Objectification and Branding of Women in the Guitar World

[spudmunkey]

And flipped around, what scenario have we ever been in when we'd be the odd one out, and every thing was branded with sexy guys? I think it's impossible to stand back and say there's no problem with the imagery when we've basically never been in the reverse scenario.

I don't mean this comment to take away anything from what does happen every day, all day, to women.

But I always hated buying anything from Abercrombie & Fitch unless I brought my own bag.

 

[Sollipsist]

Basically it boils down to whether you think this is discouraging women. And let's face it, this is such a niche product that it's far more likely that any outrage generated over it will be the only way that most female guitar players ever even know that it exists.

To me, it doesn't look like there's anything holding anyone back from playing guitar and making music. If anything, the 21st Century has more people of all kinds making more music than anybody could ever possibly keep up with. If you made a resolution to only ever listen to female artists or bands with female members, 5 minutes online would give you a playlist that would take years to get through.

As far as becoming famous by doing it, all the hard work and musical talent in the world won't make it happen. Luck is a major factor, but standing out in any way definitely helps, and you could easily argue that women actually have an edge. 100% of successful pop stars are where they are because they appeal to adolescent (or arrested adolescent) sexuality and identity. All else being equal, a 20 year old woman who knows 3 chords has about a zillion times better chance of "making it big" than a 40 year old dude with serious skills. That's the reality, and anyone who tells you otherwise is blinded by their agenda or their personal issues (or both, because the two usually go together).

If there was any single issue that could potentially improve the playing field for everyone in a positive way, it would be to demand more musical quality and less shallow marketability. Skill and dedication has absolutely no respect for gender imbalance; you're either good or you suck. Maybe if we had less tolerance for giving people who suck money and attention, the real artists - female or male - would rise to the top without any gender conversation being necessary.

That would be real fairness... and call me a pessimist, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[TedEH]

I don't mean this comment to take away anything from what does happen every day, all day, to women.

But I always hated buying anything from Abercrombie & Fitch unless I brought my own bag.

Retail like this is a great example of what I was thinking. And it applies pretty directly because we're talking about similar kinds of marketing.

What I find weird about these examples though is that if you go into shops like that -> the women in ads are dressed the same as they are in ads directed at men. It's the context of the target demo that seems to make the difference between "this image of a sexy women is demeaning" and "this image of a sexy woman is empowering". Obviously that's a very shallow look at the situation, but it's something.

 

[bostjan]

The fact you have to get so oddly specific about each example highlights @narad's point.

Huh?
I didn't think those examples were oddly specific, at all. Anyway, what if they were? Each person's personal experiences are going to typically run specific, obviously, to that person's oddly specific life.

I've found myself in situations before where I was the only guy, or only one of two guys somewhere, and got some dirty looks because of it, and the circumstances were not in any obvious way gender-specific.

Overarching point, though, is "so what?" Does this make people uncomfortable for any good reason or are we just becoming overly comfortable whining about certain things publicly? I'm the kind of person who wouldn't give two shits about being seen in public playing an amp that had a dude version of the sexy librarian on it, if it sounded good. What would that be, a muscular dude wearing a sweater and glasses?

Ok, obviously, women feel more marginalized than men, so it's not a fair comparison, right? But then what would be a fair comparison?

 

[narad]

What's so oddly specific about those things? Is cooking oddly specific? We see all the male dominated things frequently because we're male. I assume there are a large number of women dominated domains that don't come to mind immediately because I don't interact with them frequently.

But I never claimed that there aren't areas where the female to male ratio is overwhelming. This is obvious not the case -- cooking as you say, I think nursing, flight attendant, etc., are activities that are dominated by women. That's not an interesting thing.

But...these areas also have no overt sexualization, imagery of sexy men geared towards them (as far as I'm aware, not being a cook/nurse/flight attendant).

And that's the important part -- not the set of things non-sexual activities that are predominantly male or predominantly female, but the intersection of that activity with a bunch of imagery that excludes the minority. I can't really think of a single example of the female version of this, but I could rattle off male versions all day long.

 

[MaxOfMetal]

What's so oddly specific about those things?

Direct-sell/MLS schemes aren't just Tupperware and Avon. If you look at list of the largest they are farm from either women operated or catered to.

Care to speculate the ratio of burlesque and "boylesque"? The target audience's gender?

The adults in my family give some pretty whacky white elephant gifts, but..... I'm just leaving that one alone.

Can you think of any other classes where that's the case? Out of how many that go the other way?

How many movies cater to women like Magic Mike, versus those for men?

I think the sex shop example speaks volumes about how men understand female sexuality.

 

[TedEH]

^ I'll give you that my argument was pretty weak. I've not got much to respond back with, outside of that I was trying to respond to the idea that we *never* (in the practical sense) encounter sexy portrayals of guys, or get into situations where we're the odd one out and feel oddly uncomfortable because of some kind of sexual tension. It's less common an occurrence for guys, sure, I'll give you that. And sometimes the circumstances are oddly specific. But it happens.

The target audience's gender?

I know it's not the point you were making, but just to latch onto this specific sentence, I think this is what it kind of comes down to, right? Putting a sexy woman on an amp clearly indicates that men were the target audience. And that's the bit that leads us around to the conversation of whether or not we're scaring women off of guitar playing by doing that kind of thing, right?

I think the valuable course of the discussion would be to ask whether or not this kind of imagery *actually* acts to keep women out of the domain of playing music. But how do we do that without, firstly, having women in the conversation to lend their perspective (since it's the one that directly relates to the question), and without just wading through a pool of mostly meaningless anecdotes?

 

[bostjan]

Did you know that the pink disposable razors are the same as the blue ones, yet cost more? Did you also know that the colour of the razor you use to shave makes no difference whatsoever, yet because of powerful marketing of pink razors toward women, most women still buy the pink ones? Same applies to pink guns, pink laptops, etc. These are all unisex products, and the association of colour with gender is purely a social construct.

This is a deep subject with tons of nuances and lots of subtopics, but the fact that the guitar industry is patronized by a clear and vast majority male, it's somewhat unlikely that we'd be able to get a female's perspective in this thread.

...which comes full circle back to @TedEH 's point above.

 

[TedEH]

I'm sure someone will be quick to find a way to rip this particular comment apart, but how much of this is men making assumptions, rather than any women actually caring?

I mean, I know women who play music and never have I once been told by anyone that they were turned off of music or guitar because of the way it's marketed in shops, or through art on gear or things like that. YouTube guitarists, or people's responses to "chick guitar players" are a whole other story, and I think that's a long uphill battle. I tend to think that if we could manage the part about being respectful in the cases where we actually encounter women playing, the marketing part would either be a non issue, or would resolve itself by virtue of the target demographic changing.

Is the rising sales of acoustics, and dropping sales of electrics possible a sign of that starting to happen?

 

[bostjan]

This is merely an anecdote, but, when I taught guitar lessons as the major source of my waking hours spent, females made up 20-25% of my students. Yet, when you look at notable female guitar players versus notable male guitar players on google or on wikipedia, it's about 1-2%. I do wonder if there is anything to that. Are women players discouraged 9 times out of ten, to quit playing before they "make it?"

 

[MaxOfMetal]

Did you know that the pink disposable razors are the same as the blue ones, yet cost more? Did you also know that the colour of the razor you use to shave makes no difference whatsoever, yet because of powerful marketing of pink razors toward women, most women still buy the pink ones? Same applies to pink guns, pink laptops, etc. These are all unisex products, and the association of colour with gender is purely a social construct.

This is a deep subject with tons of nuances and lots of subtopics, but the fact that the guitar industry is patronized by a clear and vast majority male, it's somewhat unlikely that we'd be able to get a female's perspective in this thread.

...which comes full circle back to @TedEH 's point above.

Gonna need a citation that women actually buy more pink stuff when an identical, non-pink option exists.

The only thing I can find is a Forbes article from 2015 that briefly mentions that pink items don't sell well to women.

Also, where do you guys exist where you have never heard a women's opinion on any of this? Do you just talk about the weather? Have you never talked about stuff like this with women you're friends with? Wives? Girlfriends? Sisters? Mothers?

 

[PunkBillCarson]

Not entirely sure if this is true or not, but wasn't the guitar's shape inspired by the body of a woman?

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Did you know that the pink disposable razors are the same as the blue ones, yet cost more? Did you also know that the colour of the razor you use to shave makes no difference whatsoever, yet because of powerful marketing of pink razors toward women, most women still buy the pink ones? Same applies to pink guns, pink laptops, etc. These are all unisex products, and the association of colour with gender is purely a social construct.

This is a deep subject with tons of nuances and lots of subtopics, but the fact that the guitar industry is patronized by a clear and vast majority male, it's somewhat unlikely that we'd be able to get a female's perspective in this thread.

...which comes full circle back to @TedEH 's point above.

fun fact: pink used to be considered a masculine color (and was quite popular throughout the 1800s and early 1900s for boys/men). The preference started slowly shifting towards pink for women in the 1930s/40s, which is also when the nazis began marking homosexuals with pink triangles.

 

[TedEH]

Have you never talked about stuff like this with women you're friends with? Wives? Girlfriends? Sisters? Mothers?

Most of the above in my life have zero interest in playing music and it's never come up in conversation as to why. An exception being my sister- who mostly doesn't play/sing much for time constraint reasons, being a mother of four - but she's never said anything about how it's marketed, or had any complaint about it being a "male thing". It was just never a factor, or was never brought up as one.

One of the bands I'm in has a female vocalist -> but she's someone who would be *attracted* to these depictions, rather than turned off by them, so.... probably not the answer anyone here is looking for.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Not entirely sure if this is true or not, but wasn't the guitar's shape inspired by the body of a woman?

Supposedly, but I haven't seen anything to back it up. the figure 8 shape and flat back first start appearing in the 1600s when the vihuela and some gitterns had those features long before the "modern"(ie mid 1800s in spain) classical guitar design started incorporating both. The spaniards like to claim that the shape is inspired by the female form, in part because it fits with the mythos of romanticism/the birth of flamenco guitar.

 

[PunkBillCarson]

Supposedly, but I haven't seen anything to back it up. the figure 8 shape and flat back first start appearing in the 1600s when the vihuela and some gitterns had those features long before the "modern"(ie mid 1800s in spain) classical guitar design started incorporating both. The spaniards like to claim that the shape is inspired by the female form, in part because it fits with the mythos of romanticism/the birth of flamenco guitar.

Thank you for clearing that up. My music teacher tried to tell me that once, but I didn't know if it was bullshit or not. What I'm REALLY interested to hear, though, is the perspective of a female guitar player on this whole issue. Even more, I would be interested to hear the perspective of a woman that society deems physically unattractive, because let me tell you something... Skinny chicks on an amp? That doesn't do it for me. I like my women to have a bit of meat on their bones.

 

[bostjan]

Gonna need a citation that women actually buy more pink stuff when an identical, non-pink option exists.

The only thing I can find is a Forbes article from 2015 that briefly mentions that pink items don't sell well to women.

Also, where do you guys exist where you have never heard a women's opinion on any of this? Do you just talk about the weather? Have you never talked about stuff like this with women you're friends with? Wives? Girlfriends? Sisters? Mothers?

If pink razors don't sell well to women, then why do stores still stock them? And why is it that 90% of the women I know closely enough to know which colour razor they use, use pink ones? Why are 31% of razors sold online pink ones when only approximately 20% of the people buying razors online are women (wikipedia)? This makes no sense.

Anecdotal, but I've heard women say that the pink ones cover more area or use a different formulation of lotion (they don't, and they don't). I think there might be enough misunderstanding pervading into our culture that a significant enough percentage of women think that they have to use a pink razor.

 

[TedEH]

I would be interested to hear the perspective of a woman that society deems physically unattractive

That's.... a can of worms if I've ever seen one.

 

[PunkBillCarson]

That's.... a can of worms if I've ever seen one.

A justified one, IMO.

 

[TedEH]

A justified one, IMO.

Is it though? In the quest to get the perspective of women, why does it matter how attractive the person is?