Indieoma

As a feminist, being told that I have a lovely voice is among the most
painful and double-edged of compliments. That first sentence seems to be laced with arrogance, but it isn’t meant that way. I’m sure that lots of women love the idea of being able to sing, but I don’t value melody and harmony above subject matter anymore. If someone told me that they had been touched by the sentiment or felt close to a songs story I would be thrilled.
In short, I’d rather be told I’m clever than beautiful, because I want my life to be a thing worth living as long as possible, not just until I’m thirty.


I grew up in a town that values the arts much more highly than anything
else, and being able to sing is just something lots of people can do. It is also a potential way of making money. In that respect it is like
prostitution.


You can go right back to Adam and Eve to work out why women behave the way they do – in music or in anything else. For a woman seeking her fortune there are two choices: You can be a whore, or you can be a goddess.


Hardly ever are women applauded for their wit, their reason or their
clarity of lyrical vision. Such things remain the preserve of men.
Historically, writing for the people on subjects with a potential to be
universal has been a male endeavour. It is hard to imagine a female Bob Dylan or Billy Bragg because women are still only relatively recently (and largely only in the western world) liberated, but it goes deeper. Men
in music are not blameless, but this is a status quo that is reinforced by
women themselves.


Talent in women is still for the most part a reference to harmonic and
aesthetically appealing vocals and/ or rough edged vocals conjoined in brand with a sexy demeanour, and this is, for the most part, what most successful women in music do: Have a lovely pair of Talents.


The Goddess problem is something I have written songs about, and my problem with it can not be boiled down to jealousy, bitterness or any other criticism thrown at me for doing so. In a profession where lying is more lucrative, image is everything, and marketing is key, it is the easiest thing in the world to be a woman in music, and this does not just apply to the Aguileras and Spears’s. This is something that happens in the ‘alternative’ world all the time, only it is marketed as folksy, or elfin, or out of this world, or appealing to female audiences for their esoteric flowery ‘femaleness’. It is the ‘Other’ branded for a post-post-feminist generation – women using the same techniques used by men to oppress them, to market themselves.


Men have always fucked women over. But to play the same game: to betray feminism by admitting defeat and retreating into vain variations on the ubiquitous sex and beauty aesthetic is traitorous and despicable. For this reason I find myself wishing I was male. To be able to have as standard a history of writing, to not have to be outside of it, and to not have to be aware of the femaleness of my performance would be an incredible relief. For now, my rebellion
against the status quo becomes as contrived as acceptance of it – wearing black and simple clothes, whilst still being attractive; wanting to enjoy myself without becoming self-indulgent; being aware that this is entertainment and, by it’s nature, offensive to me, whilst still being able to communicate something with it.


As I’ve said, the romanticism inherent in the folksy, elfin and twee performances are just as much a betrayal as anything else. Being mad,
hysterical, out of this world: all of these things are every bit as contrived as poptart sexiness or R’n’B bump and grind. They are not an alternative, they are one and the same: it is just a subtler form of marketing a brand, and when that brand turns out to be an accepting woman I take issue.


The ‘otherness’ of a girl band is wholly of the status quo: It is not a
rebellion against men, it is almost always a staid reinvention of something created by men, that is dull, retro, and without substance. You are not doing it for yourselves, you are a pawn in your own game, but the game is still the same.


A good example from the poetry world has to be one of my favourite tirades
on the respective literary value of Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) and Virginia
Woolf. Before the wealthy and ‘romantic’ Woolf languished in Sussex
gardens and wrote and was applauded for her streams of opaque nonsense, the Imagist poet H.D., close with Ezra Pound, and described by him as writing ‘straight talk’, wrote precise, modern, and almost
mathematically perfect poetry. Her imagist poems are striking, harsh, and unromantic, but perfectly, perfectly TRUE. That there is less writing on H.D as one of the most important female poets of all time than there is on Woolf is heartbreaking.


H.D. is less romantic, less self-indulgent and much more in control of what she creates and yet Woolf, like so many romantic poets, gets the press. This is something I see all the time in music, because romance, however vapid, inane, and borderline nationalistic, sells well. So the Goddess singing
painfully above her range in a floaty nightie and a head-dress gets more credit, almost always, than women who try to tell the truth.


What’s the solution? Apart from sodding the lot of you, and getting a sex change, I think it is possible NOT to follow the most obvious path. The reason “You don’t know the song/ you can’t sing along/ and our daughters will never be free” is that when you follow the status quo you lose sight of the choices you actually have, until they vanish, and you’re left to wonder what the hell happened.


It’s important. We must not cease from the mental fight against inequality, against threats to our liberty, against a pervasive and enduring enemy. I refuse to accept that ‘this is just the way it is’. Women did not fight for you to be equal so that you could squander that equality.


Don’t expect to be taken seriously as a lyricist unless you write about
things that aren’t boys, girls, fucking, money, or the fairies on the hill. There will always be people who think you’re fit, or that you capture the Zeitgeist, so make sure there’s something behind those words, don’t just take off your clothes for magazines, and then answer to critics by saying
you were expressing your sexuality. Don’t do it to your daughters, they
deserve the choices you had, even if you ignored them.


And shut up about the voice, it’s the words that count.


_Julia Indelicate, March 2009 _



Links to the other Feminism posts:

Introduction

Anouchka: Fanny Business – The Art of Being a Feminist

KittyBlanche: Stage Fright

Nuala: Irish Women’s Writing, A Feminist Look

Barbara: Mrs. Mop and the Roosters

Jacki: Michelle Obama – Post Feminist Cover Girl

Karim: Imagine Me