating a music career now versus when she started 15 years ago. “When I started playing in bands in the early ’90s, getting music was a way more active process,” she says of discovering the Washington, D.C., punk scene. “You had to go to shows and record stores, which encouraged a sense of community. People were more active then. Now kids are getting into music on iTunes or online. It’s not better or worse, it’s just different.”

FEAR OF THE ‘F’ WORD
If timing really is everything, we pretty much nailed it in that the first issue of Venus Zine was released in 1995, at a peak moment for women in music. Some of my favorite bands at the time were Stereolab, the Breeders, the Fugees, and PJ Harvey. Of course, because Venus Zine started as a fanzine in a small, relatively conservative Midwestern town of East Lansing, Michigan, I had to do some explaining to friends who asked, “Why exactly do you need to cover women in music?” But once I generated a solid readership of primarily 20-something females — not to mention some cool dudes — we were able to concentrate on the content instead of defending the concept. In short, our readers got it. They understood that it was necessary for a publication to document the achievements of women in music and the arts.

A dozen years later, while the majority of Venus Zine’s inaugural readers have stuck with us, we’ve consistently attracted new readers, most of whom are women in their early 20s. A decade ago, it was safe for me to assume that the majority of our readers considered themselves feminist. These days, however, I don’t always make that assumption. I’ve nearly, albeit uncomfortably, come to terms with some young women’s lax attitude about feminism because it’s just where we’re at in Third Wave Feminist spectrum. And I can’t help but wonder if it has something to do with mainstream culture’s exclusion of feminist attitudes. Or, rather, it’s likely vice versa.

Many American women who are now in the 30ish bracket came of age at a time that allowed them to reap the rewards of a significant amount of feminist footwork — particularly Second Wavers’ emphasis on the personal being political. Jessica Hopper, a 31-year-old music writer for the Chicago Reader, Punk Planet, and Spin, says women in this age group were adolescents during the Reagan and George Bush Sr. years — a time, Hopper says, in which “people had to do so much work and fighting” for gender equality in America. When Clinton took office in 1993, these women were teenagers — an eight-year period that Hopper terms an “armchair” experience, allowing women to “finally kind of rest.”

“I’ve always felt that’s what’s to blame culturally for why a lot of younger women aren’t aware of feminism,” Hopper says. “It hasn’t been a real issue in their lifetime, but if you ask them if they subscribe to feminist beliefs, they do. Did you read the Avril Lavigne interview in Rolling Stone a few years ago in which Jenny Eliscu asked the singer if she considered herself a feminist? [Lavigne] said she didn’t know what that was. Jenny said, ‘It’s the belief that women are equal to men.’ [Lavigne] said, ‘I agree with that.’ ... Women are so afraid of the word ‘feminist’ — it’s so demonized and they think it’s bitchy.”

WHO GIVES A FUCK? CULTURE
In case you haven’t heard, apathy is cool. Popularized in part by Vice magazine, there’s a movement — for lack of a better word — of hipsters taking anti-PC to a new level.

I don’t want to completely knock Vice — afterall, the media empire should be recognized for shaking up the traditional model of social and political journalism; in some cases, their coverage of war, gangs, and other global issues is straight-up real. However, the publication sometimes throws around bigotry and sexism like it’s no big deal. You can argue that the editors are using irony to get readers thinking. Problem is that the some readers never get around to the thinking part. As could be the result, there’s a growing trend for white kids and men to throw around the “n” and “c” words like it ain’t no thing.

Here’s an example of a photo caption from the “Mentally Ill Issue” of the magazine’s popular section, “Do’s & Don’ts.” The caption describes a photo of two African-American boys in oversized pink shirts:

How’s this for disrespect? Their incredibly overweight, 7 ft. tall mother raises them and does what she can with no father and these little fucking ingrates parade around town in her maternity wear like she was some kind of stupid fat person that should be made fun of. The poor woman is left at home, nude in bed and crying to the ceiling, “Where did I go wrong, lawd?”

In a response to two letters to the editor asking why they blurred out penises in a photo issue that included stills from a porn film, the response was “Sorry, but the truth is it’s just too expensive. Advertisers don’t mind tits and swearing and drugs and all that, but for every dink you show, you lose about $80,000 of ads. It’s just not worth it. You’ll never see a dick or a bag in Vice ever again.”

Whether it has anything to do with Vice, Sleater-Kinney’s Brownstein says we’re in a culture of denial, and that when it comes down to it, people seek out entertainment, film, and music as a source of pleasure. “They don’t necessarily want it to make them think,” she says. “People are more interested in Paris Hilton than Darfur or the war in Iraq. It’s like we have so much information at our fingertips that it’s too much to process. If you suddenly have the ability to know about all the hardships of our whole world, the onus is on you to do something about it.”

Brownstein says that some people are wary of blatant political messages. “There is something valid in music that brings people together instead of polarizing people,” she says. “People are afraid to put a stake in the ground and say something.”

BLESS ITS UNPREDICTABLE LITTLE HEAD. WHERE’S THE MUSIC INDUSTRY GOING?
“I think boring bands and artists are dominating the industry, and most of these boring bands and artists are male,” says Moon.

Timony feels that rock isn’t in a very creative place, saying that the popular trend is derivative male bands. “It seems like all bands can really do is right now is copy what was done before,” she says. “Also, in the ‘90s, signing to a major label was the lamest thing you could do, but now it doesn’t matter. I don’t see that sentiment as much nowadays — there’s an emphasis on being a pro musician.”

Whereas the 1960s were great for female country artists like Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn and the '90s were great for women in alternative rock, the 2000s — like the '80s — are hot for female pop stars. Powers feels that it’s actually better to be a woman in pop now that the industry is becoming more diversified, since just about every genre except hardcore hip-hop is hosting major stars, from Beyoncé to Kelly Clarkson to Miranda Lambert to Feist. Powers adds that women operating at a grassroots or mid-level can take more control of their careers; the legacy of 1990s pop feminism also lingers in the idea that women can be in charge of their music and their business, even if the strong feminist messages of that time have somewhat faded away.

Yet the contradictions remain, Powers says, explaining that images of women in dominant roles reflect a return to conservative ideas about sex and gender. “Typical,” she says, “of a wartime culture in which people retreat into old roles out of fear and the need to ‘believe’ in something. On one hand you have songs like Ciara’s ‘Boys,’ which is as ‘feminist’ in spirit as Helen Reddy. On the other, Avril Lavigne’s nasty catfight redux ‘Girlfriend’ and a million songs by male artists about strippers and call girls. I guess this is what happens when liberation goes halfway. Women can ‘do what they want’ now, but the intense self-examination and cultural critique that leads to real social change is not only diminished, it’s become suspect.”

So where does that leave women in music? It’s confusing, isn’t it? The music industry is in a state of transition. Though consumers are interested in music more than ever before, one of the main problems is that label execs haven’t quite cracked the code on how to create a new profit model in an era when technology controls the complex, largely unpredictable, and constantly changing business that is the music industry. Which, in some cases, is a good thing for musicians who have the gumption to release and market their own music. And, that, it seems could be the floorplan to a new revolution in music.