October 26, 2011
In Hey ladies, want a hit song? Bash a man!, Today show contributor Tony Sclafani discusses what he calls a modern music trend towards”pro-female, anti-male anthems.”
In Hey ladies, want a hit song? Bash a man!, Today show contributor Tony Sclafani discusses what he calls a modern music trend towards”pro-female, anti-male anthems.” He explains:
[T]his mini-genre has become fashionable among female artists, with songs like Pink”s “U and Ur Hand,’ Orianthi”s “According to You’ and Britney Spears” “Womanizer’ all becoming big hits in the past few years. Vibe Magazine“s female arm, Vibe Vixen, even put together a list of “The 45 Greatest Male-Bashing Anthems’ — and that list didn”t even include any country songs (like Carrie Underwood”s “Before He Cheats’).
Although these types of songs had precursors, like Carly Simon”s “You”re So Vain,’ their widespread popularity today can be traced back to the riot grrrl feminist punk movement of the early 1990s, said Marisa Meltzer, author of the book Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music.
[Leltzer says] “[S]uddenly angry women were kind of fashionable, and what happens with fashionable music is we tend to see many generations of it’…
But according to Glenn Sacks, a men”s issues expert, the lyrics of songs by Clarkson and others are indicative of anti-male stereotypes found today in sitcoms, movies, and commercials, where men are seen as inept and foolish.
“I think it speaks to something larger in the culture,’ Sacks said. “Where the man”s always wrong the woman”s behavior is never examined. I always found ‘Womanizer” to be ironic because Britney had been married and divorced multiple times [and allegedly had many affairs] and is nobody to be pointing fingers about womanizing or being promiscuous.’
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