My husband and I saw the Pixies play at the Wellmont theatre on Thursday for the first gig of their tour. I’ve loved this band since they first emerged in the late '80s; their music was the soundtrack to the end of my high school and all my college years.
There were fans our age along with much older and much younger fans in the audience. The most striking thing to me was the number of adults who had brought young kids to the show.
On either side of us were kids close to our kids ages. I asked one mother what prompted her to bring her son and she told me that besides her having played their music around her son since he was small, she wanted him to see Kim Deal, the bassist for the band. “I wanted him to see that female musicians can rock just as hard as males, without resorting to skimpy outfits and overtly sexual lyrics.”
The dad on the other side of us who was there with his two daughters echoed her sentiment. "Kim Deal is fierce and edgy, and she does it all with her clothes on," he said. He wanted to show his girls a different image of a female rock star.
Kim Deal comes from an era where female rockers weren’t such a novelty. From her band "The Breeders" to "Throwing Muses," "Belly," "L7," and "Hole," there were girl bands that knew how to play instruments, wrote their own material and could hit the drums, hard. It was about the music and not about the packaging.
Between the late '80s and now, something has shifted. Turn on teen TV and you’ll see ads for shows like “Degrassi” which is aimed at middle schoolers but has very adult themes. It’s disconcerting to see videos of female musicians kids listen to today, they sing bubblegum pop lyrics with catchy hooks while gyrating in an overtly sexual manner. They’re dressed like hookers but sing like children. It’s not so much music videos they make but soft-core porn.
I don’t want my middle-school girl to think that it’s normal to act and dress that way. I also don’t want my son to grow up objectifying woman. He’s already told me that “girls can’t rock.” Perhaps next time the Pixies come through town I’ll buy tickets and some ear plugs for us all, and show him how wrong he is.
