Obscuring the Feminine: BANKS, MØ, Dreezy, Halsey, Grimes

Mononyms are not a new phenomenon, especially in music. They’re first names (Madonna, Cher, Beyoncé, Aaliyah), middle names (Rihanna, Drake), last names (Feist, Morrissey, Hozier), nicknames (Sting, Bono, Fergie), or even something completely made up (Lorde, Xzibit). I get it. Parts of an artists’ name may be unpronounceable, like in the case of Björk. An artist may want to distance their personal life from their work, and a pseudonym helps create that gap. There’s a wealth of reasons for someone to take on a stage name and why not just make it one punchy, easy-t0-remember word?

What is a new phenomenon is female artists releasing music under mononyms that have no obvious gender.

BANKS, Låpsley, Grimes, NAO, Halsey, MØ, and surely more I don’t even know about; they all obscure the fact that they’re women. Taking it further, rapper Dreezy recalls nicknames of her male counterparts—Yeezy, Weezy, Jeezy—and if all you knew was her name, you might assume she’s a man.

Unfortunately, while interesting, I’m not exactly surprised these artists are not loudly advertising they’re women. Just a few days ago, someone at the Wall Street Journal fell asleep at the editor’s desk and let a terrible op-ed get published that advised women to use their initials online to curate a persona that didn’t right away convey that they were a woman. Because, you know, hiding that fact as long as possible is the only way we can be successful.

I’m reminded of a Veep episode where the president takes a stance on abortion, forcing Selina Meyer to also do so; her staff begins to craft a statement, beginning with the phrase, “as a woman,” to which she replies:

“I can’t identify myself as a woman. People can’t know that.”

It seems that some female artists feel the same way.

We live in a world where it’s radical to have women at the forefront of the production of their own music (so radical, in fact, that Rachel Syme wrote a piece on Grimes and other female culture-makers that you need to take the time to read) and when they are, if any men were even sort of involved, that’s who is lauded as the creative genius.

Beyoncé has been the executive producer of all six of her solo albums, has writing credits for almost every song she has released, is a part of the production team for every track, directed four of the videos for Beyoncé, and was part of the directing team of Lemonade. Yet, more often than not, she is (dis)regarded as a woman with a voice and a team of men who provide all of the words, music, and visuals for her.

Taylor Swift has written all of her songs with a small amount of co-writers, composed the music, produced many tracks, served as creative director of Red, and was the executive producer of 1989. Do I like what I know of Swift as a person or her music? Not really. Do I respect her hustle and the way she has taken more control over of her output over time? For sure.

BANKS and Halsey were co-writers on their albums; Låpsley co-wrote and was part of the production team of her debut; FKA twigs is the lead (and sometimes only) writer on all of her songs, in addition to production credits.

Why can’t we admit that women creators put in the same work that men do — often, painstakingly—but against all odds and with little recognition?

Because, even in 2016, we live in a world that, ultimately, still hates women. Perhaps that is why female artists are trying to draw as little attention as they can to the small but weighty descriptor that is ‘female’. Male is the default, to which women have had to relate their whole lives. Male artists aren’t asked specifically about a ‘male audience’ or if they’re “speaking for all men” when they make music. Men get to be individuals and their work does not reflect their entire gender.

The work of female artists, on the other hand, is not assumed to speak to men, not presumed to have been developed and executed by them, and when a woman fails, society reevaluates whether or not women’s contributions in general are valuable and worthy.

J. K. Rowling adopted the gender-neutral pen name because her series’s boy protagonist was thought to be ill-received if readers knew he was written by a woman. (It’s also worth mentioning that her other pseudonym for adult fiction is a man’s name. She is the UK’s best-selling living author; if she needs to be a dude to sell a book, there is no hope for the rest of us.) Much of the Olympics coverage of female athletes chalked their success up to male coaches, or even husbands. The all-female reboot of Ghostbusters had people asking the question “should women headline movies?” after it failed to make back its big budget. There has never, at least in my memory, been a male-fronted movie that, if it flopped, condemned all movies starring men.

That is a lot of pressure to live with every day as a creative. Artists obviously try to avoid failure, but that attempt is still no guarantee of success. And no one feels like they can make something that will represent 3.5 billion people.

Perhaps that is why some artists have chosen to abandon attachment to a female name, to blur their womanhood, to obscure their feminine. Such an identity is often a burden to carry in this world, and it feels easier when, even if just for a moment, we can put it down.