I’m gonna spill some tea.
I’ve wanted to make a post about this for a long time, but I was still pretty much a baby musical theater blog and I didn’t want to start discourse. Now, however… *stares into camera* the time has come.
I’m going to ask flat-out:
Why don’t we treat male and female Broadway performers the same way?
These days, when I write my multi-fandom text posts, I make an extra effort to include Broadway women. This is because I haven’t in the past, and that is entirely my bad. That’s inexcusable, but the reason I had such difficulty is this: there just wasn’t enough content. (And, especially since my posts got so popular, I was perpetuating that.)
Not enough content. Not enough interview references that would be widely legible. Not enough inside jokes. Sure, these women were widely admired, but they didn’t have a fandom. A culture, if you will.
Consider: I don’t see memes about the witty, stunning Jenn Colella. She’s the freaking leading lady of her show. The leading men of Broadway are showered with attention and praise, but put a woman in the front seat and…nothing. Also, I see endless gif and video compilations of Andrew Rannells moments, but hardly any of, say…see, I can’t even name a female performer with a comparable following. Speaking of Andrew, we watch things like Falsettos Side by Side and make constant jokes about him and Christian Borle and Brandon Uranowitz, but we barely give a passing mention to the hilarity that is Stephanie J. Block. (Or Susan Blackwell, who is literally the host!)
We idolize male performers so much more than their female costars. Part of this fandom issue is, of course, systemically rooted: female characters often being less richly written than male characters (sigh), less representation of women in general (I could easily list off a few male-dominated shows, but how many women-dominated shows can you think of?), Broadway actresses getting less mainstream media attention than their male counterparts for these reasons and more, etc.
But we can’t really say our inattention is due to a complete lack of women in our consciousness, can we? a) While onstage representation of women still has a long way to go, there are so many wonderfully compelling female characters on Broadway right now and b) even male actors playing supporting roles or minor roles are gathering huge fandoms (*cough* Ben Tyler Cook *cough* Thayne Jasperson *cough* Joshua Burrage *cough* Mike Faist *cough* yIKES these are all newsies. Where is the comparable fandom for the Waitress cast???). This is not at all to say that these men aren’t incredibly talented and don’t deserve every ounce of the attention–but where’s the comparable fandom for female performers?
In other male-centric fandoms, I assumed that it was a straight-girls-having-celebrity-crush thing. But in online musical theater fandom, so many of us are Not Straight™ that I’m suspicious that the celebrity-crush explanation fits. Maybe this explanation is still the case and it’s a loud minority sort of thing. I’m wary to write the issue off that easily, though.
For a fandom that’s usually so critical and so woke, this smells a lot like internalized sexism to me. Why don’t we hold women up in the same way? Is it because we think women aren’t as funny as men? Is it because excellence is lionized in men, but simply expected of women? I don’t know. All of this might be the case. None of this might be the case. This is all speculation, and I could be completely wrong. What can’t be denied, though, is this simple fact: we don’t treat male and female Broadway celebrities the same way. We just don’t.
And I mean, that’s sometimes a good thing. Honestly, some of the fandom surrounding male celebrities is a bit terrifying. I’m not saying to carry over the fetishization and near hero-worship. I’m just saying that female Broadway celebrities deserve so much more. They deserve celebration, not just passing admiration.
Oh, and don’t get me started on how race and colorism plays into all of this. I think y’all have already got that one covered, though! I hadn’t seen this topic addressed yet, so I wanted to say something.
Feel free to contribute your thoughts! :)
