From a young age, women are taught that they are in competition with each other. Whilst men can occupy as much space as they want, women are told that there is only room for a couple of them at the top, that in order to be successful, beautiful, and popular, one must kick down the other girls that stand in their way. This is not healthy competition, but a symptom of the patriarchal society that fears powerful women and attempts to keep them at bay, something that women should be working together to combat. There is no industry where this competition is more publicised than in the entertainment industry; female feuds are gossip column goldmines that generate views simply by pitting women against each other and spreading information that rarely has a reputable source.
A woman’s success will always be questioned more than the success of a man; whilst he (especially when he is a white man) is deserving of all success that comes his way whether he worked hard for it or not, women are interrogated as to how they got there, and whether they are actually deserving of their success. In Taylor Swift’s The Man, a song from her seventh studio album Lover, she sings about how much easier her life would be if she were born a man, stating that, if she were a man, “They'd say I hustled / Put in the work / They wouldn't shake their heads / And question how much of this I deserve”. In these few lines, Taylor so succinctly explains the difficulties of being a woman in the entertainment industry – whatever you do is simply not good enough. You need to fight to be deserving of your own successes.
Having one’s success undermined purely because they are female, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. The women who are at the top of their game find themselves not only fighting against the men who have, for so long, held the ultimate power, they are now being pitted against each other, Woman against woman. Apparently there can only be one successful female rapper in this world, according to all the news sites that decide to pit Nicki Minaj and Cardi B against each other. Instead of supporting two women who have escaped abusive situations and rose to fame as a result of their pure talent, the media constantly compares the two women, discussing a fight that never existed – it was purely fabricated by those who wanted to create drama. Similarly, country music has seen a rise in female stars over the recent years – Maren Morris, Carrie Underwood and Kelsea Ballerini are constantly being compared against each other despite all being incredibly successful women in their own right. Kelsea brought the public’s attention to this when she posted an image of a poll to her Instagram account. The poll questioned “which female artist are you most looking forward to seeing perform at this year’s ACM Awards?” In her comment, Kelsea stated that “so we swim upstream and wear ourselves out trying to be heard and finally see the charts start to mention a few more of our names ... then something like this … makes us feel like there is only one spot available”. It is not a coincidence, either, that both the rap and country genres have, historically, been genres dominated by male artists. The fact that women are breaking into these genres is something to be celebrated, but instead these women are being pitted against each other, perhaps by those who feel as if their position in the industry is being compromised at the introduction of female stars.
This need to compare women is not symptomatic of only a couple of genres, though, it is representative of the wider issue of how women are seen to be innately competitive and catty whilst the truth is that these characteristics are simply presumed of them. When asked by Brian Hiatt of Rolling Stone if she thought women are always expected to be feuding with each other, Taylor Swift responded: “It’s assumed that we hate each other. Even if we’re smiling and photographed together with our arms around each other, it’s assumed there’s a knife in our pocket”. Taylor knows this perhaps more than any other artist out there; there was a period of time (2013-2016) where Taylor’s name was rarely out of the media, with a lot of the media attention focussing not on her song writing talents, but on whomever she was rumoured to be ‘feuding’ with at that particular time. Her 2016 girl squad – a group of strong, famous female friends who wanted to support each other – was eventually turned into a group of catty women by the media; rarely could any member of the squad post a picture without tabloids asking why another member wasn’t present (rarely was this the result of a bitch fight, it was more likely to be because of a schedule clash), and the squad soon became representative not of how strong female friendships can be, but of women that create an exclusive group reminiscent of the popular table in mean girls.
This idea that women are catty and cannot be friends without fighting is something that is internalised by many girls. How often do you hear a girl profess that she “finds boys easier to be friends with because they’re less bitchy”? Rarely is there a group of women that relies solely on putting the other down; female friendships are a beautiful exploration of love and support, yet this is constantly undermined by the conception that women cannot exist side by side. The idea that women are in constant competition, one that is perpetuated by the entertainment industry and tabloid news, lessens the bond that women can have when there is no aspect of competition. Can you imagine the power of a Nicki and Cardi collaboration? Something that, unfortunately, we may never experience because the media enforces a rivalry between them that, when whittled down, is about nothing other than two women striving for the same success. The music industry needs shaking up, there is room for every woman to be successful if we deny the internalisation of the idea of competition that the patriarchy enforces and instead stand side by side, holding each other’s hands. Women are stronger when they stand together, and the music industry needs to experience this female solidarity now more than ever.
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