I was in fifth grade and just hit what I now recognize to be my last major growth spurt. Jojo's The High Road was my favorite CD, I finally nailed the C chord on guitar, and I continued to style a tight black choker around my neck, even though Avril Lavigne's peak was long gone. Life as an 11-year-old music fan wasn't bad.
I was sitting at my lunch table chowing down on a PB&J and sporting a white Revolver t-shirt, with the faces of the Beatles looking extra distorted over my leftover baby fat and lumpy training bra. Cooper Lindsey, the tallest boy in my class, walked up to my table and hovered over me as if he had any business disrupting me and my sandwich. "I don't know why you like the Beatles so much," Cooper's eyebrows clenched together snarkily. Cooper continued to tell me that Blink 182 was better than the Beatles altogether anyway, but that I'm just a girl, so I wouldn't understand.
This was the first- and unfortunately not the last- time my music taste was ever put down because of the body part I held between my legs. I went home and looked up Blink 182 on Yahoo Music. Thanks, Cooper, for the recommendation! Got a lot of good music out of that insult…but better than the Beatles? You wish.
“Oh, I’m just a girl, lucky me. Twiddle-dum, there’s no comparison. Oh, I’ve had it up to here.” -Gwen Stefani, Just A Girl
Without women contributing to Rock n' Roll, the genre might have died out totally unfulfilled. Without women in music journalism, who would have documented any of it accurately anyway?
Music was created for anyone who would listen. From minstrel shows, to juke joints, to Woodstock, to Coachella, no one ever stopped making music to ask the question, good god, why are all of these stupid girls allowing the sounds of the century into their pretty little ears?? To which, I hypothetically would have replied with some sort of bad joke revolving around, boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider- that was my favorite come-back in fifth grade. Too bad Cooper Lindsey shocked me to the point of non-verbalization.
Music was never meant to be performed by one gender, although it was for a while, and writing was never meant to be written by one gender. Although, that seemed to happen for a bit as well… do you see a trend here or is my girl brain malfunctioning?
As our world becomes a more accepting place, we mustn't forget about those countries, those small towns, those industries and day-to-day workplaces that are moving at a slower pace towards equality; music journalism being one of them. One of the founders of rock n' roll journalism even believes that the industry in particular is, on the contrary, moving backwards.
"I think that there's more sexism now than there was when I started," said Jaan Uhelszki, who made CREEM Magazine a household name in the 70s. "We were inventing the form when I first started. There was no rock n' roll journalism yet."
Imagine that. No rock n' roll journalism. No one to interrogate the Beatles about their haircuts, no one to push for the official birth certificate of Robert Johnson, King of the Delta Blues, no one to relay to the public that Courtney Love was once a fat stripper…
Jaan was only a child when Elvis' thrusting hips were music's biggest concern, yet she recalls the music of this time totally taking over. She was at the prime age to become a rock n' roll fanatic- it would almost be strange if she hadn't become one. Growing up as the Beatles were emerging out of that, then, rather unfamiliar region of the world, Jaan remembers the way that it revolutionized life.
"It wasn't just the guys who wanted to pick up a guitar and be in a band. It affected me too. I wanted to know more. I was just really captivated by the power of music."
“Suddenly I see this is what I want to be. Suddenly I see why the hell it means so much to me.” -KT Tunstall, Suddenly I See
Jaan got her first job at the Grande Ballroom, a music venue in Detroit, and there, saw every 60s icon that passed through. She would get home at 2 a.m. and write mini reviews of what she saw. From there, she cleverly convinced CREEM's higher-ups, through a bribery deal involving free Coca-Cola thanks to her day job, to allow her to write for the magazine.
"I definitely made whatever sexism there was work for me," said Jaan. "Guys would think you were groupies or someone's girlfriend- no one took you seriously, so you could get away with murder." This helped Jaan to solidify her style of interviewing; she would ask anything her heart so desired to know, and would, most of the time, get an answer.
"A woman can ask a man a question and get a different answer than if a man asked him. I'll ask really blunt questions and get a different angle because I'm a woman."
Although using her femininity to her advantage, interviews were not always fun and games. Jaan revealed a story of when she interviewed Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin in 1977: "I was on tour with Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page was talking to me on my last day…but he wanted me to ask the female publicist the question (in English) and she would ask him, and he would tell her, and she would tell me." They were all sitting together in the same room.
Some interviews don't go as well as anticipated, while others are simply disturbed by a-hole, white, rock n' roll men who are either too stoned or too arrogant to cooperate. Still, Jaan figured out alternate ways to get all of the information she needed, like taking a peek in the refrigerator, as if to find hidden character traits in the artist's jelly jar.
Jaan had to do miscellaneous office work to keep her writing position with CREEM in the beginning of her career- something the men in the office never had to do. Even still, she was assigned to write about mostly female artists, or the artists that nobody else wanted to write about. This ended up working out in Jaan's favor, as one of her most famous pieces was on a fully-face-pained, platform-shoe-strutting band that no one really cared for (yet). She ended up getting on stage for a night with the band KISS.
"They were putting the make-up on me and I was like a fly on the wall," said Jaan. "They just treated me like one of the boys…they hadn't hit on me. I wish all of my stories went that way."
Jaan said she tries not to come off like the token female but uses her gender to ask more personal questions. Still, her goal has always been to just be seen as a writer. Not male, not female, just a writer.
"I used to work for Guitar World for a while. Me and the founder were on a panel once, and he said, 'you know Jaan, you write like a girl.' That to me was the biggest insult. Like, what does a girl even write like?"
"The goal is to not be treated like a female journalist. My name has made it easier for me; people don't know I'm a woman because of the second 'a' in my first name!" Jaan laughed.
Jaan ended our phone call by telling me that female writers need to help other female writers. "If we're not supporting each other, who will?"
“I love rock n’ roll, so put another dime in the jukebox, baby.” -Joan Jett, I Love Rock and Roll
It's crazy to think that some women truly root for another woman's failure. Let's leave that to the men, shall we?
Even the most powerful men can't stop a woman with the passion of music driving her. As Jaan was busy paving the way for other female rock writers, Joyce Millman graduated from Boston University's journalism program in 1979, hoping to find herself a place in rock journalism. Ten years later, she became only the third woman critic ever to be a finalist for a Pulitzer, but lost to a man. Shocker.
Millman began working for the Phoenix in 1981, and was one of three women there writing about music. "The staff was overwhelmingly male," said Millman. "It was like that at all of the publications I worked for."
At the Phoenix, Millman asked to write a piece on Madonna. "Primadonna," which ended up as a front-page piece, went from the original assignment of reviewing the True Blue album to Millman making the argument that Madonna was the one-woman girl group of the 80s and a huge influence on both women and rock n' roll.
"Madonna wasn't really taken seriously in Rock. It was on the cover of the Phoenix and I got so much negative mail back from it," said Millman. "People were saying the Phoenix was becoming a disco publication- people thought it was lightweight and it wasn't serious."
"Madonna injects middle-class ideas of femininity with examples of what feminism means to her, and it means simply 'equal opportunity,'" Millman wrote. "She offers an aggressive sexuality that implies it's acceptable for women not only to initiate relationships…but also enjoy them."
Millman said that the madonna/whore complex that Barbie represented came to life when Madonna Louise Ciccone posed in a punky white wedding gown, "for the laughably literal madonna/whore cover of her second album, Like a Virgin."
"I was 29 or so when I wrote that piece and I had a long way to go," said Millman. "My ideas about feminism and life in general were not formed. But I had always considered myself a feminist from the time I was in high school."
"You grow, you age, you see the way feminism really plays out in your day to day life. As I got more politically active, I became more and more of a committed feminist. Growing older you just don't give a shit anymore. I fight harder for it now. I fight hard for your generation."
“Put your troubles down, it’s time to celebrate. Let love shine and we will find a way to come together, and make things better.” -Madonna, Holiday
Madonna's influence was powerful, raw, and is still recognized today. Writer, performer and cultural critic Cintra Wilson said there was definitely a female-rock charisma back then that induced listeners everywhere.
"Hell, nobody was free from the influence of Madonna for years- decades even," said Wilson. "There were amazing rock stars before her, too: Joan Jett, Blondie; they just weren't as obvious as Madonna."
Rock n' roll influenced the way people carried themselves. It affected how they dressed, how they spoke, who they would shag, how they would shake, what they would smoke- the list goes on.
"I think there's a huge influence of sexuality in rock n' roll," said Wilson. "In the early 70s the combination of David Bowie and Lou Reid and Iggy Pop made everybody bi-sexual for at least two summers," said Wilson. "Society is in retrograde. We accept people and then we don't accept them again."
Cintra Wilson is known to be a very outspoken writer. Although her style has helped tremendously in the push for equality, she has always struggled to actually be seen as an equal writer herself when working next to men.
Wilson said editors and readers alike found it to be unbelievable that she could be a female and have anything funny to say, therefore making her work difficult to market. "They just never knew where to put me," she said.
Never knowing "where to put" her is an offense in itself, as the world around us seems to gender-ify everything- even style and genre of entertainment. What if J.K. Rowling actually went by Joanne? The transcript of the first Harry Potter book probably would have been thrown into a pile labeled, "woman author- eh, maybe later."
"I was a victim of chick-lit. Editors would always ask me, 'can we say this is like a 'Sex in the City' except for fashion or politics?' and my answer was always no," said Wilson firmly. "I've always thought of myself as a unisex writer. I've had to fight, 'do not make my book cover to that equivalent to a tampon box.'"
“We’re smart enough to make these millions, smart enough to bear these children, then get back to business.” -Beyoncé, Run the World
So, here's to being a female in the industry that prefers I be bursting with testosterone while I type away madly about a topic totally unrelated to gender. Here's to using my femininity like Jaan Uhelszki, to having my opinions challenged but pushing them anyway like Joyce Millman, and to standing my ground when a publicist wants to make a book of mine look like the outside of a tampon box.