I
n the past few weeks of January,
news headlines, social media and
essentially every aspect of my digital
media sphere seem to have been dominated
by Oscars news. Even for someone who con-
siders herself relatively removed from the
world of cinema, it’s impossible to ignore
the buzz. Discussions about whether the
Netflix Original “Marriage Story” deserved
its nomination, if a remake of Bong Joon-
ho’s “Parasite” would be inherently Western
culture-centric and therefore ill-advised
— and, perhaps the most prominent story —
the conspicuous absence of nominations for
women in major categories.
Lack of female voices in creative fields is
by no means a new development — in Octo-
ber of 2019 when the Museum of Modern
Art expanded its holdings to represent 28
percent of works by female artists, this was
seen as a major improvement in gender pari-
ty. Many stories in this same vein have taken
their turn in the depersonal-
izing spotlight of the 24-hour
news cycle.
Yet, somehow, each time
one of these stories highlight-
ing the lack of female voices
breaks, it triggers a familiar
response in me — lots of com-
plicated emotions, but pri-
marily deep-seated, visceral
disappointment. Lack of rep-
resentation for female artists
is not a new phenomenon,
and I’m obviously pleased
that these situations are get-
ting called out. Why, then,
does this subject continue to
feel so fundamentally upset-
ting?
Over this past winter
break, my mother talked me
into attending a jazz concert
in which some acquaintances
from high school were play-
ing. I was less than thrilled
about the prospect of attend-
ing for a multitude of rea-
sons: an ex-boyfriend would
be there, I hadn’t seen most
of these people in years. Yet
something else about the idea
of attending — something
that I couldn’t quite put my
finger on — made me uneasy.
I went, subject to my mother’s pleading,
and because I was quite frankly bored by
this point of break and had exhausted all my
hometown entertainment options. The band
was good, predictably — a conglomerate of
students and recent grads from prestigious
music schools across the country. Around
me, the primarily male crowd bobbed their
heads in time to the music, contributing
enthusiastic “yeah”s and “alright!”s if a solo-
ist played a particularly intricate lick.
Sitting in the corner, I felt myself unable
to engage with the energy around me. My
attention fixed on the bass player — a young
woman remarkably good at staying on the
beat and capturing the intricacies of diffi-
cult chord changes. I watched as she bit her
lip and squinted at the music, her foot tap-
ping and fingers plucking away at a steady
rhythm. I knew her vaguely — my sister had
roomed with her at a jazz camp and she was
studying at a well-renowned conservatory.
Her presence on the stage fascinated me.
She was one of two women in the sixteen-
piece band, with the other playing trumpet
in the back row. How must she feel, sur-
rounded by men to every side of her? More
interesting to me — how had she even made
it onto the stage in this performance?
In high school, I played piano in my
school’s jazz band. Freshman year, when a
boy a year older asked me to join his combo,
or small jazz ensemble, with five other peo-
ple, I jumped at the opportunity. I played
at gigs, a few of them even paid, and went
to jazz camp in the San Jacinto mountains
during the summer. I was a jazz person, I
decided. This was my niche, at least for the
moment.
Yet I found myself unwittingly begin-
ning to occupy a particular role in this world
I’d entered. The boy who asked me to join
the band called me “sweetheart,” insisting
he’d tutor me in the aspects of jazz I was
still uncomfortable with. The few girls in
the jazz ensembles I played in were relent-
lessly bombarded with male attention, and
not the wanted kind. The dynamic in our
school band was clear: The boys were there
to be musicians and improve and the girls
were there to make the band look more visu-
ally appealing. My high school band direc-
tor didn’t do anything to dispel this notion,
emphasizing his preference for women to
wear “classy dresses” rather than pantsuits
for performances and egging on boys in
their pursuit of girls in the class.
When I went to jazz camp during the sum-
mers, not a single instructor was a woman. I
watched my male peers laugh at instructors’
jokes, saw the gleam in their eyes as they
watched the instructors perform and knew
that my friends were seeing all the possibili-
ties of who they could become.
I never had the opportunity to see any of
that for myself.
Sure, I’d never intended to be a serious
jazz musician. But could my aspirations have
been changed if I’d felt that I had a real place
in the field? Jazz never felt as if it was made
for me. It was made for the men around me,
the boys following in their footsteps. I was
just lucky if I got to tag along for part of that
ride.
Watching that bass player in the perfor-
mance venue, all I could think about was all
the times she must have been called “sweet-
heart” or hit on in some other weird and
insulting way, all while trying to do her job
or perform the music she loved. I imagined
all the times she’d been asked to wear a flat-
tering dress for a performance. I thought of
her taking master classes with the almost-
exclusively-male teachers, having nobody to
see her future self mirrored in.
In the 92 years the Academy Awards have
existed, five women have been nominated
for the Best Director category. Five — in
almost a century. This statistic also doesn’t
even begin to touch upon the discrimination
toward women of color in the industry: In
2020, only one woman of color was nominat-
ed for any category, Cynthia Erivo for Best
Actress. It’s also worth noting this nomina-
tion is for Erivo’s portrayal of Harriet Tub-
man — which, as Vox aptly addresses, feels a
bit too much like a bad joke.
I can’t help but wonder if those women
in the film industry, in their directing
classes or internships or workshops, were
also called “sweetheart” by peers. If they
also had almost exclusively men to look up
to. If they also were painstakingly aware of
the space they occupied in any given room,
surrounded by men who never had to doubt
their place there.
If the continued lack of female represen-
tation feels simultaneously deeply familiar
and fundamentally unsettling to me — a
woman who has but dabbled in the creative
fields — what must it feel like to women for
whom this is their profession, their life?
It’s clear that creative industries around
us inherently value male voices more than
female voices. That these are the projects,
the films, the solo performances that society
uplifts, at the expense of their female peers.
I wish there had been more women, par-
ticularly women of color, nominated for the
Oscars, but that’s such a small piece of the
story. Before the films are made, a woman
has to decide she wants to be a director and
pursue a future in the industry. She has to
practice her craft, to apply for tough jobs and
internships, to decide this is her space and
she’s going to climb her way to the top of it.
And if the atmosphere surrounding the film
industry is anything like the jazz sphere —
and I have a nasty feeling that it is — women
have a long, unpleasant road ahead before
we get anywhere close to gender parity.
Wednesday, January 22, 2020 // The Statement
2B
Managing Statement Editor
Magdalena Mihaylova
Deputy Editors
Emily Stillman
Marisa Wright
Associate Editor
Reece Meyhoefer
Designers
Liz Bigham
Kate Glad
Copy Editors
Madison Gagne
Sadia Jiban
Photo Editor
Keemya Esmael
Editor in Chief
Elizabeth Lawrence
Managing Editor
Erin White
statement
THE MICHIGAN DAILY | JANUARY 15, 2020
I thought I’d aged out of this years ago. I’m sitting criss-cross-applesauce in my apartment while my roommate
straightens my hair. The brush catches my hair knots and pulls my head back like the boys in my elementary
school used to do, though it wasn’t because they liked me.
The hair situation isn’t going as planned. My curls are beginning to spring back from stress sweat, either caused
by the fact that I’m going to a dance with a stranger or the fear that I won’t fit in with the crowd. I have less than
20 minutes to figure out how I can turn my curly hair, acne and glasses into something remotely resembling a
The voices we value
PHOTO BY KEEMYA ESMAEL
BY MEGHANN NORDEN-BRIGHT, STATEMENT COLUMNIST