Objectification and Branding of Women in the Guitar World

[TedEH]

not nearly enough.

Okay, here's a question that will probably bring some hate my way, but doesn't require a female perspective to answer.

Why does there need to be more women? I don't mean that in an "I don't want them here" kind of way, I'm all for everyone being welcome. But what makes it some kind of requirement? Everyone should be welcome? Absolutely. But why are we dictating what women should be doing (or should want to do) with their time?

Edit: I mean that in the sense that "don't drive people away who want to be here" is a great goal. But I also have no interest in trying to tell people what they should be interested in.

 

[PunkBillCarson]

Okay, here's a question that will probably bring some hate my way, but doesn't require a female perspective to answer.

Why does there need to be more women? I don't mean that in an "I don't want them here" kind of way, I'm all for everyone being welcome. But what makes it some kind of requirement? Everyone should be welcome? Absolutely. But why are we dictating what women should be doing (or should want to do) with their time?

Not saying what they should be doing with their time, I'm just primarily interested in having more perspectives to draw from. Also, it's not that it's a requirement, it's not some kind of quota that anyone's trying to meet, at least not here.

 

[narad]

I was under the impression that they never diverged from the original purpose of sexualizing the subject. I still don't think that makes it tasteless. See my previous thoughts on sexual expressions being perfectly fine.

I don't think pinup art is tasteless, but the particular one for the amp, for whatever my taste is, does seem that way. I mean, this is why I'm of two minds about it -- for whatever reason, I like the thought that these girls were painted on these planes. So I can even sort of see what they were going for and ::gasp:: could even see it as sort of a cool idea, but then the execution, and then thinking about how that might affect others... that's why we have this thread

I'm reminded a bit by that "The Problem with Apu" thing. Lots of Indian people are not happy with that depiction of their race/nationality. I like Apu, and I feel like he shouldn't change, partially because he's often a hero character on the Simpsons. But that opinion sort of makes me feel like one of those guys in the south standing outside some General Lee statue being like, "I like it! It's history, and it looks nahss!", unable to really sympathize with how ludicrous it is to have rebel statue leaders in the US, and have black people having to walk by this monument to this guy that fought to maybe keep some of their ancestors in chains.

But you know, what class of things could you render completely tasteless. Is softcore porn tasteless? Is it tasteless to put a naked woman on an amp? Two people having sex on an amp tasteless? At some point, somebody's going to cave and say it is, and someone else can say, well that's a sexual expression, etc.

 

[bostjan]

If you tie this to my theory that people think they're less attractive than they are, I think this would be a good basis to understand why people have trouble understanding or acknowledging when they have certain advantages in life.

I don't think people are universally more attractive than they think that they are. I think most people think that way, but I would strongly wager a guess that the personality type that lends itself to being a "rockstar" would think itself more attractive than those people really are.

It's been speculated (I don't remember where I read it) that Susannah Hoffs was encouraged by the record industry to leave the Bangles partly because she was attractive and her bandmated were viewed as less-than-attractive by executives. The ladies in the band had been getting along with each other quite well up to that time, and there was no report of disagreement in musical direction, and also no reports of any of them wanting to stop touring at that point, so, I mean, I guess, why else would the band have broken up?

I don't know the SSO demographics... I sort of hope it's not as one-sided as I assume in my conversations, which is that there's like one girl on the forum, but I had hoped/still hope to get some female perspective in the thread.

This site is sort of a discussion point in the topic itself, as far as I'm concerned. Why is it that our most prominent female ss.o users tend to stick around (as far as regular postings) for a year or two at most? Either we are boring or intimidating or both.

In real life, I know a few dozen serious female guitarists, and, as far as I'm aware, exactly zero of them play seven strings or ERGs.

In the CS analogy, if we waiting until senior year to poll the remaining female CS students about their experience, we'd be missing the large pool of women that switched majors and miss out on understanding why they made that decision.

I took all of two computer science classes at the university. Mind you, this was in the 1990's, and things have changed since then, but I'd estimate that my intro to programming class was almost half female, and my assembly class was 100% male. IIRC both classes were 100% white students, despite the campus being maybe 60-70% white. (as a side note)

I'm more interested, personally, in the bigger reasons why women, strongly statistically, stay away from guitar and away from metal. Is there some implied machismo inherent in the instrument/genre, or is it socially discouraged, or is there just no interest.

Despite whatever fringe social movements are trying to do, the average male human and the average female human are different - as in different chemicals coming from different glands and also different done structure, height, fat content, etc. I truly believe that men and women have genetic reasons for having different aptitude levels, statistically speaking. I really don't think any of this implies >/< mentality. But, for example, because women have more x chromosomes than men, as a population, they are better at perceiving different colours, and men, genetically, are predisposed to being taller and more muscular, which is why women were traditionally gatherers whilst men were traditionally hunters. Women could tell the poisonous fruits apart from the edible ones, and men had an easier time chasing down wild boar or whatever - on average. I'm sure there were some men who were just as good at identifying berries and some women who were just as good at killing animals with a spear, but I think the facts agree that those were not typical cases.

So, I guess what I'm getting at, is, without any social stimulus telling any person to behave a certain way according to gender, would a man still be more likely to pick up guitar than a woman? Would this man be more likely to listen to metal music than this woman? I honestly don't know.

 

[TedEH]

But you know, what class of things could you render completely tasteless. Is softcore porn tasteless? Is it tasteless to put a naked woman on an amp? Two people having sex on an amp tasteless? At some point, somebody's going to cave and say it is, and someone else can say, well that's a sexual expression, etc.

This is probably the best argument against what I've said so far, and I've got nothing.

 

[bostjan]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do think we have some female members here though? There was at least one trans member I think too, but I haven't seen them post recently.

I can't think of any who have posted anything I've seen in the past 30 days, but there is one user here who used to contribute to discussions here about gender.

 

[TedEH]

I'd estimate that my intro to programming class was almost half female

I find that surprising. I went through one of those "game dev" programs, and out of 150 students from our year we had.... three women. And we're an industry that is trying about as hard as it can to encourage women to join in. Our office has only one woman in a technical role, and even that's a pretty recent development.

 

[narad]

This is probably the best argument against what I've said so far, and I've got nothing.

I don't think I disagree with that argument you were pitching earlier, just that there's a time and place where it's going to be more or less acceptable. And that the needle is probably currently miscalibrated a bit too much towards sexualizating very non-sexual things in domains where gender is heavily skewed and may be dissuading some amount of women from moving into it. Or maybe I should say, the needle within the guitar community, and the needle in the western world at large, are in two very different places, and that's going to create a little bit of a barrier to entry.

 

[bostjan]

I find that surprising. I went through one of those "game dev" programs, and out of 150 students from our year we had.... three women. And we're an industry that is trying about as hard as it can to encourage women to join in. Our office has only one woman in a technical role, and even that's a pretty recent development.

At the time, not to discount anyone personally, but it was a fact that there was an abundance of very nice scholarships available for female programmers, meaning that pretty much any female with above a 2.0 GPA enrolling in computer programming could get a free ride for as long as she could keep her grades up in core classes. I really don't know if those women switched majors or dropped out. My major was physics. Once I got to actual core classes, we had almost the same thing, 6 women and 8 men in the graduation year. Out of those, I was the only one who graduated with a physics degree. 2 of the men and one of the women dropped out, one of each transferred to a different university, and the rest changed majors. One of the women changed into engineering, which, if I'm not mistaken, is even more male-demographic oriented than physics, one into chemistry, one into business, and two into biology. Two of the men changed to mathematics, one to English, and one to engineering. At some point, we picked up a chemistry major who changed to physics, but then he fell behind me in classes, so he would have graduated the following year.

 

[narad]

One of the women changed into engineering, which, if I'm not mistaken

A common expression amongst female engineering students is apparently, "The odds are good, but the goods are odd."

 

[Lemonbaby]

I'm more interested, personally, in the bigger reasons why women, strongly statistically, stay away from guitar and away from metal. Is there some implied machismo inherent in the instrument/genre, or is it socially discouraged, or is there just no interest.

Let's be honest: Metal bands and musicians are often being unitentionally comic persons with their faux toughness and ridiculous (stage) appearances. I sometimes can't help but laugh at some metal artists/bands myself or find myself liking a songs's riff until some caveman starts grunting into the microphone. I'm probably just getting old...

Alternative theory: girls like to dance when they go out. Metal fans like to “hang out“ and drink beer.

 

[TedEH]

Is there some implied machismo inherent in the instrument/genre, or is it socially discouraged, or is there just no interest.

I think in metal there is definitely an element of that machismo. I don't know that it applies to guitar as a whole though.

 

[lurè]

A couple of thoughts about the concept of attractiveness.

It's a very old argument, was different in the past, it will be different in the future and is different nowadays depending on the culture.

The oldest "pinup" is probably the Venus of Willendorf, which is a figurine of a fat woman with emphasized parts of the body associated with fertility. Around 30 000 BC she was the stereotype of the sexiest and most attractive woman at the time.

Renaissance, mid 1480s, Botticelli's The Birth of Venus: a woman with very long hair, wide hips, small breasts and a clearly elongated neck. The perfect woman for the average man of 15th century; still a bit far from today's standards but closer compared to the Venus of Willendorf.

2018. The concept of "attractiveness" is different from the past and varies around the world.
We have social networks filled with heavely tattooed girls that are considered attractive and even Playboy had a tattooed model on its front page in 2017. Not long time ago this could have been considered gross and you couldn't imagine a Suicide Girl like a Botticelli's Venus.
(I have nothing against tattoos, it was just an example).

I've recently saw an interview of an anthropologist who spent the last 10 years among a tribe of natives in Brasil.
He reported that the most attractive men and women of the tribe were the ones that could remember and sing properly all the chants and the stories passed down by the elders.
Imagine how much attractive could be someone able to sing The Lord of the Rings in its entirely.

 

[TedEH]

What a weird place this thread has gone to.

And maybe telling that a discussion of women in any field has turned into a discussion about what constitutes beauty, instead of something like what values the female perspective could bring to the domain.

 

[lurè]

I may have missed the link between a pin-up on an amp and the current state of women's emancipation.

 

[narad]

After some time to really let thoughts settle, while I originally focused my thoughts on the broader picture, the most damning examples in my mind tend to be focused more on people's explicit behavior rather than images. You know the youtube comments female guitar players get. If I had to guess, that'd be way more off-putting than product branding -- though that's also because that's extremely off-putting. I don't make vids, but the thought of people sizing me up in that way is enough to not even consider it if I was a lady. I'm not saying branding is a non-issue and it'd be great to actually poll some women when making that sort of branding decision, but I have to admit that if I was a girl it's primarily all the other shit female guitar players go through that would be the most disheartening.

Once I really mulled it over though, the thing that really feels like bad taste is this case is the "smart" belle + hot finger-in-mouth in like a halloween costume version of an office worker pinup. I don't think if you ran this by any of my super smart female colleagues they would appreciate that depiction.

I'm reminded of this comedy special where the comedian was like, ~"I'm so sick of girls with their 'I heart nerds' shirts. Oh you love nerds? Let me get this overweight acne-covered DnD fan over here so you can love him! You don't heart nerds! You heart hot guys in glasses!"

Like just be honest with yourselves and call it "Hot Woman in Glasses Amplification"

 

[Demiurge]

I am a terrible liberal and exhausted by the search for thing being "problematic", and here, I have to offer that rock & roll has always had that sex element to it and its associated products are always going to reproduce it in kind. It was sweaty, hip-swinging dance music. The name rock & roll was a slang for the no-pants-dance. It's hormones through an amplifier. As its avatars, there will be scantily clad ladies and there will be guys in tight jeans and sleeveless shirts.

And in general, sex sells and cheesecake & beefcake will be employed. Is the discomfort really over branding & advertising being problematic as much as it is the self-awareness of this cynical era and the realization of how the advertisements are being used on us? We like to think that we know when we're being played, so having the next piece of gear we'd want in an ad or with a logo featuring a girl in a short skirt and push-up bra makes us feel cheesy- is that it?

 

[narad]

I am a terrible liberal and exhausted by the search for thing being "problematic", and here, I have to offer that rock & roll has always had that sex element to it and its associated products are always going to reproduce it in kind. It was sweaty, hip-swinging dance music. The name rock & roll was a slang for the no-pants-dance. It's hormones through an amplifier. As its avatars, there will be scantily clad ladies and there will be guys in tight jeans and sleeveless shirts.

And in general, sex sells and cheesecake & beefcake will be employed. Is the discomfort really over branding & advertising being problematic as much as it is the self-awareness of this cynical era and the realization of how the advertisements are being used on us? We like to think that we know when we're being played, so having the next piece of gear we'd want in an ad or with a logo featuring a girl in a short skirt and push-up bra makes us feel cheesy- is that it?

Rock & roll is dead. Like, for real. It exists only in parody. So I'm reluctant to reference old societal values as somehow being immutable.

But anyway, there's also absolutely nothing rock & roll about a few old white guys marketing a $4.5k amplifier for Dumble tones on youtube. This discussion wasn't even intended to be about rock & roll -- it could be comping jazz chord stuff, playing ...Simon & Garfunkel, etc. -- it's about the guitar community in general, not some specific genre of guitar music.

 

[Demiurge]

Rock & roll is dead. Like, for real. It exists only in parody. So I'm reluctant to reference old societal values as somehow being immutable.

I think that's why it feels so cheesy- see a dolled-up model holding a shredder guitar or something at a NAMM booth, catalog from the 80s or 90s, or apparently a logo- it's almost ironic.

At the same time, though, the same cheese/beef-caking is observable in other less-dead types of music so it's hard what to make of it. I think it's a continuation of the idea- rock & roll is dead but its trope are alive and well- it doesn't make it right but it's there.

 

[lurè]

Jackson came out in 2004 with that Jenna Jameson guitar.

A male can be attracted by the eroticism of a sexy woman on a guitar/amp.
A female can mirror her emancipation in the figure of a woman posing for a guitar/amp brand or in a pinup.

They both pay the same price if they want the product.

Brands don't make ethical choices by putting a a girl or a boy on a product, it's just a matter of what could potentially increase sales.