Chappell Roan performs during the 67th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, Calif., on Feb. 2.Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
Sophie Gilbert is a staff writer at The Atlantic and was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism. She is the author of Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves.
Twenty-two years ago, the country star Natalie Maines stood onstage at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London and made an offhand statement that would come to define the next decade of her career. “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all,” she told the audience, nine days before the invasion of Iraq. “We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.”
The backlash was almost instantaneous. Ms. Maines’s band, then known as The Dixie Chicks, was blacklisted from country radio. One station left trashcans outside its headquarters for fans to dispose of their records. Ms. Maines received death threats, and had to have a police escort to shows. The visceral rage at the band also filtered out to other women: Between 2000 and 2019, songs led by female vocalists played on country radio fell from 33 per cent of records to just 16 per cent.
What was happening to The Chicks was also reflective of a larger shift in music for women during the 2000s: Being successful and visible meant being silent. There was no way for a female artist to be open or even outspoken about the pressures of the industry, the absurd sexualization of stars, the abuses of power.
Which is why it’s been so thrilling recently to watch a new generation of stars reject the terms of a bad old bargain. Chappell Roan has been vocal about everything from her politics to the distressing ways people invade her privacy to the expectations placed on modern artists to perfectly parse hot-button issues. Sabrina Carpenter has been unapologetic about the raunchy nature of her live shows, telling fans who find her inappropriate to simply stay away. Doechii has channelled her identity and insecurities as a queer Black artist into thrilling, quirky music. Jessie Reyez has made both a song, Gatekeeper, and a short film about the producer whom she says berated her and tried to coerce her into having sex with him.
None of this has been easy. There’s a cottage industry of talking heads and influencers on social media who dedicate themselves to combing through every interview, every unfiltered public comment, every TikTok or Instagram post, in the hopes of finding something to provoke outrage and generate an audience.
“I try to know everything I can, but when I don’t answer a question correctly or I don’t acknowledge one community, it’s like, how can I do it all?” Ms. Roan said recently on the podcast Call Her Daddy. “How can these girls tour, write, perform, interview, sleep, eat and workout?”
Contemporary stardom requires people who make music to also be impeccably media-trained, controlled in their self-presentation and inoffensive in their politics. But being publicly bland and creatively innovative is an impossible balancing act, which might be why so many female artists are now refusing to try.
Our history shows us that the music industry has always made impossible demands of women. During the 1990s, the activist energy of the riot-grrrl movement and unashamedly political artists such as Sinead O’Connor, Alanis Morissette and Tori Amos led to those women being sidelined in the 2000s by a new generation of young, pliable, easily sexualized stars. In 2007, when Ms. Morissette unexpectedly dropped a mournful, piano-accompanied parody cover of the Black-Eyed Peas’ My Humps, the video underscored the absurdity of what music had done to women, requiring them to twerk in rayon hot pants surrounded by fully-clothed men and never utter a word of protest.
But even when younger artists complied, they were taken down anyway, lambasted with vicious critiques by gossip bloggers and commentators, and stalked by photographers who lay on sidewalks trying to take upskirt photos of them. What was clear was that there was no way for female artists to win: If they were open about what they believed in, and how the music industry treated them, they were shunned; if they played along, they were abused.
The treatment of women in this moment was profoundly cruel. And it seems to have made an impact on our current generation of stars, who set their own boundaries, refuse to be shamed for their sexuality, and direct their own marketing campaigns and creative output. They’re up front with their fans about what they will and won’t allow. As a result, Ms. Roan has said, people are now much more respectful of her boundaries when she’s out in public. Nor has her career suffered: Earlier this year, she won her first Grammy Award for Best New Artist, in a field of nominees that also included Doechii and Ms. Carpenter. Taking heed of what happened to the women who came before them, today’s pop icons also seem to sense all the ways in which performing for the male gaze is a trap. Instead, they celebrate their sexuality on their own terms, often in absurdist, lavishly overstated style.
None of this makes stars immune to criticism, or to backlash. But their refusal to moderate themselves to be successful is setting a model for women to build sustainable careers in public without having to compromise. And what’s also noteworthy is that despite the deluge of analysis on infinite social platforms, these artists seem to be managing to control the conditions of their own stardom.