The music genre of Rock & Roll was always seen
as a man’s world, which would mean that it was aimed at a male audience. When
rock first exploded on to the scene in the sixties, women of the sixties fought
to find their place in the culture. The feminist and sexual revolution of the
sixties was a huge story for the mass media, as Susan Douglas puts in her book Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass
Media “the media started to realise sex
sells”. This came from the release of the birth control pill, a new product on
the market that allowed women to have a choice and control their sexuality and
freedom to make bad decisions as the past decades would see. This was shown
through the emergence of girl groups.
The 1960s saw many girl
groups come to significant popularity, towards the end of the 1950s rock &
roll was created, and in 1957, just one year after the start of rock and roll a
girl band by the name of the Chantel’s were they first black girl group to be
in the mainstream media, now this was significant for two reasons one, as they
were black it was good for the civil rights movement and two, because they were
women, it paved the way for other girls to enter music industry. After their huge
success, female musicians such as The Supremes, were celebrated as they were
sophisticated and upheld an elegance that women should have while being strong
in their opinions and music. As well as women having strong opinions and were
paving the way they were also role models, the emphasis that the sixties had
was on femininity but as this was a new decade different from any other it had an
emphasis on female sexuality. This lead to a promotion in ideas, meaning women
could talk about experiences and be open to now being comfortable in their own
skin. This type of new found freedom was a huge step for those who were
teenagers and young adults in the sixties.
“providing a voice for a generation of adolescents,
female and male […]that addressed romance, heartbreak and true love” , that is
what Gillian Gaar said about girl groups that began their initial popularity in
the sixties. In 1961 the Shirelles, released a hit “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”,
this song is about whether a boy will still love them after they have had
sexual intercourse. This was a new thing to be sang about in the sixties,
although it was a valid question and it has been for decades it was never
really sang about until the sixties, girl groups provided an outlet for these
messages and it allowed women to sort these issues out. Since the Shirelles
first came to prominence it helped spur a movement of fierce female musicians
that sang about life experiences every woman in the world has experienced or
were bound to experience if they were a young adolescent. To look at the origin
of Rock music as a genre you would not look at the 1960s as a significant
decade, but because women were now becoming more of a feature it was a significant
point in the feminist movement that was occurring at the time.
By Amy Spelzini
Further reading
Gaar, Gillian G. She’s a Rebel: The History of Women
in Rock and Roll. (Seattle, 2002)
Warwick, Jacqueline, Girl Groups, Girl Culture:
Popular Music and Identity in the 1960s. (Routledge, 2007)
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