A Few Thoughts On…Misogyny in the Music Industry

Women should be allowed to create art without having labels pushed upon them that shape their careers.

I was listening to “Taste” by Sabrina Carpenter, and yeah, the song is great, but the line “I know I’ve been known to share” stuck out to me. It’s a funny line, it’s tongue-in-cheek, and it makes fun of all of the drama sparked by the release of “drivers license” all those years ago. This is no critique to the line itself, let me emphasize, but it honestly just made me a little bit sad when I heard it. I mean, this poor woman got absolutely dragged and annihilated by the internet for relationship drama that the public barely knew anything about. It made me think a lot about the labels and accusations prescribed to women that then shape their public images and careers.

Obviously, a prime example of this rampant misogyny would be Taylor Swift. She has been accused of being a serial dater essentially her entire career. She’s been called countless names and has had these labels and jokes follow her around going on 20 years now. They were never funny in the first place and they’re not funny now. I feel like this is a common occurrence in the music industry specifically. A female artist will be accused or labeled as something, and that then follows them around through their career. It’s sad, after a certain point the music is entirely disregarded and the actual things they have to say about their lives and their experiences are then ignored in favor of whatever stereotype they’ve been prescribed.

Even on a lesser level, you could look at Clairo. She was accused of being a “mean girl” early on in her career, and I do think that perhaps that somewhat stunted her success or growth (or at the very least was a label that followed her around for a few years). I do wonder what is going to come of Chappell Roan’s recent (and correct) statement about women in the music industry essentially being stalked or made uncomfortable by fans, and how they are expected to grin and bear it. Upon her release of that statement (even following the TikTok she posted about it), a lot of the discussion I saw from the general public about her changed to be verging more on negative rather than positive, which I found interesting considering how valid I think her statement was to begin with.

A lot of the time jokes are being made at an artist’s expense, and it can then hinder the art that they create. Music is rooted in self-expression, whereas a lot of these nicknames or jokes are deeply rooted in misogyny. I think that people are made uncomfortable by outspoken women, especially women that are outspoken about topics that are traditionally not discussed in the mainstream by women. Going back to Sabrina Carpenter, for example. Her music heavily relies on sexual innuendoes and how much she enjoys sex and being open about it. I think that this is part of what she pokes fun at in “Taste”; she’s able to kind of call out the people who seem to be uncomfortable with that, or those that hold that over her head even when she’s come out with some incredibly successful and genuinely well written and produced songs.

I just think that there is a double standard that runs rampant in the music industry. Bruno Mars has been outwardly singing about sex for years upon years of his career, and that doesn’t seem to be a main focus when talking about his music. John Mayer and Ed Sheeran also write a plethora of songs about their exes, but they’re never spoken about as “serial daters” like Taylor Swift once was. Women release songs about their experiences with ex-lovers and they’re deemed “petty”, whereas men do the same thing and they’re looked at differently. I definitely think that the music industry has made more space for women, but I also think that we have a long way to go.