«Feminism isn’t fun, it’s complex and it pisses people off – and it takes work! And Sonja Eismann has done it herself, proving with nerve and anger and countless examples how patriarchal the music industry still is.» – Christiane Rösinger
Young women and their bodies — naturally conforming to beauty norms, youthful, sexy — are the raw material from which the music industry and the very logic of pop are made. They are adored and fetishized in song lyrics, insulted and degraded, used as projection surfaces on stage and backstage alike. Female fans are seen as screaming crowds or mindless groupies, incapable of genuine interest in music or of having any serious taste. And when a woman steps onto the stage as an artist, she is first and foremost a woman — only then a musician. Her body is always wrong somehow: too fat, too thin, too perfect, or otherwise inappropriate. She is either whore or saint — and then, suddenly, simply too old.
In a text that is as furious as it is instructive, Sonja Eismann reveals how deeply sexism and ageism are inscribed in the music industry; how we, as consumers, have learned and internalized the male gaze; how abuse and pedosexuality are accepted in almost every scene and genre. She writes about old men making underage singers perform sexualized songs, about the apparent impossibility of aging “correctly”, about sexist music journalism, superstars like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, or Peaches, about femicides in song lyrics — and, of course, about examples of self-assured reclamation, resistance, and the defiant middle finger raised against the patriarchy of music.