Sexism in the 1980'S Music Industry

Clark 1 Maureen Clark Senior Thesis Dr. Paul Schuette 3/24/2019 Girls Just Wanna Have Equality: Sexism in the 1980’s Music Industry By the 1980s, women were finally making their way into the American workforce. One can see that in many aspects of 1980s pop culture from the shoulder pads in women's suits in an attempt to make them appear more masculine and powerful as well as female empowerment movies like “Working Girl”. However, this rise in female empowerment was definity experienced most within the music, where female artist like Madonna to The Go-Go's were dominating the charts and the workplace. Despite the success that they were achieving, however, most women were still struggling to be seen as authentic or genuine, and most importantly they were fighting to be on an equal playing field as men. Webster's Dictionary defines marginalized as: “(of a person, group, or concept) treated as insignificant or peripheral”. Women have always been a marginalized group within the music industry since its conception, just like in almost every aspect of history. However, by the 1980s, women were entering the workforce at a more rapid rate than ever before, this affected every aspect of American culture along with its music. Despite more representation within the workforce, women in music were still often dismissed, despite the fact that many women and girl groups were making some of the most successful music during that decade. One reason for Clark 2 this had to do with the rise of MTV along with the sexism that has always existed in the music industry. Women had an incredible hand in shaping the music industry at this time, and because of the things they were able to overcome in the decade of the 1980s they were able to inspire generations of musicians to follow in their footsteps. It is next to impossible to talk about 1980s pop culture, but especially music without bringing up the impact that Music Television, popularly known as MTV, had on that decade. MTV launched in August of 1981, changing from that moment onward how Americans, especially Americans teenagers and young adults would consume music. Music would no longer be just an auditory artform, the music video was now just as important as the song was. Some people cite the rise of MTV as the first really big success of cable television. MTV’s format of playing music video after music video meant that there was a new need for masses of new content. The more air time your video got correlated almost exactly with how many records you would sell and since the music industry still made almost all of its profits from the sales of physical albums, getting your video played on MTV often was crucial. Unfortunately, this also contributed to the sexism against women in the music industry. Many male musicians and bands along with the persuasion of record labels used the concept of “sex sells” in their music videos. The majority male audience would tune in not only for the music but for the “scandalous” images that would play along with them. MTV, because of this, became seen as a sea of women in suggestive clothing being subservient to men. In the article Sexism on MTV: The Portrayal of Women in Rock Videos, by Lilly Ann Boruszkowski, she discusses the different ways women are objectified within these videos. She Clark 3 uses the Butler-Paisley scale, which is a scale to find and rate sexism in advertisements for her testing of MTV videos. In her studies with 110 random selected videos only 17 were considered not sexist at all, and 69% of them were listed within category one “condescending”. The condescending is described by Boruszkowski in her article as: “Condescending. The woman is portrayed as being less than a person, a two- dimensional image. Includes the dumb blonde, the sex object and the whimpering victim. This level of portrayal can include an aggressive, sexual role. Examples: Here women are used as sexual objects, or are presented in roles where others do her thinking.” Clearly women and young girls watching MTV were getting a horrible message sent to them when watching these videos, however one important thing must be noted about the Boruszkowski article, out of the 110 videos sampled only 23 of them were performed by “female and mixed groups” and the numbers of sexist incidents in those videos are far less than the ones in male music videos. Because of the sea of sexist content that was on display in MTV music videos, female musicians video often stand out as being a breath of fresh air. However, women often felt sexism coming from behind the camera. The second video that was ever played on MTV was Pat Benatar’s song “You Better Run”. Though not nearly as high quality and story-driven as her later music videos would become it is still incredibly important to look at in the context of this paper and MTV as a whole. The video shows Benatar in front of an all male band, dressed in a striped top and black leather pants. The majority of the video is shot from Benatar’s shoulders upwards, with nothing Clark 4 objectively sexist about the music video, however in an interview given in 1987 Benatar was quoted saying: “We were dancing and we were starting to tape and [the director] says to me, “come on, I want you to get out there and shake your ass, I want you to be hot.” And I went, like “f**k off”, and so the attitude that comes across on the video isn’t… it has nothing to do with what I’m doing. It has to do with the anger at this human being who had infuriated me so much. And, hey it’s tough shit. They’re spending $150,000, baby you better shoot (Benatar, 1987)” The women of Heart in the CNN documentary series “ The Eighties” talk about how the need for a sexy music video made them feel like the music they were creating was was secondary to the video the label and directors were producing. They discuss how the creative direction of the grand music videos, mostly made them feel like they couldn’t steer their own ship anymore and were losing the authenticity of their artform.These example perfectly sums up the sexism that has always and still sadly exist today in the music industry. MTV and the 1980’s didn’t create a sexist environment in the music industry, it had always existed. However with many women being at the forefront of popular music at the time, they were able to form their own narrative and break through the misogyny. In this part of the paper we will be discussing specific example of women artist overcoming sexism and how they have helped to shape modern music. One of the most important groups to come out of the 1980s was the Go-Gos. They were the first ever female group to write their own songs and play all of their own instruments to Clark 5 ending up number one on the Billboard charts with their album Beauty and the Beat, where they stayed for multiple weeks. Despite the fact that these women came up in the Los Angeles punk scene, they weren’t respected by many men in mainstream music. Often being dismissed for their Valley Girl aesthetic or told that they were “pretty good for girls.” Despite the fact that popular opinion of the band was that they were silly California girls writing unimportant pop songs, the group had a ton of talent and rock credibility, they came up in the LA punk scene with bands like the Germs. The women of the Go-Gos were able to have a successful run of albums and when the group inevitably broke up, almost all of the women in the band were able to have successful careers as performers or continued to write chart topping songs. The Bangles, an all girl group that came after The Go-Go’s, faced similar issues. They were only seen as the “New Go-Go’s” even though they strived to be their own individuals. They jokingly said that they weren’t the next Go-Go’s, they were the next Beatles. They were constantly objectified in interviews and like the Go-Gos, were told that they were pretty good musicians for girls. The entire music industry seemed pitted against making groups of women successful. However, the Bangles song writing capabilities were so strong that they were able to overcome the sexism and misogyny and be successful. Despite the industry trying to suppress female voices, many women were able to overcome the injustices and own their artistic freedom. In 1983, there was a big feminist anthem that came out, Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. In Lewis's book, she describes the importance of the music video and the messaging it gives to young female viewers: Clark 6 In Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, “fun” is articulated as an expensive and politicize concept for girls. Fun is defined visually both in terms of doing what boys do- getting out of the house (and housework) and onto the street- and in terms of the kinds of activities and relationship girls devise in their attempts to create complementary order of female fun. By including images of female roles in labor, the video exposes the social constructed limitations placed on girls who want to have fun. What is clearly not fun, the video suggest is assuming the duties of the mother and housewife.

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