A common theme among many teenagers and adults today is the grouping of certain things into what gender they fit best with. As most people knowingly have decided, pink is widely considered a girl color, with heterosexual men commonly calling the pink colors they wear ‘salmon’ to protect their perceived male identity.
This type of categorization often carries over into another situation: music. Taylor Swift and sappy romantic bands such as Parachute often fall into the ‘female’ category, and men that listen to those types of music are often called gay or are considered too in touch with their feminine side. Heavier music, such as Metallica and AC/DC, is more commonly associated with male figures.
When males and females cross over the ‘gender divide’ in music, further stereotypes are created. As mentioned above, males that listen to ‘female’ music often get stereotyped as gay or overly feminine, while women that listen to ‘male’ music are typically considered tomboys, emo, or goth.
By no means are these gender divides accurate or helpful. Take myself, for instance. I am very into the pop-punk and post-hardcore scene. I listen to Pierce the Veil, State Champs, and All Time Low almost constantly. However, I also listen to Taylor Swift, Meghan Trainor, Luke Bryan, and Ed Sheeran quite frequently. By no means am I gay or overly feminine because I listen to the latter mentioned artists. Concurrently, my girlfriend, along with my other friends that listen to the formerly named artists, do not cross gender boundaries just because they enjoy music that isn’t widely considered to be associated with their ‘gender’.
The only way to truly understand how flawed gender grouping is for music is to understand what music means to people.
People are dependent creatures. We may not necessarily depend on one another but we depend on venting outlets, intangible objects, abstract thoughts, and even food to help us make it through our days. Many people rely on music as a way to make it through the day.
With that said, in a day’s 24 hour span, people experience multiple emotions, including sadness, happiness, anger, and so on. During those emotions, people generally choose music that fits or describes those emotions. If someone is sad, the general population would not want to listen to “For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Metallica and would instead prefer something more mellow, like “When You Move” by Parachute.
That general concept can carry out across the emotions. When people are content or happy, they are more likely to listen to the music that they consider their favorite music. When someone is angry, they may be more prone to listening to a much heavier genre of music.
Now, I am not saying that this is the way it is for everyone. I once met a girl that listened to almost nothing except Beyoncé. Not everyone has a wide taste in music that allows them to explore the full range of their emotions through music, but the general public does tend to consider themselves ‘genre-fluid’ when it comes to music.
The other major discussion on this topic lies in the realm of psychology. Psychology has openly discussed the mere exposure effect for years. Essentially, the mere exposure effect says that the more you are exposed to something, the more likely you are to like it. The easiest way to think about this is Rebecca Black’s song “Friday”. At the beginning of the “Friday” frenzy, almost everyone would say they hated the song and that it was worth nothing. However, as time went on, more and more people began saying they liked it. This is, most likely, due to the mere exposure effect. People cannot always control what music they like because of the mere exposure effect, so there is no reason to gender stereotype them because of it. I listen to Meghan Trainor because I have a girlfriend and a sister that listen to her constantly, so I am always exposed to it. That doesn’t make me gay or overly feminine.
Music, though, is more than just the mere exposure effect and emotional dependency, it’s life saving. Look up All Time Low’s “Missing You” music video on YouTube and you will see this. Through a love of music, along with meet and greets, and constant social media connection to artists around the globe, people start to love artists as if they have always been their best friends. Bands are not just people that get seen in concert, they hold special places in the hearts of everyone. Alex Gaskarth, lead singer of All Time Low, addressed this best when he said:
“Loving a band with all your heart is something you only understand when it happens to you. On the surface, others can see it as a petty obsession, but they’ll just never know the feeling of putting so much faith into a few people on the other side of the world. It’s hard to explain it to them, the listening to song after song on repeat, the waits for new albums, the excitement and surreal sensation when you finally see them live. They don’t seem to understand why the lyric booklets give you a sense of comfort, or why you paste photos of them all over your bedroom walls. And they can’t understand why one band could matter to you so much. And you think to yourself, ‘Because they saved my life.”
So, why don’t we, as a group, destroy the music-gender barrier and help everyone see that music is more than labels separated by what society believes is socially competent for each gender. Music is a way of life and a way to help us not give up. Everyone has a love of music different than the other, but no one should be criticized for being abnormal in a world where normal just does not exist.
