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Arts
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 — 3
“You’re not like other girls,” he says.
You are supposed to take this as a compliment.
But what he really means when he says this is that he
looks down on women and girls as a whole and you
do not fit the degrading image of women he has in his
mind.
And of course you don’t! Because (like all other
women), you’re unique and a powerhouse; these are
two things that couldn’t be further from that image of
women he has in his mind. This is something you’ve
only learned with time, or are maybe just realizing
now. If that’s you, welcome. I’m so honored to be a
part of this moment with you, and we are so glad
you’re here.
First, the crucial question: Where does the “not
like other girls” phenomenon come from? Obviously,
in the general sense, it’s the product of a patriarchal
society that devalues women. But the phenomenon is
reinforced in a plethora of ways in pop culture as well
as through interpersonal interaction (like the one
with our Average Joe above).
For example: despite my respect for Taylor Swift as
a woman, a musician and a strategist (Swifties, please
don’t come for me), the iconic and pervasive lines “She
wears short skirts / I wear t-shirts / She’s cheer cap-
tain, and I’m on the bleachers” are the poster child
for this trope. “You Belong With Me” shot to stardom
and still has a special home in the cultural zeitgeist
because it resonated with all of us, reminding us of
that pang of sorrow and jealousy we felt watching our
crush date someone else.
Over some delightful chords, Swift says what we
only wish we could have: You should be with me
instead. Unfortunately, the song doesn’t just say that
your crush should be with you because you’re great —
it crosses a line by arguing that your crush would be
better off with you because the girl he’s with now is
“like other girls” and you’re not.
In the equally popular cult-classic film “Pitch
Perfect,” Becca (Anna Kendrick, “Love Life”) is an
excellent archetype of this. She’s moody, she likes to
produce music instead of singing it, she wears dark
eyeliner, she refuses to partake in activities that many
other women find fulfilling, she rejects the advances
of the Dream Guy™ — you get the gist. While she
ultimately does find love and belonging in her rela-
tionships with other girls, the film elevates her as the
desired woman because she’s “not like them.”
A significant period of my life was defined by my
efforts to not be like other girls. I wore the same
Under Armour sweatshirts as the boys in my class,
I read the Warriors series when they did (you know,
the completely plausible one about the warring gangs
of cats), I wore the same DC skate shoes and I spent
my recesses playing knockout on the basketball court
instead of sitting on the bleachers talking to my girl
friends. Not that there was anything inherently
wrong with that. In hindsight, though, I did every-
thing the boys did, not just out of enjoyment, but also
because I thought that being “like other girls” was
a bad thing (wrong) and figured the best way to be
the least like other girls was to be like the boys (also
wrong).
As my roommate pointed out over one of our
mac and cheese dinners, it has “become cringe” to
say that you’re “not like other girls.” How interest-
ing that, as the concept has been interrogated, its
insidious nature exposed to the world, it is women
who take the fall. Even now, the message is clear:
It is the women who once fell prey to the ideology,
rather than the men who cultivated it, who should
feel embarrassed. From its conception, the “not
like other girls” phenomenon was destined for a
significantly long run before its current reckoning
because it obscures the role of the oppressor in pit-
ting women against each other, allowing for him to
abscond, even now.
In possibly my favorite tweet of all time, @mcapri-
glioneart wrote: “No, no, no. You misheard me. I
didn’t say ‘I’m not like other girls.’ I said ‘I LIKE
OTHER GIRLS. IM GAY.’” In another (now deleted)
tweet, @MissElla wrote, “im not like other girls in
their mid-twenties. Im childish like a 13 year old and
moody like a 90 year old on their death bed.” These
women illustrate (in the most amusing way pos-
sible) what we know to be true, now and forever: It’s
not embarrassing to be like other girls. In fact, it’s an
honor. I couldn’t be more proud of the ways I am like
other girls. I cherish the relationships I have with the
women who enrich my life, each one of them bring-
ing something special to the table I’d be worse off
without. They empower and inspire me to be the best
version of myself, and lift me up and accept me on the
days when I can’t manage that.
Loneliness, at one time or anoth-
er, has played a central role in many
people’s lives. Whether it is actual
isolation or a fear of it, it plays into
how people look at their social inter-
actions, and at the value of their lives.
How lucky we are that music exists!
“Outsidership,” especially when con-
sidered through music, is strangely a
very connecting experience at times,
realizing you and others see the world
in the same way. And there have been
so many fantastic musicians (Nirva-
na, Radiohead, Velvet Underground)
who express deeply their own per-
sonal experiences of outsidership.
Much of rock, indie rock and grunge
were founded around this feeling.
The more specific you get, the more a
general audience can relate.
My anger rises when these bands (so
often white, straight and cis masculine)
or their fans pervert the label of “out-
sider” and take it only for themselves. It
most certainly has to do with the feeling
of being wholly individual — but every-
one is a whole individual. Pop music lis-
teners are whole individuals too. Taking
the label of “outsider” and keeping it for
oneself is not what most of these bands
were about. Ironically, being an out-
sider is a shared experience. It is widely
shared by women, people of color and
members of the LGBTQIA+ commu-
nity. I have certainly stepped into many
rooms in my life full of men and instant-
ly felt an uncomfortable twinge as I had
to reconsider how to relate to them in
conversation, or if I should instead stay
silent. And there are many fans of these
bands, and some bands themselves, that
don’t fall into any of these categories and
refuse to acknowledge outsider identi-
ties besides their own. Although we
might all at some point feel desperately
alone, there are some who are born into
that and can never escape from it. This
creates certain bands and listeners that
thrive off making people uncomfort-
able. In communicating their own emo-
tional experiences, they use too much
anger, not enough empathy.
In writing this, I am not trying to
attack anyone’s social experiences.
Some prefer to exist mostly or entirely
alone. Some thrive that way and don’t
need people in their everyday life
to enjoy their existence. Some have
become alone due to others not talking
to them because they think they are dif-
ferent or odd, which in turn causes them
to talk to fewer people, and then fewer
and then barely any at all. These are not
the people I am talking about, and nor
would I ever want to criticize them. The
ones I refer to are those who use their
“outsider” mindset to suck the joy out of
art for others.
I have met countless people, often
men, with a superiority complex about
the music they listen to. They look down
on pop music, dismissing it as pap. At
one point, I bought into this. Entrenched
in the world of male-dominated punk
before realizing how deeply problem-
atic it is, I bought into a bitter outsider
mindset that looked down on pop
music, which I pronounced with spe-
cial derision. Then, amid discovering
the usage of swastikas and iron crosses
by bands [COPY: need a link here] like
the Ramones and the Dead Boys in the
CBGBs punk scene in New York (docu-
mented by Legs McNeil and Gillian
McCain in “Please Kill Me”), [COPY:
need a link for the book] or Sid Vicious of
the Sex Pistols, I realized how messed up
they had made this culture. The swasti-
ka, as they tried to explain it, served as
a symbol to shock people. [COPY: link]
Obviously, that is absolutely no excuse.
In their anger, they alienated those who
had already undergone trauma and trial,
who had literally been cast out of society
and tortured and persecuted.
They claimed the outsider label as
their own, making the punk scene a
worse place to be for people with actual
marginalized identities. As discussed in
Todd Haynes’s new documentary “The
Velvet Underground,” The Factory, run
by Andy Warhol and producing acts such
as The Velvet Underground, was a toxic
place for women, a place where they were
valued only for their looks. When you see
a whole music scene full of white people,
or full of men, it’s not because there were
no marginalized identities that would
have wanted to become part of the scene.
It’s because there was a lot of racism or
sexism or any other -ism involved. When
listeners consist of a majority of men, it is
worth asking oneself why.
Sometimes, the culture is formed by
the band. But other times, it is misinter-
preted by the fans. Especially with sen-
sitive subjects, it matters less the intent
that the artist created with, and more
the way the general audience will most
likely interpret the lyrics. For example,
Kurt Cobain of Nirvana was an avid
feminist, and wrote “Polly” and “Rape
Me” (both stories concerning sexual
violence) as middle fingers to sexism. He
believed that men should be educated
not to rape, rather than women being
asked to protect themselves. How-
ever, the lyrics to both of these songs
are incredibly incendiary. While he
meant them to be empowering stories
of women defending themselves, that
is certainly not their only or even their
most obvious interpretation.
Bands in such positions of promi-
nence have a lot of influence, and when
they release something, it will surely be
interpreted in a million different ways.
The source also matters; on discussing
with a friend, he remarked that these
probably would have come off quite
differently as Courtney Love songs,
rather than Nirvana songs. Even though
Cobain’s intentions were good, these
songs can likely serve to fuel something
terrible inside some listeners and do not
take into account his responsibilities as
an influential male artist.
Even if the mostly male, white bands
that filled these genres aren’t at all bad
people, not many of them considered
their domination of these musical
genres. It is due to this that a whole coun-
ter-movement formed (that of riot grrrl)
and is still ongoing. When searching for
indie rock bands in the ’90s, you have
to pick through legions of white men at
the forefront, before reaching people of
identities that society has automatically
deemed outsider. For example, Long Fin
Killie, an indie rock band from the ’90s
headed by Luke Sutherland, a gay Black
man, has just 1,470 monthly listeners on
Spotify. Although they made important
strides toward inclusion in one of the
whitest, most male-dominated genres
of them all, his and the band’s names
are virtually unknown. It is this form of
sexism, racism, homophobia, transpho-
bia, etc. that is the most prevalent: that of
simply not considering how much space
you take up, and whose voices are not
being heard.
It’s an honor to be like other girls
The real “outsiders”
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EMMY SNYDER
Daily Arts Writer
ROSA SOFIA KAMINSKI
Daily Arts Writer
Finding hidden gems has always
been an obsession of music fanatics:
stuffing eager faces into dusty crates,
with two fingers grazing the record
sleeves alternating to and fro, leafing
through hundreds of records to grab
some tantalizing faded cover art and
bring that forgotten music to the light.
When the needle hits the wax, the
question arises for the music collector:
To share or not to share?
Do we rush to have the song in
another’s ears, hide it away for the
perfect moment to surface or keep
it tucked away forever? What if it’s
shared to the wrong person? What if it
finds its way to the internet? What if,
God forbid, it gets to a place like Tik-
Tok or Youtube recommendations?
Before long, everyone’s playlists and
“Now Playing” are marked with that
special sound you worked so hard to
find, that secret gem you kept all to
yourself. These are the anxieties of a
gatekeeper.
It’s a perfectly normal consider-
ation, rest assured. We might all have
thought proudly to ourselves, I lis-
tened to them before they were cool,
in response to a shared appreciation
for an artist, slyly signaling that we are
definitely not jumping on any band-
wagon. We all desire to be just a tad
bit original; we all have a little hipster
inside of us that secretly delights at the
discovery of an untouched piece of art
that brings us the same level of enjoy-
ment as any other. Because as much as
we might like to think we are comfort-
able with the exposure and discourse
of our favorite hidden gems, there will
always be a time an album goes omit-
ted in a discussion, a song so obscure
yet so deliciously good it can’t even get
extended playlist treatment, an artist
we purposefully neglect to mention.
Gatekeeping is less an active cam-
paign to silence the spread of music
and more of an internal plea we all
have in our minds — in one way or
another, no matter how loud that plea
is actually voiced, the desire to keep
things dear to us safe will always ring
true. As much as we cheer for the
success of the artists that bring us so
much joy, the transition from obscu-
rity to popularity is one without its
pitfalls for devoted fans. The Japanese
funk band that hasn’t found its way
through the Youtube waves yet, the
bedroom pop artist you’re pretend-
ing wasn’t just reviewed by Pitchfork,
the 15,000 monthly listener indie-folk
artists you could have sworn was only
1,500 a month ago, as much as we’d
like to champion around their success,
there’s a small part of us unwilling to
let that go. So where does this desire to
gatekeep come from?
Discovery is inevitable, and it’s safe
to say that gatekeepers understand
that. If they have confidence in the
quality of what they are attempting
to gatekeep, whether that be a psy-
chedelic pop artist from the ’70s that
verges a little too hard on the abstract
or an album only available on the deep
reaches of Youtube, they also have
the slight doubt in their mind that
quality will inevitably translate into
pedestrian attention marked by Spo-
tify curated playlists and mainstream
publication reviews. Gatekeeping is
impossible, yet it prevails despite futile
efforts. It’s not so much a tangible abil-
ity to control the spread of informa-
tion — especially in our time where
it spreads at such a rapid pace — but
rather an empty attempt at control for
comfort.
The question “to share or not to
share” is not as hard for those who
dig purely for their own enjoyment
and pay no attention to any rise in
popularity, or for those who truly
don’t care for those who dig to truly
expose, such as the label “Numero
Group” with a model to revitalize
and renew the music. Their project
with Duster allowed new distribu-
tion of their music along with their
newfound popularity, amongst other
forgotten artists. They give them a
second chance at success for their art,
a second chance at exposure for their
music to reach a wider audience.
As for communities like Rateyour-
music.com, the music side of TikTok,
Discord servers devoted to the dis-
cussion of music, subreddits and pri-
vate Facebook groups, the question
remains a delicate one. Gatekeeping is
still a very prevalent practice in Inter-
net communities, but it’s hard to say if
their influence of popularity reaches
outside their own communities, or
is contained to the bickering inside a
comment box.
Despite the fact these are micro-
climates and niches amongst music
communities, they speak to a very
real approach to the division of artists
amongst listeners. Surely, we can’t all
be as perfect as an archive label, and
surely, we aren’t as bad as Internet
hoarders masquerading as collec-
tors. But still, that inner hipster rests
inside of us, and where does it come
from? What is the obsession with
“obscurify,” the engine that ranks
how “obscure” your Spotify data is,
and what is the delight of having our
number hit 70%, 80%, 90%? 91%?
We gatekeep to prevent the music
from being subject to analysis from
others. In effect, when others listen
to a piece of music, it changes as it
gets passed around from ear to ear.
No matter how hard we try, how hard
we stay to our convictions, the seeds
of doubt from Pitchfork reviews and
YouTube replies and empty com-
ments from friends will always be in
the back of our minds. Gatekeeping
is simply a prevention tactic until the
very last moment before the pristine,
delicate, perfect, untouched percep-
tion of the music we hold in our minds
gets muddied by the subjection of
others’ thoughts and feelings. It’s a
method to stave off that second before
the image of the music we hold so dear
in our head, the absolute image of that
music, is altered.
Even guilty pleasures are a part of
this treatment. On one hand, we con-
ceal our guilty pleasure songs and art-
ists to save ourselves the shame and
embarrassment of sharing such enjoy-
ment, but on the other, is it not to also
preserve our own image of that music
in our head? Do we hide our pleasure
at these songs to save them from the
judgment of others? To conceal is to
contain it in its most pure form to be
enjoyed forever, on repeat: a rapture of
sound at each click of that play trian-
gle, free from outside scorn and meant
just for you.
When we value the esoteric qual-
ity of the work more than the work
itself, what we lose is that confi-
dence in it. This, in turn, is possibly
another reason why it’s gatekept so
hard: because that perfect image
of the work cannot be touched by a
scathing critique or the idea that the
work’s quality is dependent on The
virginal piece of music brought to
light sacrifices the delight and plea-
sure of its obscurity. That’s why we
gatekeep, but we also show: to feel
the intimacy of introducing a friend
to music never touched by their ears.
Sharing music is a way of connec-
tion and communication. To share
a hidden gem or an obscure piece
of music special to us contains the
same level of intimacy as sharing
our favorite ’80s hits or our most lis-
tened to artists. The reason people
gatekeep is because of this intimacy,
or the fear of that intimacy.
Why do we gatekeep?
CONOR DURKIN
Daily Arts Writer
A public lecture and reception; you may attend in person or
virtually. For more information, including the Zoom link, visit
events.umich.edu/event/84264 or call 734.615.6667.
Rhys Isaac Collegiate
Professor of History
Susan
Juster
Mumbling
Masses and
Jumbling
Beads”
Wednesday, November 10 2021 | 4:00 p.m. | Weiser Hall, 10th Floor
LSA COLLEGIATE LECTURE
Finding Catholics
in Early America
“
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