When a movie about The Runaways was announced early this year, I have to admit that I was among the skeptics. Kristen Stewart, fresh off her Twilight superstardom, was involved, and Dakota Fanning's signing on to the project worried me even more. Something about it just felt gimmick-y and calculated to me.
But as more information became available I found myself getting more invested. Joan Jett as producer and a script based on Cherie Currie's memoir seemed like good signs, and bringing in Alia Shawkat seemed like another one. Photos from the summertime-shoot showed Stewart, Fanning, Shawkat, and the entire band looking amazingly like the real Runaways. Seeing Stewart in Adventureland, and falling in love with her portrayal of an honest-to-goodness Lou Reed-loving, band t-shirt wearing, musician-dating music geek in September sealed it for me.
But I didn't realize quite how excited I was until the first trailer was released just before Christmas. I definitely screamed a little when I watched it:
Visually, the trailer looks kind of awesome. There are scenes from concerts, scenes in recording studios, and Kristen Stewart smashing a chair, all in one minute --but what's really exciting to me is the voiceover. It starts the trailer, and it tells us: "In 1975, rock was a man's world." This initial, straightforward acknowledgment of gender as an issue is what made me realize that this movie is a big deal.
The trailer focuses on scenes in which the band is told that it won't be successful because all of its members are female. This suggests that this is the central conflict of the film: an all-girl band struggles for resources, support, and success against sexist ideas in a masculinist industry.
How many times have the real-life, day-to-day issues of female musicians, in any genre, been show on film? Sure, it's sort of been done. But to quote Jenny Schecter on lesbians in film, "Well, I don't think it's been done a million times." Consider that Dreamgirls, whose plot pretty much rests on issues of power and gender, never really deals with the exploitation and abuse it depicts. (Yeah, I know, it's a musical, but STILL.) Coal Miner's Daughter and What's Love Got to Do With It are much more satisfying, not to mention more responsible -- but those films are about extremely well-known and successful country and pop artists, respectively.
The Runaways movie is a big deal because it has the potential to give women and gender in rock some much needed visibility. Also, because it's the story of a band that eventually imploded, partly because of sexist exploitation, the real-life consequences of misogyny have a chance at some screen time as well.
And all of this is very important, especially to me, and especially to my friends who are starting bands and writing music right now. But if this movie is really done right, it will have the potential to about more than women in music. The story of the Runaways is, at its center, about young women working to make their voices heard, and to do fulfilling, fun, rewarding work in a world that still isn't entirely open to the idea of women in the public sphere, making money, and making a real contribution to society. Let's hope that the Runaways movie is both good enough and accessible enough to find an audience beyond young women musicians, aging riot grrrls, and punk enthusiasts.
Yesterday I engaged in an activity that for me is unprecedented in its overt 'femmey'-ness: I went around the corner to the local salon for a little mani/pedi.
While waiting for a beautician to start working on my nails, I paged absent-mindedly through some celebrity gossip magazine. I didn't quite recognize a lot of the people in the photos, and so the headlines about scandals involving diet plans, adultery, and adoptions didn't really move me.
But here's what got my attention: photos of Kristen Stewart at Comic Con, wearing a Minor Threat t-shirt. Minor Threat?! I incredulously wondered to myself. Really? I experienced a split second of elation, yes -- Kristen Stewart listens to Minor Threat, FUCK YES! -- which gave way to judgment, cyncism, and scorn. Like she even knows who Minor Threat is. Chyeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.
Kristen Stewart, looking t-u-f-f tough in her Minor Threat tee, with some guys. (Who are those random dudes? Fans or something?)
And then I regretted it. Because it occurred to me that whenever I see a young, pretty girl, especially an actress, sporting a t-shirt of any decent band, I assume that she doesn't know the band. Why do I do that? I don't think anyone ever questions it when a guy wears a band shirt. Why the double standard?
The better question might be, why do we wear band t-shirts? And maybe the right place to start is at home: I myself have quite the collection of band t-shirts. I like t-shirts, they're comfortable, and they're a great way to support a band. I try to only buy shirts at actual shows, because that way the proceeds go directly to the artist. T-shirts are also an important means of signaling your musical tastes, not only to others, but for yourself. Your band t-shirt is a declaration of your appreciation for a band, and also of your choice to wear a t-shirt rather than, say, a three piece suit, or a tube top.
Band shirts seem neutral, but are in fact very gendered (and also classed) articles of clothing. The fair-skinned, heterosexual, overtly feminine, middle class standards of womanhood and girlhood, do not involve band t-shirts. Such women and girls are rarely presented in such casual clothing -- they are expected to wear dresses, skirts, blouses, and other garments with decorative buttons and lace and ruffles. Women are their professional/office and formal attire, just as a younger women are their trendy, not-really formal, but not really relaxed, 'misses' section outfits.
And if you do see a girl in a band t-shirt, particularly as represented in film or television, she's sleeping, doing housework (like Jennifer Garner in Juno pictured below), depressed, or 'punk'.
Heaven beside you: Jennifer Garner paints nurseries in her (husbands?) band shirts!
But that's it, right there -- such a t-shirt often signals that a girl is punk, or at the very least, 'different'. Anyone remember Peyton on the early seasons of One Tree Hill? Who didn't fall in love with her and her devotion to her favorite bands, and her numerous band t-shirts? (I maintain that in real life, Peyton's taste would actually be much better, and much edgier, but I guess it's the point and not the vernacular.) Peyton is 'the rebel' on that program, as directly contrasted with Brooke, her stylish bff, who never wore any kind of t-shirt, though I wished she would.
In 'real life', band t-shirts seem to mean the same thing: a girl or young woman who wears band shirts on a regular basis, is bucking gender conventions, by wearing an article that is designed for men. And if she's taken the time to modify the t-shirt, tailoring, altering, or even just cutting it and transforming its dude silhouette into a garment that is more flattering to her figure, even better.
Or, you hope, anyways. The paradox is that as an article of clothing, t-shirts are inherently superficial. A girl in a band t-shirt could be a total radical, or she could just be wearing t-shirt. Women are assumed to be superficial, and because it's been feminized, fashion is assumed to be superficial as well. No one bothers to consider that women's choices of clothing, from t-shirts and jeans to ballgowns, are deliberately made, based on the individual's grasp on how clothing is produced, where it comes from, and what it means socially. Women and girls' sartorial behavior is automatically written off as irrelevant and frivolous.
So in the same spirit of bucking convention, I'm going to refrain from making assumptions about Kristen Stewart and her clothes and musical tastes. Because wearing band t-shirts is meaningful to me, and it's just one way of declaring that women are part of bands, shows, and the music industry, too. I have to believe this, despite the stereotypes and generalizations. I have to have faith, based on my own experience, that not every girl in a band t-shirt is just wearing something she found in her boyfriend's dresser drawer.
