Music & Gender

As I mentioned in my first blog, I am someone that enjoys a wide range of music. To demonstrate this contrast, my two top genres according to Stats for Spotify are hard rock and K-pop. In the US, these genres tend to appeal to very different audiences. Most of the hard rock fans I know are middle-aged men. Most of the K-pop fans I know are girls. Though the fanbases are, of course, more diverse than this, this is how the demographics tend to exist. As an avid fan of both of these genres, I have received many, many, many comments about my interests.

My freshman year of high school, I walked into class with an AC/DC t-shirt on. My teacher raised his eyebrow at me and asked, “AC/DC? Can you name even one of their songs?” I am convinced that every woman with an interest in a male-dominated subject has been asked a variation of this question. (I got him to leave me alone by asking if there was a specific album that he wanted me to name a song from. And then listed all of their studio albums, marking the lineup changes. I... am a really big fan of AC/DC.) The assumption was that, because I was a girl and therefore not AC/DC’s target demographic, I wouldn’t actually know what I was talking about.

Being a K-pop fan has garnered even more judgement. Artists with largely female demographics have never been taken as seriously. Whether it’s BTS, One Direction, Taylor Swift, or even the Beatles at one point, there is always a lot of contempt for these sorts of artists. It’s like the music is assigned less credibility in society simply because the fanbase is comprised mainly of women. BTS and other K-pop boy groups in particular (Western boybands too, in all fairness) have never been taken seriously because of the stereotypes the media perpetuates of their fans as screaming, crying, 12 year old girls. I know plenty of grown people, myself included, that love K-pop. I know men that love K-pop. This usually isn't talked about because it messes with the idea that people have of K-pop and its fans. I'll use BTS as an example because they are both ridiculously talented and terribly well-known at this point. Anyways, there is some truly spectacular lyricism in many of their songs and their discography is so diverse that I really believe everyone would like at least one song of theirs. However, many people go out of their way to mock the group and their fanbase simply because of this weird narrative that surrounds bands with majority-female followings. If women are judged when they’re part of both predominantly male AND predominantly female fanbases, what are we supposed to be interested in?

I’m attaching a video of one of my favorite songs, and it happens to be by a member of BTS. I don’t think it sounds anything like the idea that most people have of them.

I also want to briefly talk about how both of these genres view women. Rock music has a lot of misogyny ingrained in both the culture and the lyrics. I mentioned before, I love AC/DC, but I cannot ignore their sort of objectifying portrayal of women. Honestly, though, the campiness and unseriousness of their lyrics actually make them one of the lesser offenders. Look at bands like Guns ‘n’ Roses or Motley Crue that sing awful things about women. Look at groupie culture. Even though I am a fan of the music of each band I’ve listed, I think there’s a lot of importance in stepping back to examine what you’re consuming and how it portrays certain groups of people. Sure, the guitar riffs sound great, but awareness is key. Not all rock bands are this way, though. There are some excellent women in rock like Joan Jett, Nita Strauss, or Debbie Harry. There are also a number of positive female portrayals. My favorite band changes fairly frequently, but I usually list it as Thin Lizzy because they are always near the top of the list. Their song “Rosalie” sings about a powerful female executive in the music industry. 

K-pop has made a lot of large strides in regard to their portrayal of women. A few years ago BTS came under fire for a song that they recorded in 2014. The lyrics are centered around a hormone-crazed boy chasing after a woman and have been considered both cringy and misogynistic. (But… it’s just so catchy.) Even though I honestly enjoy the song, the lyrics just fill me with tremendous secondhand embarrassment. You can tell they were young when it released. Here is the music video, if your morbid curiosity has been piqued.

BTS, specifically RM, the group’s leader and one of the major songwriters, has publicly acknowledged this controversy. After this, they actually took it upon themselves to get their lyrics reviewed by feminist scholars before recording. This is an action that I feel very few mainstream artists would take and I think it's rather impressive.

All of this was a very longwinded way of saying that there are major issues with how women are treated both as fans of a band and in lyrics. Really, people just need to examine their thought processes. It’s important as a consumer to be aware of the attitudes that you're absorbing.