Double Standards in the Music Industry
The proof is in the media.
For as long as I can remember, I have seen and felt this weird split between women and men. Men hold open doors. Men always pay the dinner bill. Women are meant to be pretty. Women are meant to be pure. These ideas, though, were never explicitly said; instead, they were displayed in the people I watched on TV.
So when Britney Spears cut off all her hair only for the media to say mean things, I was shocked. This wasn’t the put-together “golden” pop star I knew.
It happened again with Miley Cyrus, though in her case, the backlash was needed. When Cyrus’ album Bangerz came out in 2013, the singer appropriating black culture.
I’m older now, and looking back, Spears’ sudden change wasn’t what the media said it was. Now I understand that even celebrities can burn out.
Change is a good thing… unless you’re a woman.
I blame it on the male gaze, though, of course, the cause of the difference between what we’re traditionally separated as male and female can be blamed on several things. The male gaze, summed up, is a heterosexual man’s outlook on the world in a way that pleases him. Laura Mulvey was the first to coin the term in her 1973 paper called Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.
“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role, women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Women displayed as sexual objects….”
Mulvey explicitly talks about films, but I believe her theory can be seen throughout the entertainment industry. Behind the male gaze, society seems to have built-in “roles” like the housewife or the caregiver. All roles of passive women. Beyond that, a woman had to look a certain way. Most ads are aimed towards having a message of looking their best at all times.
Overall, there are many pressures on women, more so on performers or the trendsetters or the role models. Either way, “perfect” comes with the title “entertainer.” Well, women entertainers.
Chris Brown, an R&B singer, sells out concerts and has a huge following. Yet, in 2009 he physically assaulted Rihanna; there was some backlash. Then in 2011, Brown released F.A.M.E. It received positive reviews; the album even made it on the Billboard charts and won a Grammy for “Best R&B Album.”
Taylor Swift hit the country scene young, fresh, sparkling. Her image was well crafted; each song only supported her good-girl image.
In 2016, Taylor Swift was caught in some drama involving Kanye West over song lyrics from West’s 2016 track, “Famous.” The drama was centered around the fact that Swift claimed she did not approve of Kanye’s lyrics “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why? I made that bitch famous (Goddamn).” That is until a video surfaced of Swift on the phone with West approving of the lyrics.
And then the backlash struck. Swift’s response? The singer went silent on her social media. I remember the day Taylor Swift left the internet, and the only people who supported her through it were her fans. Other than the fans, many were calling her a snake or drama queen over song lyrics.
Then Swift went on her Reputation tour where she addressed the drama with a speech, without naming names, of course.
“A couple of years ago, someone called me a snake on social media, and it caught on. And then a lot of people were calling me a lot of things on social media. And I went through some really low times for a while because of it. I went through some times when I didn’t know if I was going to get to do this anymore.”
Brown and Swift’s are two different situations with two different outcomes. I don’t think the outcomes matched the situations, but it boils down to a woman versus a man.
The music industry as a whole is set up for the male performer to succeed. Last year Rolling Stone reported that,
“In 2019, 14.4% of songwriters were female, compared to 11.6% in 2018 and 11.5% in 2017 — which moves the eight-year average only slightly upward, to 12.5%. The same narrative — if not a worse one — emerges in other parts of the industry: Women comprised just 5% of producers in 2019, taking the eight-year average to 2.5%.”
The music industry is a man’s world. From an outside perspective, women performers like Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj, and Billie Eilish are always packaged in a nice bow whenever they do anything. Anything the men do, the women must do two times harder. And they've told us these things.
“For a female artist, it takes a lot more to be taken seriously if you’re not sat down at a piano or with a guitar, you know? For a male artist, people instantly assume they write their own music, but for women, they assume it’s all manufactured.”
In 2006 the hashtag #MeToo movement started, but it took off in 2017 when actress Alyssa Milano. Many big names were brought to light for the bad things they have done. One of them is R. Kelly, who finally got what he deserved after roughly 20 years.
Then there were artists like Kesha. Kesha took on her ex-producer, Dr. Luke, with sexual assault allegations. The court dates and files go back to 2009. Along the way, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Pink, and Taylor Swift were brought into the mix. In 2016, Kesha gave an update to her fans,
“So. I got offered my freedom IF I were to lie. I would have to APOLOGIZE publicly and say that I never got raped. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS behind closed doors. I will not take back the TRUTH. I would rather let the truth ruin my career than lie for a monster ever again.”
Kesha has since released two albums since she broke away from Dr. Luke, but Kesha’s case against Luke is still ongoing.
There is overwhelming evidence that there’s a double standard in the music industry based on gender. The ratio of men to women in the music industry is large, though it’s not to say that these things don’t happen to others that don’t identify as women. But it’s frustrating to see mainstream media drag women entertainers across their headlines so blatantly.
Then again, no one should be publicly humiliated. Rather be taken in where they can get help, learn, or recover. Or maybe all three or more? Whatever they need to learn and since we as a society put entertainers on a pedestal that shouldn’t exist when we know they’re just ordinary people who took advantage of the talent they possessed.
