This panel explores how female musicians in our contemporary moment have
developed various “feminist styles.” It argues that deploying a “feminist style” through
fashion allows these musicians to subvert traditional norms associated with gender. This
panel demonstrates how such subversions have led to the fashioning of new forms of
performance and narrative, as well as genre and identity. It concludes that “feminist
styles” shift how popular music sounds and looks, and who it is understood to represent.
INDIVIDUAL ABSTRACTS Izzy Fincher, “Guitar Girls in Bikinis: Sexual Objectification, Performative Masculinity, and Feminist Fashion on Guitar Magazine Covers”Annie Clark, known as St. Vincent, became the fifth woman ever featured on the cover
of Guitar World magazine in 2017. With her signature Ernie Ball guitar, St. Vincent
poses in an oversized bikini print t-shirt – a feminist fashion statement intended to
highlight the hypersexualization of women in guitar magazines. In guitar trade
magazines, women are primarily depicted as groupies or glamour models in
advertisements and media content, illustrating the use of sexual imagery to appeal to
male consumers and reinforce the masculinization of the instrument. This paper
investigates the sexual objectification of female guitarists on the covers of two widely
circulated guitar magazines, Guitar World and Guitar Player. The cover artists featured
in this study include Nita Strauss, Sophie Lloyd, St. Vincent, Orianthi, Joan Jett, Susan
Tedeschi, Kaki King, and Bonnie Raitt. Through the framework of a feminist critical
visual analysis, this study investigates the intensity and degree of sexualization found in
photographic representations of female guitarists through the lens of objectification
theory, gender performativity, and performative masculinity of electric guitar.
Dan DiPiero, “‘(Revolution) Girl Style (Now!)’: Crushes and Femme Performativity in Indie Rock”While the idea of “girl style” came to national prominence with the advent of the riot grrrl
movement, what came to be known as “indie pop,” “C86,” “cutie,” or “twee” music had
been coalescing aesthetic expressions around traditional markers of adolescent
femininity at least since 1983. Arguing for a reading of indie pop as “soft femme”
expression (Andi Schwartz 2020), this paper traces the status of the crush in indie rock
from the 80s through today, arguing that the queer and feminist artists at the forefront of
the contemporary indie revival deploy and manipulate romance narratives in a variety of
ways that draw from the past in order to continue subverting hegemonic norms. Actively
aware of rock history and the role that masculinity has played in overdetermining
cultural imaginaries of the music, bands like that dog., The Softies, SASAMI, and Black
Belt Eagle Scout self-consciously and creatively work with romance narratives using a
variety of strategies as a part of their larger reshaping of the genre, a renegotiation that
has shifted how indie rock sounds and who it is understood to represent.
Resisting longstanding assumptions that treat women and queer folks’ romantic lives as
inconsequential, the first part of this paper outlines a turn to the “crush” as a
methodological perspective in popular music studies. Subsequently, I trace recent
developments in queer and feminist indie rock, particularly along the affective
orientation I have called “Big Feelings.” Finally, I analyze three techniques
contemporary bands use to subvert traditional romance narratives in rock music.
Ultimately, I suggest three categories of analysis for considering work by bands working
in the tradition of what Kate Siegfried calls the “grrrl crush,” (2019) including love songs
that undermine heteronormativity, love songs about objects other than romantic
partnership, and ostensible love songs that artists insist actually aren’t.
Kate Grover, “Revolution ‘boy’ Style: boygenius Fashions the Self-Aware Supergroup”It’s safe to say that boygenius, a collaboration between musicians Lucy Dacus, Phoebe
Bridgers, and Julien Baker, are aware of their status as an all-women rock band.
Whether dressing up as 90’s rockers Nirvana on the cover of Rolling Stone, paying
homage to The Beatles’s Ed Sullivan Show performance during their SNL musical guest
spot, or referencing the gendered parameters of genius in their group name, Dacus,
Bridgers, and Baker utilize various platforms to bring attention to their difference from
the male-dominated pantheon of rock history. At the same time, boygenius revels in
contradictory gender expressions, using queer embodiments to question gender norms
and make fun of rock culture’s reverent posturing. Like the feminist bands of the 1970s
who parodied cock rockers’ macho, and the Riot Grrrl punk rockers who encouraged
women to start bands as a means of disrupting the status quo, boygenius deconstructs
rock and roll’s assumed “maleness” to create space for fellow girls, gays, and theys. In
this paper, I examine how boygenius’s use of fashion, rock iconography, and tongue-in-
cheek performances of “female masculinity” situate the band within a linage of feminist
rockers critiquing the genre’s patriarchy.
Ajitpaul Mangat, “‘spill ur GUTS’: Olivia Rodrigo, Merchandise, and Asian American Women Who Holler”Cathy Park Hong, in Minor Feelings, describes coming across a new kind of Asian American woman during her teaching: Hong contrasts the “self-hating” Asian American women of her generation who “sat there meekly like mice with nice hair” with the Asian 2.0 woman who is “empowered and politically engaged and brilliant.” In this paper, I argue that Filipino American singer, Olivia Rodrigo, embodies the Asian American women of today who, as Hong puts it, are “ready to holler.” I begin by considering how Rodrigo’s development as an artist reflects Hong’s assertion that she herself “struggled to prove herself into existence:” I chart Rodrigo’s transformation from representing “minor feelings” (to borrow Hong’s term) on her first album, Sour, to expressing “
rage and dissatisfaction” on her second album, Guts. I focus on how the t-shirts that Rodrigo sells as merchandise for her Guts World Tour exemplify her burgeoning voice: these t-shirts feature variations of the slogan “spill your guts,” with some depicting Rodrigo spilling her “guts” while shouting. Such a slogan is far from empty, I demonstrate, as Rodrigo has used proceeds from her tour to support her charitable organization, Fund 4 Good, and “
community-based nonprofits that champion girls’ education, support reproductive rights and prevent gender-based violence.” I contend that this clothing has contributed to the creation of a political space during Rodrigo’s tour performances within which young women are empowered to voice their solidarity with other women. Such a space, I emphasize, is intersectional, with Rodrigo creating t-shirts featuring a phrase, “Perfect All-American Bitch,” that mocks her status as a “model minority,” an identity that has been used to isolate Asian Americans by pitting them against other minority groups. Rodrigo can thus, I conclude, be understood to use clothing to respond to Hong’s urging of young Asian American women “to talk.”
