If anybody could find me a synonym for CD or recording that starts with O, I’d appreciate it.
Anyway, the topic at hand: I was looking through my CD collection today, and noticed that they’re all groups that are male led or completely male. I don’t have a large music CD collection, it’s only 25 discs (7 of which are soundtracks to movies or TV shows). It’s also decently varied, from Dave Brubeck to Beck, Everclear to Eagle-Eye Cherry, Santana to Smashing Pumpkins. Everclear is the only one I have more than one CD of, with three, but all the groups are men. I can’t really figure out why. I thought that maybe I feel less stupid singing to them, but I sing with the female led groups when I’m listening to the radio.
So, dopers, any guesses as to why? Is your collection of CDs or MP3s predominately of one sex, and is it your sex? What’s the distribution in the recording industry?
I’m considering buying the Avril Levigne CD, so this may soon change.
I’ve noticed a similar thing, not only in music but in novels I read. I always seem to choose a novel where a man is the hero. Not always, but more often than not.
I think it has something to do with identification. As in, I can identify with this particular hero, and not with a woman hero, becuase … I’m not a woman.
At least that’s the juicy little rationalization I tell myself so I don’t feel like a mysoginist.
When I was growing up I would always pick male protagonist novels because they always got to do things and go places and be cool while all the central females were either moaning over men, their looks, their unplanned pregnancies or their eating disorders.
I bought the Avril Lavigne CD today after a particularly annoying job interview, so I’m no longer strictly male bands.
Now that you guys mention books, I suppose I have a mostly male book collection too. The fourth book of the hitchhiker trilogy was specifically about Fenchurch, though, so it isn’t totally male.
Jack Batty: Yeah, I’m not a mysoginist either. Some of my best friends are female.
that’s not really true either… I never made any friends after moving back here, because I thought it’d be temporary… darn.
I’ve definitely noticed the same male trend in my (I’m a chick, btw) listening/reading habits. During my formative years, the only reading material aimed at girls (Judy Blume and Hariet the Spy notwithstanding) were books about horses or the Sweet Valley High series. The boys (especially those Alfred Hitchcock mystery-solving ones) always seemed to do more interesting stuff. Ditto for music. Women rockers had come a long way from wanting to be Bobby’s girl, but Tiffany and Debbie Gibson still weren’t relevant to my life.
Through a concerted effort to broaden my horizons. I’ve found some great stuff in both categories. Off the top of my head I can think of Sleater-Kinney, Liz Phair, Brenda Weiler for music, and Alice Walker, Zora Neal Hurston, Fanny Flagg for books. Still looking for younger women writers, though.
I’ve spoken about this with a (male) friend of mine. We both work in the extremely liberal world of student activism here at UW-Madison, and admitted a bit of guilt over the one-sidedness of our collections. Some people can get pretty sanctimonious about how diverse their music collections (and thus their worldviews?) are. But we were able to decide that our distate for listening to Ani Difranco 24 hours a day did not make us misogynists**.
**I used to like Ani, really. She’s cool, she does good stuff. But for og’s sake…some people around here gotta listen to other music once in awhile.
My CD collection, which is more than 500 strong, is probably 65% male. Specifically, WHITE male. I have fewer than ten CDs that feature non-Caucasians.
Another 5% are classical. And 10% are ensemble-type Broadway soundtracks, so neither one gender or the other.
And, of the 20% that are by female artists, the vast majority are Pat Benatar, Sarah Brightman, Crystal Gayle, and Linda Ronstadt.
So I have four representative females in a sea of maleness.
I’m male, and women probably have a small edge in my music collection. There’s no agenda there–I just love female voices. My books may lean slightly more toward male protagonists, mainly because my preferred genre (F&SF) has historically tended to have males in that role. I generally don’t have any more trouble identifying with female protagonists than with males; I find the different viewpoint interesting.
