Reading Between the Lines: Female Musicians in Rolling Stone Magazine










2 Harris, “Labelle,” 42.


3 responses to “Reading Between the Lines: Female Musicians in Rolling Stone Magazine

  • keraera

    Thanks for the opportunity! Awesome blog!

  • Gina

    What is your view of women being sex-positive? I feel like a discussion/mention of sex-positivity could save this article, cause otherwise it seems kind of… well… demeaning.

    The author assumes that the women featured in Rolling Stones Magazines would not have talked or been sexual, unless prompted. Perhaps this is true, but perhaps it isn’t. I feel like assuming that women are being pressured and/or coerced to be sexual rests on the presumption that either women aren’t or shouldn’t be openly sexual. This puts women in a box I think they don’t really belong in.

    Additionally, I think you would also have to prove that men are also not sexualized to the extent at which women are. Keep in mind, though, that men are sexualized in different ways than are women. I honestly would say that they are equally sexualized. Sex sells, in all industries, but I think it is even more true in the music industry.

    So, ultimately, while I think reading between the lines is good, I think that you can’t spend so much time reading between the lines that you miss the entire story.

    • kera

      Hi Gina,

      My view of women being sex positive is positive. Women can express their sexuality – as they often did during the mid-seventies. Most gender scholars, however, are quick to add that these expressions of women’s sexuality weren’t completely innocent. The so-called “Sexual Revolution” wasn’t liberating for some women (You can read Ruth Rosen’s chapter, aptly titled, “The Hidden Injuries of Sex” in The World Split Open, which details some of the negative effects of the sexual revolution).

      Female musicians, especially in Rolling Stone’s magazine, were not only encouraged to be sexual as part of their onstage persona, but expected to. As Orloff, Rhodes, and other scholars and female musicians have detailed, sexualizing yourself was nearly the only way to make it in the hypermasculine rock industry. In fact there’s an ad in Rolling Stone in 1975 that jokingly attests to that:

      While men could use their musical talents to appeal to male producers, women were expected and often forced to use their sexuality. Orloff illustrates in her book a common scenario for women trying to make it in the industry: “A new act to promote. A good-looking singer with her first solo album. It has cost her record company over $40,000 to get it into the stores. The young executive sighs and stares at the floor. ‘If she’d only go down on the promotion men, we’d sell a million records (13).’”
      So their discussion of their orgasms might have been genuine and empowering for these women in some way, but the point was that more of the article was spent on women’s bodies (including extensive physical descriptions absolutely NOT found in articles on male musicians), their sexuality, and their male muses and partners, rather than their talents. Men did express their sexuality a lot, but women’s body parts were often made the focus of these discussions (and images) of male sexuality, and in the articles their band/music was the focus of the article.

      That being said, there’s actually no way of knowing how much of what women said in these cover stories was legitimate or put in by male journalists and editors (as although more women were being hired, no women were put in charge of female cover stories). Their self-sexualizing articles, however, made a significant impact on other women trying to succeed and being taken seriously.

      You should actually read Rhodes book (mentioned at the top), as she, being a former pop musician herself, really nails the double-bind women experienced during this time.

      While you make a good point about how these comments by women were sex-positive, you have to consider not only the historical context (of the music industry, the women’s movement, and the sexual revolution), but also the fact that these articles are written by men and mostly for men – and sex sells. This was an industry built on hierachies of power. If women are trying to articulate power through their own self-sexualization, how much power can they really ever have?

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