The creative arts are both fascinating and highly controversial components to societies and cultures all across the globe. All over the world, artists create sculptures, music, photographs, paintings, and other forms of art to express deeper emotions and feelings about themselves and external forces that may otherwise not be fitting for standard conversation. Even if one does not create, communities of people come together to admire and resonate with the creations of others and furthermore find a common ground between friends, family, and even complete strangers. Music is known best for doing this through a new emergence of music festivals across the world, music platforms, such as Soundcloud and Spotify, and an uproar in online journals. Unfortunately, while many want to create and be heard/seen/felt by others, there is a large barrier that many need to overcome for these artists to recieve the attention and credibility they have earned.
Women in the music industry can often times recieve a lot of fire from media outlets, Facebook trolls and commenters, and even other artists. Krewella, known across the world for their hit single “Alive” in 2012 and holding several headlining spots at festivals and venues alike, is often seen at the butt end of the joke, “You can’t do that, you’re a couple of girls!”
Shocking that someone would say that, I know. But, let’s think about this for a second: young girls with dreams and goals who looked up to artists like Beyonce, Krewella, Rihanna, etc. who are told they cannot do something because of their gender is absolutely sickening! Even worse is seeing women create and post their work to social media and recieving comments from men like “Leave the music production to men” or “F this garbage, take your tops off onstage instead.” In doing this, safety in expression and leaving it in the public eye is being taken away from women left and right (and trust me it isn’t just in art either. I’m sure you’ve heard jokes made about girls driving or how they’re only good for housework blah blah blah, it’s old.)
What needs to be recognized and acknowledged is that women are capable of creating amazing and life changing things without the help of a patriarchal crutch. Women need to stop being viewed as subordinate and incapable of doing things in a male dominated industry, such as music, and start being celebrated for how they change the game in a way that men can’t. Nicki Minaj has defied the rap game so much that Kanye West reconsidered her verse in his track “Monster” because it was so good, Beyonce continously floods the Billboard charts, Lady Gaga has brought light onto the struggles of being different and recently, Krewella is battling to prove that girls can produce EDM just as well as any other male artist. It’s time that artists celebrate each other despite their gender, race, sexuality, etc. and start raising each other up.