What It Means To Be A Woman In Heavy Music Today2

by Pandie Suicide

Let’s face it, a lot of the music industry is male-dominated, from artists to the behind the scenes goings-on, music managers and record label owners and execs, particularly in the world where I roam – the world of metal.

As a music journalist/host for such websites as Chicks with Guns Magazine (oh how I sometimes wish I carried a gun), Barebones Music and The Gauntlet among others,  I have seen sides of the industry that your usual fan , ‘headbanging enthusiast’,  metal ‘afficiando’ or whatever you want to self-identify as, may not have had so much experience with. While there are certainly a rank of women in music journalism, growing more and more so in metal, to the point where sometimes I think we almost outweigh the men in numbers…well…not quite, that’s about where it ends.

Step backstage into the world of the metal show, and everything changes. While there are certainly musicians and bands that feature female artists such as Otep, All that Remains, In this Moment, Lacuna Coil, Arch Enemy (oh how they give me chills!), Kittie, good old Joan Jett, Mary Magdalan,  Within Temptation, Bleeding Through, Hole ,Winds of Plague and more in the genres of heavier music, chances are you’re going to find yourself  backstage with a roadcrew that you’ll be lucky to find one girl in, and she’s probably in merch – sure I’m not down with all the heavy lifting involved with being a roadie myself, it’s just an observation, correct me if you believe otherwise – the band, unless it’s one of the aforementioned is probably mostly all guys, along with management, and security. Unless they’re the girlfriends/wives etc the only other females you’re likely to encounter are hangers-on, friends, girls that want to ‘hang out’, there’s nothing wrong with this, I am not making any judgements,  but the difference between them and the road crew, band, management etc, is that everybody else is working (and drinking/ smoking/ whatever but hey it’s the music biz that shit’s normal) and so it’s easy to be viewed in the same way, you’re a girl, you’re not here to work, you’re here to ‘hang out’. So it can be harder to be taken seriously as someone who is just trying to do their job and do it damn well at times.

But  then some of us thrive on that male/female dichotomy thing.  It can be the one thing that sets us apart. Hey we’re a hot chick, and you’re all metal dudes with long hair or whatever. It’s completely a point of difference, and sex sells. But does it really give you an edge being female, or is it a hindrance? I think it depends on the way you look at it and how you use or don’t use it to your advantage, and how seriously you want to be taken. Do you have to become ‘one of the boys’ to fit in or can you be accepted as somewhat of an equal even with a dress on? Or will you always be considered just the ‘sex’, no matter how many degrees in metalogy you profess to have?

Coming from a very ‘strong- independent –female’ type culture in my home of New Zealand, where women ran shit, as CEO’s of telecommunications companies, and Prime Ministers who ruled the whole country or whatever and we were the first to give us ladies the vote back years ago, I find this whole situation very interesting. Ahh another meaning-loaded word – “interesting” – just what does that even mean? .Dealing with being reduced to purely a potential ‘target’ to ‘hit’ and a gross feeling of being sexually harassed with the eyes, these are all great interesting parts of being a woman in the music industry. Maybe that happens in every industry, I don’t know. There’s less drama than when I worked in the cosmetics industry…I think…actually no. Maybe not. But the kind of drama is certainly more interesting. Negotiating this foreign territory where proving oneself is a game that never ends is interesting. Respect, legitimacy, these things are hard won here. Is it just that I’m different from everyone else or something, that I’m in an alien environment and nobody knows how to deal with that yet? The looks on some of these music industry guys when a girl like myself opens her mouth and says something intelligent. Jaws drop. Heads explode. It’s all very interesting.

I mean I’ve been in this business a long time – I was 16 or 17 years old when I won my first credible  little journalism award and picked up a pretty big writing award at 13,  and since then have  hundreds of credits to my name.  I love what I do!

But along with this I’ve also been on tour with 13 guys and myself on a tour bus for over a month, as the host of a tour (meaning I was the Emcee of the show, introducing the bands, hyping up the crowd and so on) there were days where hotel rooms, showers and anything other than truckstop food was off the menu. Sure I didn’t love it completely, especially as a vegan with the whole not having a lot of food choices to choose from but I got over myself, enjoyed every minute of it and would go on tour again in a heartbeat but with the lessons I’ve since learned probably do a thing or two a little different.

Along the way I got asked many a time how I was dealing with being on tour with this many guys at once, and being the only girl, how can you handle this, and other such questions which completely bewildered me, because for all the attention I’m drawing to the fact that there aren’t many women in the heavier side of the music industry right now, I still didn’t really focus on the fact that I was a female and everyone else was a male. I just thought we were people. And I also didn’t consider the fact I wasn’t male to be some kind of a weakness.  When we stopped off to visit a friend of the band on a day off, who went on to offer me a shower but not the rest of the guys, simply because I was a girl, I had to decline it. I wasn’t going to do that, just because I was a girl, it wasn’t fair. I loved going on tour and I highly recommend it. It’s very ’character-building’ and a lot of fun. Perhaps not everyone can handle it, but I don’t think being male or female is a complete and true indicator of who can or can’t.

At the end of the day, should we really even care about legitimacy and respect and all that crap? Not really. Bitching about things just makes you a bitch.  I should really  just get on with it and let my love for the music take over, and my actions speak louder than anything else, as we all should. I’ve said my piece, now it’s time to in the word’s of my friend Jeanne Sagan, killer bass player of the band All That Remains “ Have a good sense of humor, don’t take any shit, and work hard – I do what I do and hope that it speaks for itself,” – because that’s exactly what it means to be a woman in heavy music today.