internet poptimism and i broke up and i got all the records.
thereâs something, i dunno, weird to me about this current âTEEN GIRLS ARE SACRED AND WE MUST LISTEN TO EVERYTHING THEY SAYâ meme, occassionally invoked by popcrit types. i know it originates from a good place, and so i donât mind it as a corrective to the monstrous disdain for young womenâs opinions our society undeniably has, but too often these ideas, idk, misrepresent actual real life teen girls who are still kind of immature and figuring out who they are, etc etc. i guess my real issue here is when âstop being awful to [young] womenâ turns into âteen girls have the best taste in everything!â especially when this idea is invoked by men in their 30s. because it is so often divorced from real life teenage girlâs experiences and opinions, because it is only applicable when teen girls like something that we want them to like, because most of those teen girls will grow up into women with completely different tastes who you will not care about. because most âteen popâ is actually consumed BY CHILDREN, NOT TEENS.because I bet there are as many (probably more) american high school girls who listen to Drake than listen to fucking One Direction but that doesnât fit the poptimist narrative so nobody ever talks about the fact that his fanbase skews young & female (nodisrespectozaynmalik, alldisrespecttodudesontheinternet). because when I was a teen girl my favorite bands were The Cure and Modest Mouse and I hated every non-rap song on the radio and I would have kicked out your poptimist teeth if youâd suggested that Britney Spears was âmyâ music. because i was wrong about pop music and i needed time to grow up and figure shit out just like anyone else. i was not a fully formed oracle of pop culture wisdom, i was a kid.
the idea that poptimism is somehow inherently more feminist literally disgustsme, as a woman and as a music fan. there are about 50,000 reasons why pop music is great, but the fact that some folks perceive pop music to be better because itâs more âfeminineâ or itâs âwhat women likeâ or some shit like that is downright insulting to me. we all know rockism was rooted in chauvinistic ideas, but that doesnât mean the polar-opposite perspective is immediately feminist. if anything, when poptimism tries to get political, when poptimists (dudes usually) make this argument that liking pop is somehow more progressive than liking male-dominated forms like rock, it mostly only serves to reinforce stereotypes about women, that we are frivolous and shallow and inauthentic and obsessed with spectacle over meaning. this whitewashes the fact that women have been fighting for equal space in less commercial, more masculine genres of music for decades. it posits that pop music has better gender parity for both performer and audience than a lot of other genres because women chose pop, when in reality we were just banned from every other clubhouse.
i realized a couple weeks ago that a lot of self-described feminist men on the internet are a lot more interested in elevating femininity than they are in the welfare of real life actual women. the denigration of femininity is a crucial part of sexism, but itâs not the only or even the most important part. and selfishly using the literal oppression of women to argue why you think a record is or isnât great is gross and unhelpful. i havenât got a problem with women explaining why they think a record is sexist or exploring how those themes affect their enjoyment of said recordâthat shit is awesome and important, even when i disagree with it. but sometimes I feel that for a lot of men these ideas (âbut the women [donât] like it! hereâs a link to one womanâs blog I read once!â) are simply another weapon in the arsenal to use against other dudes when arguing on blogs and forums and twitter. idk, maybe i am being too cynical here, but liking pop music (or hating dudebro indie rock) doesnât make you a feminist. To suggest that it does is a disservice to both women and pop. YOU MFS WILL NEVER BE MORE FEMINIST THAN ME AND I OWN âLIFE IS⊠TOO $HORTâ ON CD.
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