Chew your own arm off

Mamma Cass was large and great and she got play from the groupies. Joni Mitchell's latest album makes a point of showing her age. I think rockers of both genders need an "image" and that image tends, mostly, to be an attractive one. In fact, I don't know of the outliers/pretty ratio is that different for men and women at all. Rap has Big Pun and Biggie, but then we also have Missy, who is the opposite body type of Eve/Da Brat, et cet. But I don't think there are truly ugly rock/pop stars of either gender, just more and less attractive ones, which can be measured against individual or societal taste anyway.

What a bizarre question. I'm going to go at face value, and respect the fact that you're not being sexist, but trying to address a sexist issue.

The general "way of the world" in every sense is that men are allowed to compensate for not being *physically* attractive by being considered attractive and desirable for other traits (talent, athletic prowess, monetary success, etc.) while women are generally not allowed the same freedom. With a very few exceptions of vastly charismatic but not conventionally attractive women, most women still are judged solely by their appearance.

Clearly, society at large is reflected in its artforms, its idols and its music. Interesting that people bring up being fat as a token of unattractiveness so I will address that, even though there are clearly so many other factors. Because, obviously, conventionally unattractive women (Christina A?) with perfect bodies can and do make huge successes.

I have noticed that in other cultures (and here I step into the dangerous ground of bringing up racism as well as sexism) fat is not viewed neccessarily as ugliness, but is considered attractive. (I used to work with a Puerto Rican coworker who always used to hit on overweight women, saying "the bone is for the dog- the MEAT is for the man!" which I thought was a wonderful saying.) Hence why, in rap, you get women like Missy, and in "soul" or "R&B" you do get incredibly voiced and large women.

But then... (on even more perilous ground) I remember back in the late 80s, when the whole acid house explosion brought "black" club music into the mainstream, charts and MTV, when videos were made to appeal to "white" audiences, they would replace the actual (overweight) session players with skinny ethnic looking girls. I think it was Technotronic or someone, that the session singer (one of the Weather Girls, IIRC) sued, and the video was shown with an accompanying note saying "visual interpretation by... (name of dancer)"

Are "white" or "mainstream" audiences unable to accept overweight women, unless they're clear tokenism (fat one who can really sing) attached to not-so-good-singer with perfect body (Mamas and the Papas is a perfect example of this. As was their kids' band... what were they called? Wilson-Piper? No, Wilson-Phillips, sorry, Church fans)?

I don't know. I find the whole issue clearly fascinating, yet utterly revolting, and it's hard for me to think clearly or rationally about it.

You probably have 10000 David Crosbys or Shane McGowans for each Missy Elliott though. Women can get away with not being conventionally pretty if a.) they have an obviously huge, distintive talent (i.e. Missy - and even there, who knows who record labels are overlooking - or who is discouraged from ever performing publicly in the first place because of their looks) or b.) working in a genre where unprettiness is less of an issue, and might occasionally be an asset (folk, riot grrrl). Otherwise forget it. If Britney Spears looked like Mama Cass, they would have found someone else to sing "Baby One More Time".

Kate - I'm not sure rap or R&B are any less guilty of this kind of thing. Besides Kelly Price, I can't think of many Aretha-sized female R&B performers under the age of 40. With rap, just think of Foxy Brown and Lil Kim. And I'm also suspicious of the notion that it was to avoid turning off *white* folks that Technotronic videos featured models pretending to be the vocalist - they were probably worried about their entire target audience regardless of race.

I'd be interested to see what anyone thinks of this , which Maura sent to me yesterday. It's relevant, I think.

The only person I could think of off-hand is Peaches. Not ugly but.. not bothered? I've only seen her live, never a picture of her, so she might have been having a bad night..

Tom, the Bellrays are a great band. I have the ep split with Streetwalkin' Cheetahs and "Let It Blast". That article was certainly weird. I never thought of them as cashing in on their fat and ugliness.

"Aretha-sized " hee hee. She is a tank isn't she? Well I think living life as an ugly woman can tend to mold the personality. They feel less worth and may be then less prone to enter the male-dominated world of music. I have noticed women always seem to put a much higher value on live performance than men. SO maybe they tend to think of being a musician or songwriter as a public figure-type job, so if they are ugly they wiil shy away, whereas men can be hogs becaus ethe ytend to think more about the studio or the piano than the stage.

That girl from "Everything But The Girl". I think. I've only seen one video. And she seemed rather unattractive. Some magazine or site said she "got hit with the ugly stick". So maybe I was biased when I saw her.

This question had such great potential for talking about the differences between women and men in the music industry, and the amount of compromise necessary to make it, both from the perspective of the industry and of the general public that will be buying/listening to/appreciating the music. Oh well.

It still has that potential, Sean. Maybe you could give it a shot and try to pull the thread in that direction.

I was just thinking that. Gimme a few minutes to pull my thoughts together on this.

I think that one reason the Sopranos is such a popular show (after the obvious facts that's it's 1) very well-written and 2) very well-acted) is that everybody LOOKS LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE! In fact the only standout hottie would probably be Jackie Jr. and well, his Scrabble skills are a little lacking. I think audiences can believe a fiction better when the participants don't look like California surgery victims. (I love it when some sitcom has "the fat girl" on the show - in reality just a normal chick, but enormous compared to the stick-girl regulars.)

But maybe this is different for pop music? Do we not want our pop stars to be "one of us"? I think that's the assumption Michael Jackson's working under anyway.

Okay. I'm trying not to be too earnest or PC about this, because I've been there before and I realize how annoying it is. But I think maybe it's fair to ask a couple of questions about this.

Why do we feel it's important to ask the question in the first place?
As stated in the question, it wasn't meant to be sexist but ultimately I think it went down that path. Rarely do you hear someone commenting in the same way about authors--when was the last time you heard someone commenting on the physical appearance of a best-selling author? I'm sure it happens, but it's not common. Same goes for the people in the background, producing, etc. But you get a singer up there and all of a sudden you've got people commenting on his or her physical appearance as if it suddenly somehow matters. Why does it suddenly matter? Do you not want to listen to a female vocalist that you find unattractive because secretly we, as children of the media, harbour fantasies of meeting up with said singer, catching their eye and falling into a mad embrace with them (insert your own lurid details here if you feel this should go further)?

Why is there such a double-standard when it comes to men and women?
Else-thread sniping about Billy Joel aside, women tend to be the big target of this beauty contest mentality. You can certainly put a lot of the blame on this at the feet of the record companies, and the old sleeping-your-way-to-the-top mentality (or at least the promise of a bit of starfucker payback, ala Tommy Mottola). The entertainment industry has been like this for a good long time, granted. But why do we continue to put up with it? Are we brainwashed by the gloss and glamour of the beauty-queen style videos? Do we just not care? Thus we have Martha Wash being left out of Black Box's video and not being credited for the C&C Music Factory song, because people felt she wasn't attractive enough. (Note: She looks perfectly fine to me.)

Why do we force women into girly-girl boxes in the music industry and revile strong women?
Brought up in the Courtney Love thread, with other references to the riotgrrl thing in other threads. In general, the women who make it big in the music industry either are sassed-up ala Britney, or are presented as some fragile flower, ala. Sarah McLachlan or Dido. There are a few around the edges that make it on their own terms and retain their strength, like P J Harvey and Patti Smith, but at the end of the day they're marginal in terms of sales and exposure. I know a guy who absolutely cannot STAND Harvey because she "reminds me of the Plasmatics", and he then started muttering something about menstrual blood--while I don't disparage someone's dislike of someone like Harvey or, say, Diamanda Galas, I feel it should be for musical reasons and not because of some need for women in music to be considered manageable. Again, why should it matter? They're on your stereo, not sleeping beside you or attacking you every sunday at the pub. This is what I was alluding to in The Producers thread: women are held down in the music industry unless they conform to some male fantasy, and most of the the women that are independent are often marginalized, ignored, and even reviled. Whether you like Ani Difranco or not (and musically speaking, I'm unconvinced by her later material), it's almost considered embarassing to pick up one of her albums now. Why?

Now, with those thoughts aside, to answer the original question: Men can get away with it because we have a double standard. Truthfully, it doesn't factor into my listening enjoyment of any particular artist, male or female. I put it to you again: Instead of slagging off Tracey Thorn or Shirley Manson because they don't fit into your particular vision of beauty, why should this even matter?

Oh, and to follow-up on Tracer's comments...yes, I realize that TV and movies are definitely areas where physical attractiveness plays a major part in who becomes big and who doesn't, but I think that you often have a broader palette in visual: both young and old, the "beautiful" people and the merely plain (those that are considered "ugly" become the dreaded CHARACTER ACTOR). Because you have to look at these people all the time, the impulse to want beauty is maybe more understandable, if still escapist. But why does it seem like a bigger issue with music, where women are concerned?

"The same as the people in the background, producing etc' - don't these people have any importance in music? I know 99% of people are only aware of the existence of singers to the exclusion of the rest of the process, but we know better, don't we? The oversized R&B singer is already a comfortable niche for those with the girth and the lungpower. However,in the less-fashionable outlands - those 'people in the background' as well as the more muso end of things - I still don't see a female equivalent of somebody like Gary Moore, who looks like somebody attacked his face with a weedwhacker. Singers are always going to be a bit more 'presentable' - I'm more interested in the lack of distaff visual eccentricity in the realm of instrumentalists, producers etc, places where you don't think it SHOULD matter.

We had talked about this in the Producers thread too, about the lack of women of any kind throughout most of the behind-the-scenes part of the music industry. I agree. Where are they? I'm going to start a new thread on this.

One final addendum to my longer rant above. In the first section, I specifically talked to the male fantasy about wanting to end up in a mad embrace with the female performer because the thread was about "ugly women". Of course, this works both ways, I suppose, which is why you always see boy bands comprised of boys that look like they just waltzed off a runway in Paris instead of the punter from down the pub. The point still remains that it's easier for the general plain male to score media points than a plain woman. Just wanted to clarify that.

Was also thinking more about Tracer's comments about the Sopranos, and it got me thinking again about a major beef that I have with soap operas (hey, my mom always used to watch the Young and Restless during supper when I was still living at home, and now I sadly know enough about the history of the show that whenever I'm home I find myself asking what's happened with such-and-such a character): all of the characters look the same. During my last visit home, I couldn't keep any of the characters straight, because all of the male character had this chiselled look, with short spiky black hair, and all of the female characters had shoulder-length blone hair, a lost pouty look in their eyes, and generally the same height and build. Tracer's comments on the Sopranos hits home even harder because of that: compared to the obviously manufactured and vaguely Nazi-ish conformity of Young and Restless, Sopranos is a cornucopia or diversity and is all the more frightening for the ordinariness of the characters' appearance. Yes.

That's the really interesting difference I've noticed between American soaps and British soaps- in all American soaps, the actors/actresses are gorgeous, they have lovely homes, great jobs, and virtually no problems except these vastly overwhelming *fantasy* problems.

In British soaps, the actors are *fairly* ordinary looking. Yes, there are the obligatory stunners, but there are just as many old, or plain, or not spectacular looking people. (We are discounting the parade of lovelies that is Hollyoaks... mmmm... Finn...) They have ordinary jobs, and real world problems that their viewers actually face.

I'm not going to draw any conclusions between the two cultures, because I've already been told off for doing that yesterday, but I know which I find more compelling and more interesting. (mmmmm... Finn...)

The effect of British soaps on society is even worse than American TV's. As if being enthralled by a class system they claim to despise but secretly cling on to for dear life isn't bad enough, now they get their prejudices confirmed yet again by the soaps, with people "just like us!" Great, another justification for being just like everybody else. Do you notice in England that after speaking to somebody for five minutes you can predict everything else about them, and usually be right?

I mean, when a murder or something happens on a soap in England, it's printed up in the tabloids as if it was a real incident, and the great British public eats it up. The fact that a few people on the shows are a bit eccentric-looking doesn't make things any better.

Ooh! It appears to be mindless generalisation day today!

Hey, there's not enough anti-working-class prejudice in these circles. Just thought I'd even things up a bit.

You're half-right, Tarden. Hence why I never watch soaps.

Most of the comparisons here are off. If you're talking people hoping to get played on MTV, both the men and women have to be reasonably good looking. After that, it's up to the stylists. David Crosby, Billy Joel (and Janis Joplin), etc. are from the pre-video era, and would not likely have been anywhere nearly as popular today.

John Popper isn't a product of MTV, and neither is Melissa Ethridge (she's better looking than he is, by far, by I don't think she had to be.)

Speakig of Ethridge...isn't it funny that everyone hold David Crosby up as the ugliest rocker ever, and yet she chose him to father her kids? Must have been his pre-disposition to drug addiction and weak liver that won her over.

revive

PJ Harvey is a pigdog...

if it is just about the artist, music is not an art any more.
Kahlo was a celebrated artist, celebrated for her art, and
not herself as a person or image.

Dude, Missy is fucking hawt. Y'all trippin'.
And Salma Hayek's okay too.

Chew your own arm off ????????????????????????????????????????????