Hi everyone! This class has been such a journey and I’ve loved reading all your blog posts and can’t wait to sit down and see all your independent studies. I did mine on Taylor Swift’s impact on the music industry, her standing up for artists’ autonomy, and just generally her impact as a powerful feminist and businesswoman. As shown, I made a huge drawing as my creative element, and the above link leads to my artist’s statement and bibliography.

Have a great summer!

Overall, I really enjoyed this course. The three posts that had the most impact on me were the oral history, disidentifications, and (although it wasn’t technically a blog post) the presentation I did on riot grrrls. For the oral history, it was really meaningful for me to sit down and talk with my dad about what he was up to at my age, as I’ve always felt like we’re very similar. It made me feel closer to my family and let me see my dad in a new way by hearing stories about his life I had never known before. As for disidentifications, I really liked reading about it because I had never had a word to put to that feeling before. I’ve definitely felt out of place in many areas of my life before, and I definitely want to go back and reread that to digest it more in its entiriety. Finally, I loved learning about the riot grrrl movement. I really love that type of music, and feel really inspired by women in music in general. At concerts for one of my favorite bands, they always have the girls come to the front to mosh safely during the last song, and I had no idea that that originated from riot grrrl, so that was super cool to learn about. I also love making zines and think it’s such a good way to express yourself. I really want to do more research on the movement because I think it is so inspiring.

Overall, I loved this course and wish that the whole corona situation hadn’t happened so I could devote more energy to it. Women and gender studies is a topic that is really interesting to me and something I think about a lot; I’m glad that I now have all these readings and really hope to look at them more over the next few months. Thank you all for a really great semester!!

Material feminism means discussing gender as merely an expectation put in place by society, our culture, technology, and everything that surrounds and affects us on a daily basis. It focuses on the things that force us into boxes and make people believe that women are less than men and should take up certain roles or “traditionally feminine” careers and hobbies. The goal of material feminism is to break down the preexisting idea of social roles and become equal and free to represent gender as we please.

Judith Butler argues against the fact that there is a pre-existing gender when we are born, rather that society molds us with the stereotypes of what it means to be male or female. This comes into sexuality a lot because people will automatically assume that women who dress more masculine are lesbians and that men who dress more feminine are gay, although that is obviously not always the case. A quote I really liked from the reading is “The political assumption that there must be a universal basis for feminism, one which must be found in an identity assumed to exist cross-culturally, often accompanies the notion that the oppression of women has some singular form discernible in the universal or hegemonic structure of patriarchy or masculine domination.” 

As for myself, I’m definitely lucky in the fact that my family never pressured me to dress a certain way or made me feel like I had to wear makeup or conform to any typical notions of femininity, rather they just let me figure myself out in my own time. I had a phase of really wanting to be a tomboy, and would refuse to wear pink or dress in skirts and dresses. Now as an adult, I definitely embrace my own femininity and when it comes to expressing myself and through my appearance, I do whatever feels natural. That being said, I’ve definitely noticed that dressing loudly and doing whatever I want with my makeup comes off very performative to others and it’s gained me a lot of negative and unwanted attention from men. Sometimes I feel really bad about it and like I may just be worsening stereotypes, but at the end of the day I’m just being me. Our gender is only as important as we decide to let it be, and should not limit how we appear or how others treat us. Everyone should be free and comfortable to be themselves, whatever that means for them personally.

Culture Wars are the opposing opinions around a topic; in the case of what Heywood is writing about, this is feminism. She speaks a lot on the differences between 2nd and 3rd wave feminists, and the gaps in their beliefs/practices that can cause friction, although at the end of the day they are both striving for a world of equality. This can cause outsiders to have false views of the movement, like the common belief that feminists “hate men” and truly think that women are better. This is mostly caused by the “unapologetic” nature of 3rd wave feminism. One quote from page 8 of the Heywood reading that I felt really helped this to come across is “The  lived messiness  characteristic  of  the  third  wave  is what  de-fines  it: girls who want to be boys,  boys who want  to  be girls,  boys andgirls  who  insist  they  are  both,  whites  who  want  to  be  black,  blackswho  want  to  or  refuse  to  be white,  people  who  are white  and  black,gay and  straight,  masculine and  feminine, or  who  are finding ways  tobe  and  name  none  of  the  above.”

Step 1:

I am using my independent study to reasearch sexism in the music industry, focusing on the career of Taylor Swift, and how she has evolved into the strong feminist that she is today. Throughout her career, she has been constantly belittled for many of the practices that men in the industry are idolized for, and repeatedly had her accomplishments falsely taken credit for.

Step 2: What do you need to know?

I want to look more into her battle for owning her own music,as well as times where she has talked openly about what it means to be a woman in the music industry. This includes speeches, interviews, her recent documentary, and even music videos. Some specifics I want to focus in on for my project are Kanye West’s claims that he made Swift famous, Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta taking away her masters, her award show speeches – in particular the 2019 Billboard Award Speech, and her recent single “The Man” and the documentary Miss Americana, both of which focus heavily on the role of women in society as well as the music industry. I will also need to research how she has evolved over the years, as people are constantly learning and she has not always been as outspoken and honest about her struggles as she currently is. Also, I plan to look more into how her writing and discography has been sexistly stereotyped for years, despite the fact that her subject matter is no different than anyone else’s in the pop genre. Her impact is incredibly huge and she is one of the most influential people in the music industry, and it is incredible how much of that she accomplished at such a young age.

The quote I chose from this reading is “No rock scorns me as a whore The earth means exactly what it says The wind is without flattery or lust Greed is balanced by the hunger of all So I embrace anew, as my childhood spirit did, the whispers of a world without words”

I really liked this quote. The author is right in that no matter what, you’re not going to be able to please everyone, and that they will always have something to criticize you on. However, judgement isn’t present in nature, and I think it’s so important to be connected to it. It alleviates pressure felt by the expectations and unfair judgements of others.

 I interviewed my dad, who was born in 1958 in Baltimore, Maryland, where he lived until he moved to New York City in the early 1980s. When I asked him to describe what he remembered from this time period, the first thing he mentioned was the Cuban Missile Crisis, during which he would have been only about 5. Despite being so young, he was scared for what would happen and described a “having a dream where my whole family was sitting in the backyard on top of the bomb, like it was a playground thing,” and also described how they kept 2 large trash cans of water in the basement in case of some sort of apocalypse.

My dad’s family was very political, and all his cousins and uncles were either running for office or helping the campaigns. He also mentioned how he remembered the Nixon vs. McGovern election, and that he and his family supported McGovern.

“My grandfather was head of city council around this time in the 70s. And there was a shooting at city hall. Somebody went into city hall and just started shooting people…he wasn’t killed, but I think it really did a number on him,” my dad said. He mentioned that it “was like the only mass shooting we ever heard of. I don’t even remember thinking of it as a mass shooting, I just remember thinking of it as this weird, crazy guy who just went crazy.” There was no fear of it happening again, whereas shootings today are so common that it feels like it could happen to anyone.

In the 70s, my dad described himself as a “wannabe hippie,” while his older sisters and brothers were the real deal. After my Uncle Jimmy graduated high school, my grandfather made him the manager of the restaurant he owned in Ocean City, Maryland and hired all of his friends as workers. 

“Because they all had long hair, PopPop made them wear wigs…it was a cultural thing, like he didn’t want people to know his restaurant was being run by hippies. PopPop bought a van for the store…but it was like constantly driving hippies around, you know, doing drugs and stuff….He rented them an apartment. They all lived in this like 2 bedroom apartment, it was like 10, 12 of them.” The year after my uncle managed the store, my grandfather hired actual workers and also my dad, who would have just finished 9th grade. He lived in a slightly bigger apartment with 14 other people, shared a bed with a girl he didn’t know, and they had to put an umbrella above the toilet because the upstairs leaked.

Also in the 70s, he went to one of the last rallies to impeach Nixon. 

“We hitchhiked down to DC. We got there; it was like a million other hippie events I ever went to. There were people smoking pot, it was just like a party, you know, and that’s the way I looked at it….it wasn’t as packed as the March for Our Lives…At one point we were on the mall..it was like the crowd as a whole decided…to give into this mass brain that’s really stupid, cause any individual would have any sense not to do this. But we all started going towards the capitol, and we’re gonna go to the capitol, I don’t know what we’re going to do there, we’re just going! We get..pretty close to it and there’s a lot of police on the steps…and of course we couldn’t go any further….so some people started picking up rocks and throwing them. And I was like ‘Oh, I don’t know about this, I didn’t sign up for this,” and then Chris picks one up and throws it and I’m out of here…so he left with me…It was not for me.”

He moved to New York City in the early 80s, to direct a film that his brother’s friend had written. “When I was in New York, I didn’t think about politics at all. It didn’t penetrate that world,” he said. Hearing that was interesting, because although we didn’t discuss the difference of that attitude versus today’s, I feel as though despite feeling the same overwhelming emotions of moving to New York, I can’t afford to be politically ignorant. Although he said that he viewed his stomping grounds of the East Village as being in a musical lull when he arrived, he still experienced the culture in really cool ways. 

“I moved to the East Village, 1st and 9th, with Jimmy. The East Village at that time, I would describe it…in a lull but in hindsight it really wasn’t. Musically, maybe it was, because if you go back a few years to the..late 70s, was really the height of CBGB’s and a lot of, just local bands that made really famous….When I got there that had kind of waned. But it was still the leftover from the punk – not all of CBGB’s was not these bands…I remember walking around the East Village and being afraid of the punks too. I couldn’t figure them out….they were like hippies but they had a different uniform.”

He also talked a lot about Pyramid Club, and how big things were happening there that he was unaware of at the time, as well as the people he knew and spent time with that ended up being culturally significant. “I think we tried to go once…but turns out that the people who were doing that…in ‘82. I don’t know if you know who Steve Buscemi is…him and that age New York actors, that was them! There were some things really happening but I either wasn’t aware of it, or I was too young, or I wasn’t plugged in enough yet…Then we knew the Manic Panic girls…I wasn’t close friends with them, but they were friends with my ex-wife…They did a lot of performing in clubs where they would just do these silly tap dance numbers…We played with them a few times. There was a TV Show that was filmed in Secaucus – The Uncle Floyd Show – that went national for one season…I did do some shows with them, but they weren’t anywhere near famous.”

Finally, when asked about the women’s movement, my dad mainly noted how it was portrayed in the media. “Through the lens of television..sitcoms where there were bra-burning jokes, and the liberation, it was just always seen as this funny thing. That was the response to it. There was this big push…I don’t even know when the ERA was first pushed…But there was a time when it got close, I think in the 70s. Just short of a couple states ratifying it….I remember the ERA failing and thinking it was weird, like why would it have failed?…I remember the idea that we thought we had conquered all that, in a very naive way.” He said he saw this in my grandmother, how she would attempt to make decisions for the household and be more assertive, but it was ultimately up to her husband. Even when it came to traditional expectations from men, he mentioned how his father forced him to play sports despite his lack of interest in sports.

Overall, I loved the process of interviewing someone, especially a family member. My parents have never been people to share much of their past with me, so it made me feel closer to my dad and made me see him in a different light. The interview recording is something I can save and look back on when I’m older and my parents aren’t around anymore, so that is quite special. I also really enjoyed hearing about my aunts, uncle, and grandparents, and what they were up to when they were younger. I really enjoyed the topics we covered in the interview as well. I’m really intrigued by these time periods, and it was cool to hear how someone I know was affected by them.