From Rock to Porn: It’s a fine line these days - staff
 
Although there are thousands of indie women are out there making it happen “their way,” there are also plenty who are still falling prey to the old adage of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. As long as women allow themselves to be exploited, or worse yet, choose to do it themselves for gain, neither women nor the music industry is going to evolve one iota.

In the sixties when rock and roll really began to take off, it was about something. It was about changing the world, peace, and love. Yes there were drugs, there have always been drugs in some form or another, look at Billie Holiday and that whole era. But in the sixties there was a foundation, a movement, a purpose, an agenda.

After the passing of the seventies, and the death of disco (or so we thought, I see Madonna has revived herself and is now labeled the “disco deva queen, apparently her spiritual cd, released soon after the birth of her child, didn’t quite fill the bill), the eighties unleashed a new sexual rebellion. The sixties became cliche’, old tired and worn, along with its agenda. The new generation didn’t want to hear what their parents had to say, or what their parent’s music had to say. Women’s presence on stage was graced by the likes of Madonna, Pat Benetar, Blondie, Joan Jett, Chrissy Hines and Cyndi Lauper. They were wild, they were speaking out and they represented something women had wanted a long time and had not gotten, something alright, I’m just not sure what. They began to serve as role models for the up and coming and soon an entire plate of wanna-bes were flooding the scenes. This didn’t really happen with our earlier rock mothers like Janis and Grace Slick, I think there was too much respect to even try to emulate them, and not to say they themselves didn’t succumb to the adage. And as talented as they are even Cher and Tina Turner made it perfectly clear throughout the years that they would wear or not wear whatever they wanted. Or so we are lead to believe. Is that just one of the prices to be paid for stardom and fame?

A recent ad in a major city rock newspaper sports women in undergarments, leather, fish nets and four inch heals straddling guitar necks and cases. A reference is made in the same publication by an advertiser inviting women to come as “rocksluts,” to attend the opening night of a band whose name I will not disclose because 1. It violates my own editorial guidelines, 2. It is dishonorable to the female in all of us as well as in the spiritual light, and 3. I have issues about referring to my or anyone else’s mother in that light, you get my drift. Of course these are males, yes this is an all male band, however the females are participating none-the-less by supporting the music, by appearing in the advertisements. And there are plenty of female band versions of this going on. As a women's music site, we receive submissions on a daily basis and unfortunately there are some we have to pass by. Girls using guitars as a phallic substitutions are not what women in the industry need as peers and representation, and will not accomplish our mutual goals of showcasing our true talents in a positive feminine-based light. Our success needs to be based solely on talent rather than sex or the “if we can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” theory.

We are so eager to prove our strengths as women, so eager to break into the secret realm of the male-oriented rock world that some of us have become the very thing we detest and protest against in order to be allowed to play their game.

It is not about being allowed to play their game, it is about creating our own game by our rules, not succumbing to theirs. Pull down your panties or we won’t let you play. We’ll let you play if you pull down your panties. That was said when we were five years old by the neighborhood boys. And maybe some did and maybe some ran home to tell their mothers. We’re grown women now. Play it your way, make it your game. Be a class act because those are the acts that live on. If they’re busy looking up your skirt, they may not remember whose skirt it was, just that they got to look. We need to prove ourselves as artists, musicians, performers, song-writers, in honor and respect of the feminine, because we are feminine, not in disregard of it.

This too shall pass, this time in our lives and when we look back, what will we ask? What will our daughters and grand-daughters see as they re-live our careers through photos, video and dvd footage, and archived articles? Who will they see as women and who, based on that will they become? True feminine rockers, or glorified porn queens?