I am a musician. My head keeps constant rhythm to the beats pulsing through my body. Growing up, I dreamed of myself standing on an open stage, singing my heart out to the audience screaming back at me. A world without music doesn’t sound like a place I’d ever want to be.
I can only imagine that there are millions of girls just like me in the states, you know, the girls who dream of making music for the rest of their life. The kind of girl who bops her head to the synchronized instruments streaming into her head from the iPod she’s holding. I can say in confidence that I am not the only girl with the passion for music.
If this is the case, then why would the April 2010 edition of Rolling Stone Magazine, arguably the most well known music magazine to ever hit stands, show such biased evidence towards their writers?
Flipping through each of the pages of the magazine made me madder and madder. How is it that I counted 34 bylines by men and only seven bylines by women? Is this to say that women aren’t capable of writing a literary piece about a band, album or any musical phenomenon?
I read the articles the women wrote in the magazine, and three out of the seven articles are about women artists. Articles about Rihanna, M.I.A., and Coco Sumney (Sting’s daughter) spotted the pages here and there among a collage of manly bands. How could women represent such a small population of its readers?
Two men writers, Tim Dickinson and Chris Norris, were able to write pieces such as “The Watchdog”, a National Affairs piece, and “No. 1 The Black-Eyed Peas” the featured piece for the entire magazine. The ironic thing about the National Affairs piece was that it featured a story about a woman named Elizabeth Warren, a top financial expert for the government. One would only assume that this piece would have been given to a woman because of the previous evidence. Apparently women don’t know enough about politics to write a feature.
The music reviews section didn’t prove to be any less agonizing. Of the 14 music reviews, men wrote 11 of them, and women wrote three of them. Of the three pieces written by women, two of them featured female artists, Kelis and VV Brown.
The movie review section featured Peter Travers. He reviewed four movies, and rated them from three stars to two and a half stars. Personally, I feel that any movie review should be done between two people. Personal bias can easily leak into each article written about the movies. With two people reviewing, there is less opportunity for a one-sided view to creep in.
Overall, I personally feel that Rolling Stone Magazine is not paying attention to its readers and their needs. When women writers are only allowed to write features on women, how will they personally grow? It is hard enough for women to get respect in the workplace, and I can only imagine how much harder it would be in a man-dominated field like Rolling Stone Magazine.
I don’t understand when this misconception came about. Men and women know the same about music and bands, and yet there seems to be this subtle difference of how men are thought of as more knowing of music than women.
It is frustrating, to say the least, when these obvious biases are put into publications. I believe that in time, women will be able to bridge the gaps of biasness. My generation of women is very strong, independent women who are extremely capable of conquering whatever field they feel is meant for them. In years to come, I can only imagine how far women will go from now. In a short 50 years, we have already witnessed women in the workforce succeeding and doing well. Fifty years from now, we will see so many more changes!
