Overview
For my social action inquiry project, I chose to investigate what college-aged women thought about song lyrics, specifically from popular female artists such as Lizzo and Meghan Trainor. I was interested in this topic because I wanted to see if other women my age listened to lyrics as closely as I enjoy listening to them. Ultimately, I wanted to figure out if the words had a positive or negative impact on individuals.
What inspired this project were the stark differences I noticed between Lizzo's lyrics and Meghan Trainor's lyrics. Personally, I found Trainor's lyrics to be troubling, as they depict women in an ultratraditional light. In her hit song, "Dear Future Husband," she sings, "If you treat me right, I'll be the perfect wife. Buying groceries, buying what you need [...] You gotta know how to treat me like a lady, even when I'm acting crazy, tell me everything's alright."
Lizzo, on the other hand, encourages her listeners to "Take a deep breath, time to focus on you [...] Boss up and change your life, you can have it all no sacrifice." My perception was that Lizzo is more focused on having a strong sense of self outside of a relationship, whereas Meghan was more focused on having an identity centered around a relationship. Personally, I found Lizzo's lyrics to be far more empowering and wanted to see what other women my age thought.
Project Design
I surveyed 27 women between the ages of 19-24, all of whom attend my university. However, I made sure that these women represented different groups and had varying opinions. In the survey, I asked the women to respond to the following questions:
1) Age
2) Gender Identity
3) Favorite female artist
4) Do you listen closely to song lyrics?
5) Have you ever been offended by song lyrics that have negatively referred to women? If so, which ones? Song(s)? Artist(s)?
6) What messages should be in music to empower women?
Lastly, I had participants rate the following lyrics (also mentioned above) on a scale of 1-5 (1 = least empowering, 5 = most empowering):
"If you treat me right, I'll be the perfect wife. Buying groceries, buying what you need."/ "You gotta know how to treat me like a lady, even when I'm acting crazy. Tell me everything's alright."
"Woo girl, need to kick off your shoes. Got to take a deep breath, time to focus on you" / "Boss up and change your life, you can have it all no sacrifice."
Results
The majority of participants were 21 or 22 years old. 63% of participants answered that they have been offended by song lyrics that negatively refer to women, and 70.4 % of participants answered that they do not always listen closely to lyrical content.
I had those who had been offended by song lyrics detail which song/artist bothered them the most. Many of the responses discussed male artists, however, a few mentioned female artists (such as Taylor Swift and Meghan Trainor) as having misogynistic lyrics. Specifically, one response mentioned how Swift's "Bad Blood" focuses on a feud between two women in the industry and encourages women and girls to fight with each other.
26 out of 27 participants scored the first set of lyrics ("Dear Future Husband" by Meghan Trainor) as a 3 or below on the "empowerment scale." Meaning, they did not feel empowered as a result of listening to these lyrics. In turn, 25 out of 27 participants scored the second set of lyrics ("Good as Hell" by Lizzo) as a 4 or 5 on the same scale, meaning that they felt empowered while listening to these lyrics.
Some sample responses I received to "What messages in music do you think women need to hear more often?" are as follows:
"That we can be just as powerful as men and sometimes even more so."
"That we can be independent, have whatever career we want, and can pursue our dreams."
"Men aren't everything."
Conclusions
Through this project and its subsequent data collection, I was able to see that women are frequently being degraded through song lyrics by both male and female artists, and we need to begin creating more empowering, less sexist music. Although I love listening to artists such as Meghan Trainor and Taylor Swift, this encouraged me to take a closer look at the content of their lyrics and see what Lizzo is doing more effectively. As an eventual educator of young women, I hope that pop artists can create more progressive, pro-women tunes in the near future!
