Rocking Without the Girls?

Whether or not you happen to enjoy the music genre of rock (which almost any sane person does), you must by now have come to the realization that the overwhelming majority of the band members are male. In fact nearly all the major bands are all male. The female presence in Rock music is surprisingly lacking.

The gender mixed rock groups came around during the British invasion of the mid 1960’s with Jefferson Airplane, but who did not become widely recognized until the late sixties. The first all female rock band was Joan Jett’s The Runaways in 1975. As for the Runaways, interestingly they are a rather hard rock band. This may have been done to give the new raw edge of an “all girl” band in the music scene. If they are breaking into a formerly male only field, they may as well make a name for themselves. It wasn’t until the 19980’s that all female bands we able to reach the Billboard charts such as The Go-Go’s and The Bangles. At this time female bands were becoming less of a novelty and being taken more seriously as they should have been.

In the modern day there is only one all girl band that I can think of, The Donnas. There are quite a few that are of mixed gender, and just to name a few; Evanescence, No Doubt, and The White Stripes. The presence of women in rock music has been expanding, but is far below anything more than a handful. While just four named here doesn’t cover all of them, just think of all of the all male bands that are out there. Do Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Led Zeppelin, Queen, The Rolling Stones, or The Beatles come to mind? It appears that the all male bands are really the ones that attain lasting success. Mixed gender groups like Blondie can also have long lasting implications, but the female bands just kind of fall by the wayside for the most part.

Could it be that rock music is not “feminine” enough to be an accepted practice for Western women to take part in the industry? Pop music and country music have quite a proliferation of female artists, and if you remember what I said Joan Jett’s The Runaways were a hard rock band, possibly it is so because the girls needed to be just like the boys or more so to fit in. I believe that this trend of rock music not being feminine is changing. If we look a The Donnas we can see that they do not have a forced image of who they are, they are women who enjoy creating and playing rock music. If anything The Donnas use their femininity as a marketing tool for themselves.

Even today I think most people feel that all girl bands are a novelty, and not taken too seriously. With the changing nature of the industry, hopefully more of these all girl bands will make it to the main stream media, as well as the continuing expansion of mixed gender bands.

Eating Disorders vs. Pop Culture

Statistics say that eating disorders affect 90-95% of females in the Western society. According to the Massachusetts Eating Disorders Association approximately 40% of female college students have an eating disorder in this country. I find this to be quite shocking statistics because I am in college and I hang out with various females, yet I’ve never come across someone suffering from such a disorder. But it’s probably not that I haven’t come across a person suffering from an eating disorder, I just haven’t encountered someone who has come open to me about their problem.

I think it’s quite unfortunate that there are so many young ladies out there that are dealing with this problem. Eating disorders seem to be very silent. Silent in the sense that sometimes you can’t judge or tell by a person’s appearance that they are dealing with an eating disorder. And even if one was to know or sense that their classmate or friend is suffering from an eating disorder, the person can easily deny the accusation and take personal offense to your thought of it.

My main question is why are eating disorders so common? Why do a majority of eating disorder cases occur among females? Why are eating disorder rates increasing? In my opinion, the chief reason lies within popular culture and societies’ norm of what is “beautiful” and not so “beautiful”. Thinness is commonly associated with health and beauty. If you are an overweight, young female, then you are not considered to be the ideal woman because you don’t fit society’s norms of beauty. Now, who wouldn’t want to be considered beautiful, especially in the eyes of male counterparts? Everyone, especially females, rely so much on their outer beauty to get what they want in life and that includes being desirable to men, attention, advantages in work places, etc. It’s no wonder why so many women feel the outward pressure of keeping the ideal thin figure, even if it means depriving oneself of food or throwing up forcefully.

In addition, one of the other reasons that lie behind the motives of those who deal with eating disorders, I think, depends on their self image. The way we perceives ourselves, greatly influence what we do in response to fixing any problem we see or enhancing ourselves. I think it would be correct to say that people, who suffer from an eating disorder, don’t have positive views about themselves and pretty much have self esteem issues. I feel this way because many times, they are not as “big” as they perceive themselves to be and they tend to seek other people’s acceptance.

As society has evolved over the years, more and more people are becoming self conscious about their image. We are constantly reminded of society’s non acceptance of people who are overweight through movies and television that make overweight people the source of humor. It’s sad to see the damage that popular culture has made around the world and now we have to deal with it until the day that everyone can be accepted the way that they are and when the definition of beauty is more than skin deep.

Body Disorder in Pop Culture

In society, body dysmorphic disorder is a continuous problem. Body dysmorphic disorder also known as dysmorphophobia is a condition in which people become deeply concerned about some imagined or minor defect in their appearance. These concerns are usually focused on things like wrinkles, spots on the skin, excessive facial hair, swelling of the face, or misshapen nose, jaw, mouth, or eyebrows.

My first thought to this definition is that many people has this disorder, especially us females because the majority of the world is concerned with their appearance. Most people that I know, including myself has had either acne, long arms, small breast, a big forehead, thin lips, unmanageable hair, or some other kind of unsatisfactory feature that we absolutely hate. But looking further into the aspects of dysmorphophobia, I realized that this disorder is more serious than I had originally thought that is was.

A person with dysmorphophobia may avoid public places and some may go to any extent to rid them of the defect that they have through procedures like plastic surgery. Interestingly, I have a friend who has undergone surgery for a breast augmentation. In her case she felt inferior to other women, especially women who were well endowed. She would always say to me, “You’re so lucky, what do you eat, I wish I had your genes”. I hated when she said these things to me, one because she constantly stared at my breasts and two, because I hated the fact that she wasn’t happy with her outward appearance and always had to compare herself to others. Because of the “defect” she believed she had, she lacked major self esteem in everything else she did. When we would get dressed and prepare for an outing, many times she would not attend. She also hated dates in fear of the guy’s first impression of her. I would always tell her that not every guy drools over women with large breast because some men rather date ladies with brains and beauty. And fortunately enough, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. My words of encouragement seemed to justice. Why is it that so many people focus so much on beauty?