Pop Alerts
As an avid pop Stan for the past 10 years, I always noticed the little things that my favorite female artists would mention or experience, always hinting to some sort of unfairness within the industry. Fifth Harmony would mention how tiring it was to tour since so much work would go into it while Justin Bieber was often late to his sold-out arena tours and delivered a mediocre –at best- performance while being intoxicated and no one would really bat an eye, and all his fans remained loyal.
Here are some concrete examples where female artists saw their career get significantly tougher for the mere entertainment of label CEOs and music producers:
Back in 2010, the X-factor, for the first time in its history, successfully created a boyband that fangirls fell in love with. This meant a lot of revenue to entertainment manager and ex-X factor producer Simon Cowell and he knew: New content was put out every day such as “One direction Video Diaries”, covers and engagement with fans on Twitter was at its highest.
Simon then made sure to establish a strong UK audience by releasing a lot of UK influenced pop songs.
This gave him all the proof he needed to push One Direction to a North American label to reach a wider audience. Not-surprisingly, it wasn’t very hard to convince one of the best labels in the US to sign a small group consisting of mostly white teenage boys who –yes- could “sing” and their rise to fame was at that point just a matter of months: their net worth is currently standing at a 340 Million dollars combined.
Now this is where things get complicated... while One direction were getting their hair brushed by the label CEOs themselves , Simon Cowell seized the opportunity and simultaneously created two girl groups in two different continents: Little Mix in the X factor UK and Fifth Harmony in X Factor US.
Here we have a situation where music producers took advantage of the band wave and fed into the girl group drama by purposefully creating competition within their own label and while at the same time giving full attention to a mediocre boy band and instead helped feed into the craziness of the fangirls.
Media took over that "label created feud" and every article about any of the girl group would also mention the competitors and compare them to each other. Articles like this were common during their popular days.
This behavior within label officials is more common than you think, let’s take now a closer look at how the industry LOVES to pin female artists against each-other.
Nicki Minaj was the queen of rap for 10 years uninterrupted until Cardi B rose to fame thanks to her funny videos on Vine and her consistent engagement with fans.
She was the new rap girl, who was unapologetically herself and didn’t care about what the media had to say about her. And well, shortly after her first Hit single “Bodak Yellow” became the first number one rap single by a female artist since Lil Kim in the late 90s, the media took this as an opportunity to announce that “Nicki Minaj career is dead” discrediting all of her work when in reality She is the literal PINK PRINT for female rap today and has paved the way for many.
With the consistent portrayal of her “obvious” decline in the industry, Nicki Minaj eventually fell in the media trap and found herself feeding into this non-existent feud with Cardi-B leading to a literal public fight in 2018:
As a woman, seeing that was truly disheartening, I was happy to have more than one female rapper to listen to but apparently the music industry felt threatened and really pushed the “Rap Queen” Agenda, allowing only one of them to thrive. Cardi B success really affected Nickis (Media wise) , her album “Queen” wasn’t getting the best responses at first and her social image seemed to be changing: she -rightfully- started to defend herself publicly and created her own personal radio station as she was being boycotted by most in the name of having only “One rap Queen”.
Now moving forward to the year 2020, we are seeing a surge of female rappers who are more confident and talented than ever and most importantly know the importance of Sisterhood. But the numbers are still very low: why is it that there is 100+ male rappers who can’t even hold up their mics properly yet are still successful, but the industry wants to make sure that female artists must be number 1 and if they aren’t then their entire work will be discredited.
Sadly, rivalries between female artists are very common are often pushed by the labels and the media.
Today I am asking you to start noticing around you how your favorite artists are being treated: Have you ever asked yourself why Drake would go on tour on a yearly basis, but you had to wait two years before Katy Perry could even release her album? Or why you had to watch Ariana Grande -who had her most successful year in 2019- get snubbed on Live Television by the Grammys while some country white male song wins over her for “Song of the year”.
It's time to start calling out the micro-aggressions present in the everyday life of your favorite celebrities and advocating for them. Hollywood isn’t exempt from sexism nor does it do anything to combat it: these emotional and traumatic experiences for female artists are just marketing ploys for these labels and management companies who plan on feeding into the “Girl drama stereotype” that never ceases to work, and we have had enough!
We can change this if you join me on sharing this article with your friends, and comment below times where your favorite female artist were getting brushed off by the industry and got their complains ignored!