WHY AREN'T YOUNG WOMEN TAKEN SERIOUSLY WHEN IT COMES TO MUSIC?

Girls at Harry Styles concert. @HSHQ on Twitter.

Last weekend I went to a pop-up record fair in my local city and while I was there, I was clearly spotted out by some of the vendors and they clearly decided that I knew nothing about music or the price of vinyl. One then went on to try and over-charge me for the vinyl I ended up buying. I challenged his pricing and it did go down but it left me wondering: did these vendors try and over-charge me that because I'm a young woman?

I'm not about to shout misogyny. I don't think any of what I'm saying in this post is really about gender at all. I don't think those vendors were sexist; I think that being a young AND a woman just didn't necessarily help. I think had I been older, they wouldn't have tried to over-charge, but I also think if I were a young man, they wouldn't have overcharged. It's the winning combination of being young and a woman that somehow means I'm less valid as a music listener.

Music is and always has been an old boys club in general, which means being a young woman interested in music is much more difficult than it should be and I'm going to use this post to explain it a little bit.

'Well, PROVE IT!'

Pete Wentz eye rolling. Didn't have an appropriate image so...this works.

Pretty much throughout my life, ever since I've started developing my own music taste, I've noticed that nothing is cool until the men between the ages of 15 and 40 think so. And even when you do like the same bands like them, suddenly it becomes a competition and the gatekeeping begins.
Gatekeeping, if you didn't know, is where people only let people enjoy/like things if they can fill a certain criterea. For example, you're not allowed to like an author if you know less than 5 of their books. That kinda thing.

I've mentioned many times in previous blog posts that I went through an emo phase and One Direction phase simultaneously, and often it felt like I couldn't win. I could say I liked One Direction without being borderline bullied but what was almost worse is that I couldn't say I liked emo artists/bands without being questioned on which songs I knew and what the names of band members were. These were the bands that, at the time, were the cool ones to like. Yet I wasn't allowed to like them unless I knew every single lyric to 'I Write Sins Not Tragedies'.

I'm not about to claim that it's only young men doing this to young women. It's not. But it seemed like as a teenage girl, I was having a lot harder of a time proving myself than the guys were. To be honest, I think a lot of it was just kids being assholes. But, there was still a little sense of 'Are they doubting me so much because I'm a girl?'.

Admittedly, there's less of a gatekeeping issue now with music (and seems to have moved on to things like gaming, but that's another issue). People seem to be getting used to the idea that you can like a music artist or a band without being able to write a biography on them. But there's still a lasting nick in my brain where I'm scared to say I like a music artist because I don't know that much about them.

'They're only liked by teenage girls though..'

Taylor Swift 'Reputation' concert at a stadium in Pittsburgh

The thing is, this idea of invalidating music taste doesn't just impact the young women, it impacts artists. I could easily name 10 artists that I don't believe are given the credit they deserve because their audience consists mainly of young women, or even USED to consist of young women and doesn't as much anymore but are still judged based on their demographic (that they shouldn't even be judged on in the first place). 

Let's give an example of Taylor Swift:

Taylor Swift is a multi-grammy winning singer-songwriter, who at the age of 20 penned an album all by herself because she was accused of using too many writers. She's completed two stadium tours and become one of the greatest selling female artists of all times. Yet, with all these accalaids, she's still not taken seriously. Why? Because her fanbase is majority young women and apparently, an artist with a demographic like that can't possibly be a musical icon despite having all the evidence to prove she should be. I could also talk about her own success being invalidated by a certain older male rapper because he thought his own opinion was better than the MTV VMAs judging panel, but I won't get into THAT quite yet.

This then leads, unsurprisingly, not wanting to be associated with fanbases of young girls and you know what? That sucks! Imagine being a teenage girl and hearing that your favourite artist is embarrassed by the amount that you love them. I get it though: if artists with a young female demographic aren't taken seriously, then artists are going to want to seperate themselves from the demographic. It's just a big, ugly cycle.

'The Beatles, that sort of thing, that's real music'

Beatles fans in 1964, somewhere in the USA.

People seem to forget that once upon a time, the Beatles weren't a classic band and they were predominantly supported by groups of young girls 'fangirling' over them. The above picture could easily be recreated at a 2012 Justin Bieber or One Direction concert. It would have been these young girls that helped The Beatles become as successful as they are. Without them, we wouldn't have the videos of the crazy Beatlemania and the sold out concerts all over the world.

Never forget that your favourite 'classic' band were almost definitely brought to fame by groups of young girls supporting them relentlessly, and your favourite song was memorised by thousands of them on the tours that made these artists and their money. When you think about it this way, surely the key to being successful is to have a major following of young women, so why do so many people, from music critics to the general public to the artsists themselves, look down upon it?

As a linguistics student, I know that young women are the innovators when it comes to new language variants. So, why can't teenage girls be seen as innovative in other aspects, such as music? I'm not saying that every boyband phenomenon that young girls like is the next Beatles, but to dismiss very successful artists just because of their demographic is bullshit. And to dismiss a young woman's music taste, and not let her like the things she likes, that's also bullshit.

These people dismissing every artist who's fanbase is majoritively young women, could really be missing out on artists that will be considered icons in 50 years time. So think about that, and maybe give your sister/daughter/female friend's favourite artists a listen to once in a while. You might like what you hear.


Written by Ruby Crowhurst
instagram: @rubyonmusic_