The Reality of Being a Woman in the Music Industry
Hi guys! I realize it’s been an eternity since my last blog post, my apologies. Today however, I was feeling rather inspired. I thought I’d share with you, from my point of view, the reality of being a woman in the music industry today.
My sister and I have been in this business since we were 15. Sitting here now at the age of 24, I feel like I have some fairly-decent insight and a whole lot of experience on the subject.
Prepare for weird, sexist comments.
The way we started was on YouTube. It all started as sunshine and rainbows in the beginning; lots of “wow you guys are so greats” and “keep uploading” types of comments. However, after the first, I guess you’d say, “big video” for us, we realized that this industry was a whole lot tougher than they lead you to believe. It was around the 300k subscriber mark when the comments comparing our looks and voices against one another began, the “you sucks” as well as the “take your shirts off” or the “are they kissing yet” comments. At this point, we were freshly 17-years-old, still in high school living in a small town of 1,200. It was a hard dose of reality, but you could say coming up on this platform gives you a very, very thick skin. Friendly reminder; it’s a whole lot easier to say mean, rude or hurtful things behind a username and a computer screen. We held our heads high and continued-on this journey with confidence because passion is passion.
From 18 to 19, let’s just say a lot of things changed. We went from living in a small town to living in Nashville, with no friends except our champion of a mama, going into this business fearlessly. We not only lived in a new city in a new house, but were also spending a large amount of our time in LA. Now LA is crazy at any age you go there, but to us it was the biggest culture shock. At this point in time, the thought of living there was a joke. (little did we know we’d want to move there in just one short year.) Anyway, this is when what Liz and I like to call “music business university” began. Here’s just a few of the highlights of what we learned about being a young woman (or woman) in this business:
Are you a cute boy who sings? No? Keep moving please.
This was possibly the most frustrating part of performing live. At 18, 19, 20, you’re already insecure about growing into the woman you will be and constantly comparing yourself to the impossible standard that society sets us up against. However, Liz and I stepped on so many stages owning ourselves and accepting who we were at that point in time. The most difficult part came when we would follow or open for the young, attractive teen boys. To go from watching most of the girls in the audience screaming until their voices were gone and quite literally throwing themselves at the stage to rolling their eyes when we stepped on stage and mouthing insults to you and their friends was all sorts of discouraging. We could never understand where we were lost in translation. What did we do? Why don’t they react to our show like they do the young boys? Why aren’t we teenage boys? It was as if there was a mute button everyone pressed when a girl stepped on the stage.
Hair and makeup
Let me just say this: it is terrifying to walk into a new hair and makeup situation with a stranger who doesn’t know what kind of makeup you like. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had to “suck it up” and deal with what makeup and hair we were given that day because there “wasn’t enough time” to fix it. Talk about a confidence killer. I understand why most artists have a hair and makeup person they know they like travel with them, unfortunately we never had this luxury.
Not only that, but you have to make sure you have at least 2 extra hours to “get camera ready” or “stage ready.” This already puts us 2 hours less of sleep behind the boys, and yet we are still expected to get out there and do the same things. Not to mention you feel like the biggest diva ever for “demanding” enough time to get to looking like the standard everyone holds a young woman to look like.
Make sure you’re tan, skinny, wearing a good outfit, and push up your boobs if you’ve got them.
The impossible standards women are held to in society and in the music business are infuriating. Say you have an 8 AM soundcheck. As a woman, to adhere to society standards, you’d need to get up at 6 AM, workout, take a shower then head to your soundcheck. Then you’d head back to the bus eat, get your face and outfit on for the meet and greet at 3, then head back to the bus and change into yet another outfit (because outfit repeating is a no-no,) then head to stage at 7. Now keep in mind, if you were a boy you could have used this time to take a nap if you wanted. You play your set, hop off stage and back to the bus. Odds are there are a handful of people to meet or see after your set, then you wait for the headliner to finish around 11. You say your goodbyes, do a few more selfies and head to sleep at around 1. This leaves us a whole 5 hours of sleep. We are tired and we get up and do it all over again every morning.
Remember, you’ll do all this work to be 1 of the 4 female voices on the Country Top 40 Chart today.
I’m not writing this post to complain. I love every second of every minute of what I do. I just wanted to write this post to make more people aware of how hard women work in the music business. Now I’m not saying men don’t work hard, because they do. I just feel like society forgets all the extra little things women are expected to do. Be kind, be respectful, and remember that we’re doing this because we want to connect with you and share our stories with you, among many other things. We’re all that 8-year-old girl singing karaoke in her mirror, daring to dream big enough to make it in the big leagues. Next time you hear a female voice at a show, on the radio, at a bar, put yourself in her shoes. She’s honored to have the opportunity for you to hear her voice and her songs. She is probably running on little to no sleep and spent the last week picking out her perfect outfit. She might have just come from a meeting where someone told her no, or maybe this is her second show of the day where she was ignored by the male artist’s fans and she’s feeling discouraged. You don’t have to like her music, but respect her. You never know what battles she had to fight to get to where she is today. As women, if we all stood together and supported one another not only in music but in life, what an amazing world it could be. Women, listen to your fellow women.
PREACH.
