Nirvana. The Beatles. Pink Floyd. Bands that mean absolutely nothing to the girlies. Or do they? In this essay, I will outline why basic bitches wearing band shirts is actually a feminist act of sticking it to the man.
Self-proclaimed music bros, Anthony Fantano subscribers, and guys who tune their guitars to drop D all love to ask the same dreaded question: can you even name three songs by Nirvana? To them, I raise a question: can you even name three women in music? Three women in music who you haven’t at some point said were overrated? Annoying? An industry plant? No? Oh well, whatever. Nevermind.
I’m so tired of learning again and again that it was The Beatles who created pop music. Do you know how many degrees in music I have? Do you know how many times I’ve had to sit in an academic setting and be told this by people who have dedicated their lives to researching music? At least in class I’m expecting to “learn”. At least I’m not just at some random dude’s flat as he proudly shows me his crate of records (I have twice as many). He pulls out Sgt. Pepper’s: “Did you know that The Beatles changed music forever when they literally chopped up their tapes, pasted them together by hand, and put some in reverse?” Yes. Yes, I do know. And I know that they did that more than one album and one single ago, on their B-side, ‘Rain’.
Honestly, I think pop music wasn’t created until 1999 when Britney Spears uttered the magic words “hit me baby, one more time”. I get that some of you may think I’m being satirical right now. But! I must confess, I still believe. And not to discredit all the incredible women before her. I can literally feel some literary bro telepathically beam-yelling into my head: “What about Patti Smith?” Some male feminist studies major, chastising: “What about Bikini Kill?” Some guy who spins house music on his weekends, plying: “What about Donna Summer?” But, for me, the 2000s signified a period where as many women were involved in pop music as men. A time where women were performing as well as men on the charts in radio airplay, in CD sales. Discrediting the pop girlies of the era, saying they’re “just doing pop”, with all its connotations of being cheap and manufactured, just feels like trying to gatekeep the success of these women.
This leads us nicely to those cheap, one-ply Nirvana t-shirts. The production of band t-shirts is sort of a reflection of the mass-produced pop music that women of the time slayed so hard at. It echoes the consumerist element of pop, that its function is to be as simple and catchy as possible to spread virally as far as possible. Subjecting these highly-lauded, oh-so-precious all-male bands to the production lines of clothing factories reduces their meaning to the same fate. It’s even more efficient when it’s fast fashion, replicated again and again, with no care at all for what stores they ultimately end up in. They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but with the way music bros react, you can tell they consider fashion the lowest form of culture.
When us girlies wear those mass-produced band tops with no care for whatever songs Pink Floyd brought into the world (I know I’m due to make a Pink Floyd joke here but honestly I cannot even name a single one of their tracks) it’s actually a feminist appropriation of male music culture. When you try gatekeep that band’s iconography by asking us to name three Pink Floyd albums, you’re just proving our point. By wearing these shirts, we’re actually prompting a parallel of women’s experiences being gatekept out of the music industry entirely. We’re reducing that band that you so fiercely want to protect to nothing more than a fashion statement, because that’s what the music industry did to women at large. Nothing more than a fashion statement, something made to sell. Dislocating it from the music, its meaning, the cultural era it defined, so we can define that for our own. Replacing your idols with our idols.
One day, people will no longer know Nirvana or The Beatles or Pink Floyd. They’ll lose any familiarity with The Smiths, Ramones, ACDC, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin. All they’ll know is girls born after 1993 wear Nirvana shirt, eat hot chips, and lie. And anyway, it can’t be any more offensive than inviting us back to your flat to rip bongs under a mandala and Bob Marley poster, can it?