Women Suck At Guitar
According to this WaPo article, at least. I actually find this strange; I always thought the gender imbalance in rock, though large, was not ENORMOUS. I guess Britney et al sort of pad out the numbers of women in pop/rock.
Reasonable people can argue about whether there are any guitar heroines, and you might insist that Jett, Mitchell and a dozen other women have earned the title. But what's beyond dispute is a stunning gender-related imbalance when it comes to this particular craft and, come to think of it, every other job in a rock band -- drummer, keyboardist, bass player -- except singer. The only interesting question is why.
4 Comments:
For the most part, I pretty much agree with this position. However, that's not to say that a girl can't become great at any given instrument. It is to say, though, that all of our greatest rock musicians happen to also be male. Still, nothing hotter than a girl with a guitar.
The guitarist for the Donnas is a total rock star. She was fantastic. But this is like the "why are there no great women writers?" question -- blaming it on the double-X is often erroneous.
But I'll read the article, and give it some thought.
This doesn't surprise me. Though I didn't read the whole article, I assume that the argument is that there aren't many FAMOUS "good" female guitarists/musicians. The same thing can be said for a multitude of instruments and fields (even the world of professional flutists is dominated by males).
I believe that this has less to do with actual skill level, and more to do with our culture's acceptance and proliferation of the idea that women's place in rock is as a lead singer. Lead singers are the most sexualized of the band members, so it makes sense that a lot of them are female. And as far as Britney et al, I wouldn't consider them musicians, but rather performers. Skill is the last thing that has gotten them where they are today. (Key word - Boobies)
I think it's interesting how many female musicians abound in the "indie rock" category. This seems to be one arena that is far more accepting of the idea that women can be lead singers and a whole lot more. Yeah Sleater-Kinney!
That's my 50-cent. Take it or leave it.
oh, p.s. that was me (joy)
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