#Holly Berry Happiness Online class

[holidcy]

i am actually embarrassed to say how long this intro too me to write out ? so im not gonna say it ! it’s not like it took be 3 hours or anything 👀 . and for what ? idk because this intro is a mess . but anyways ... i’m mia , i’m a whole twenty years old which really just feels like a glorified teenager but whatever , we’re not here to talk about that right now . we’re here to talk about my lil baby holly . guys she is literally the sweetest human ever ? but also ? to sensitive for her own good and really the good of those around her ? very happy feet energy coming form this girl . but without further ado , below you can read up on holly & if you wanna plot give this a like . also my discord is 𝖒𝖌𝖐'𝖘 𝖜𝖍𝖔𝖗𝖊#9789 if you wanna plot there or just generally chat !

𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐈𝐍 𝐃𝐄𝐏𝐓𝐇

full name: holiday elena addams nickname: holly ( she’s basically turned this into her name , not one really calls her holiday ) , holls , elle ( by her parents ) birthday: june 3rd birthplace: chicago , illinois hometown: highland park , illinois ( although the family home was located in highland park her parents would in chicago and holly even attended private school in chicago ) residence: new york city , new york nationality: american ( est. 1999 through birth )  ethnicity: english ( maternal & paternal , 50% ) , polish ( maternal , 25% ) , spanish ( paternal , 25% ) religion: catholicism  orientation: heterflexible ( she claims being straight but in all actually she’s not closed off to anything despite not having much experience outside the opposite gender ) languages spoken: english ( fluent , first language ) , spanish ( fluent , second language ) , polish ( conversation , third language ) , mandarin  ( conversational , fourth language ) . father: leandro oliver addams  ( 49 years old )  was born & raised in chicago , illinois by a politician / businessman & a philanthropist . leandro went on to take a little bit from both of his parents as he is a highly esteemed business tycoon as well as being regarded as one of the most charitable men in the world .  ( relationship:  there has never been a day that has gone by where the two didn’t get along . if there is anyone in this world who gets holly it is her father . truly , daddy’s little girl . the two of them are as thick as thieves . ) mother : susanna renee addams ( nee daniels ) ( 48 years old ) was born & raised in long island , new york . the daughter of a hedge fund investor & a stay at home mother . susanna grew to be an amazing cosmetologist and which the help of her father’s amazing business mind she was able to start up a salon in new york city . she gained the most devoted clientele , loving every second of her work . she took a break for almost a decade before deciding to return to the beauty industry . today she has salons across the globe in chicago , los angeles , toronto , london , and new york city .  ( relationship: susanna often had to play bad cop when it came to parenting and because of this the two butted heads quite often whilst holly was growing up . despite this , her mom is her role model and the two have always had a friendship that underlined their mother - daughter relationship .  ) social class: upper education: attending new york university ( s. 2018 ) she spent her first year of university at usc , she’s majored in creative writing at both universities  career: author ( her book is a coming of age mystery called privilege that she’s recently admitted to writing the full book during a coke binge ) , internet personality , philanthropist , socialite , and student  notoriety: being apart of the prominent addams family , amassing over 32m followers on all social media platforms , publishing a new york times best selling book at the age of seventeen . weight: 120lbs height: 5′5″ hair color: brown ( with blonde highlights ) eye color: brown positive traits: benevolent, high spirited , extroverted , romantic , honest , affectionate , intelligent , friendly , ambitious , passionate , approachable , charming  negative traits: immature , vain , garrulous , critical , sensitive , stubborn , inattentive , naive , sarcastic , obsessive , insecure , impractical , irritable likes: anything strawberry flavored , flowers , driving fast , pink , watching the first snow fall , birthday parties , lips gloss , netflix , sunkissed skin , dogs , peanut butter , agatha christie , redecorating , driving with the windows down , long plane rides , denim jackets , taco bell , orange juice , makeup , sports , female empowerment , online shopping , fresh berries , roller skating , photography , writing , tea dislikes: liars , driving in the snow , coffee , having no siblings , deep water , bad drivers , body shaming , pizza , hateful people , being rushed , cuss words , repetition , disloyalty , being alone ,  horror movies , dentists , silence , cheap perfume , criticism , the unknown , traffic , wine , poptarts ,  small spaces ,  hobbies: reading with a hot cup of tea , video editing in the back of a car , smoking before bed to help fall asleep , going out to eat with her parents , napping , hiding alcohol in her bedroom , painting alternate universe cartoons , attending big soirees , stashing drugs in jewelry boxes , sleepovers with her closest friends , talking the dogs on walks , early morning instagram lives , old disney marathons , scribbling in a notebook while snuggled up in bed  chara inspo: olivia baker ( all american ) , leila faisal ( all american ) , tan france ( queer eye ) , elena gilbert ( the vampire diaries ) , dorothy gale ( wizard of oz ) , lucy pevensie ( chronicles of narnia ) , lara jean ( to all the boys i loved before ) , elle woods ( legally blonde ) , jeffree star , jenny humphrey ( gossip girl ) , cassie howard ( euphoria ) fashion inspo: vsco girls , bella hadid , megan markle , rihanna , selena gomez , perrie edwards , emma watson aesthetics: ghostly sounding music playing as background music to a pen to paper , eyes widened at the chance to do something positive , the annoying beg for approval , infectious energy , a pout so crippling , the swell of regret as you sneak a bottle into your bedroom , tanned skin tousling with silk sheets , big eyes threatening to shed a tear , the zip of a pink mclaren 

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝐄𝐑𝐀

holly is the only child to leandro and susanna addams ( the addams family 👀 ) . she was born with not just a silver spoon but the silver spoon . the addams are a prominent american family , that are regarded as one of the leading industrialist during the gilded age . in short her families been billionaire rich for a long time and are known as one of the families to bring wealth to the city of chicago . she was incredibly spoiled growin gup as you would assume but by the grace of her parents teachings she was anything but a brat . she had being filthy rich and being an only child working against her and she still managed to be the most giving and down to earth child . from a young age holly would give her toys to other kids during play dates & ask her parents if she could donate the things she didn’t use anymore to the less fortunate . 

although her father had a busying career as he took over the family company just a year before holly was born , but in spite of that he always made time for his family . luckily her mother had stepped away from her career soon after meeting holly’s father , so she was able to be a stay at home mom and be there for every important moment of holly’s life . by the way , susanna was straight of of a real housewives show only just an overall better person ? they had dinner together as a family every night , threw parties at the house for every big moment in holly’s life . everything from birthdays , graduations , academic honors , to becoming captain of the cheerleading team and everything in between warranted a celebration in the eyes of susanna and leandro . 

she grew up extremely sheltered , mostly because her parents wanted to keep their little girl well their little girl . they didn’t want the world to taint her . she went to church every sunday and even wednesday nights , if she wanted to have a sleepover it was always at the addams household , and her parents met the parent/s of every kid she befriended growing up . 

despite their attempts her parents couldn’t shield her from one thing . getting her heart broken and at sixteen she experience her first bout of heart break . the boy she’d falling head over heels for just stopped talking to her one day , with no rhythm or reason he moved on to another girl with a blink of an eye . she couldn’t understand why ( pst ? it was because she slept with him and that was all he wanted to begin with ) someone could be so cruel an play with someones heart like that . it was her first experience of how the world could really work and in all honesty , holly couldn’t handle it . she got her hands on her parents bar room in the house and would literally drink every night before bed so she could sleep . 

this soon turned into her going to parties , promising her parents "i just want to hang out with my friend , i wont touch any alcohol” and her promise was always kept , she didn’t touch alcohol at these parties instead she smoke weed and on the chance one of her friends had it on them she’d do a line . 

this double life , if you would , didn’t lead to any real issues , at least not while she was in highschool . she still graduated top of her class  and even got accepted into her dream school university of southern california .  it wasn’t until she was a semester deep in usc that she realized she was losing control over her life . maybe it was a mix of her derailing mental state , being separated from her parents , and the los angeles social make up . whatever it was holly wasn’t too far gone to see she needed help . 

instead of going back to school the following semester holly checked herself into rehab . her parents freaked out , unaware their daughter had touched a substance a day in her life . it was a long process and took alot of owning up for her own wrong doings but after a couple months she checked out of rehab and flew out to her parents .

she had decided upon leaving rehab that her best bet directly after getting out would be to surround herself with people who loved her . during her short stint in california her parents had made the temporary move to new york city so that her mom could focus on the salon in the city , so holly transferred to new york university to continue her studies and be around her parents .

she lives under their roof , despite being more than self efficient thanks to her multiple branches of income including her trust fund but she figures there is only so much more time before they leave to go back to chicago that the more time she spends with them the better off she’ll be when they leave the city . speaking of , she doesn’t know her parents will be leaving the city in the next few months . on a positive note they plan on paying the rent in the apartment they live in for her until she finds somewhere she likes better .   

today , holly is a sober ( she smokes weed here and there but it’s not a addictive so it fine 🙄 ) and happy . although due to how sensitive the girl is anything could make her snap , she’s incredibly fragile guys . like capable of having a mental break at any moment but like we ignore it because if we bring it up it’ll happen . wooo . 

not so fun fact ? when she has an off day she’ll literally sit in her room holding either a bottle she had hidden in her walk in closet or stares at the coke she keeps in her jewelry��box . she hasn’t used any of it but she tells herself its there as a reminder when really it’s a crutch for if she ever needs it again , she has easy access .

secret time ? she pushed her ex boyfriend of a balcony while she was drunk . this happened before she went to rehab ... perhaps you could say it was what prompted her to realized her crazy ass needed to go to rehab . ummm , it’s not acceptable and she knows this but one thing we all need to know about holly is that holly + substances + being upset = toxic shit that is always the equation and there is never another answer to it . 

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

a girl squad or just a squad in general really , give my baby her lil group of people please

maybe a fellow chicago native ? who she dated in highscool and you know is the one who dropped her like a hot potato after she slept with him

ex hook ups 

frenemies but more like a blair & lil j circa season 1 situation ? 

someone who just doesn’t like her , but like she does everything she can think of to get them to like her 

an unrequited ting were he’s leading her one so he can sleep with her ?

or maybe someone has a crush on holly but she just doens’t have the heart to tell them she’s not interested so now here she is kissing and OMG YUP NOW SHES SLEEPING W THEM ...

someone she races ? she loves cars especially fast ones

a we hang out and watch/obsess over sports but the whole time i can’t help but think about how hot you are kinda vibe ?

someone who is v bad for her and they know it but she doesn’t care because she like them so much & he likes her too but knows he’ll hurt her ?!

someone who sees that she might be teetering on falling off the wagon ( maybe they were over her place and saw the stash of substances all over her room ), maybe they’re trying to get her to stop smoking weed bc they feel like for her that’s a huge gateway  

smoking buddies where they literally just hot box cars together and munch on taco bell talking about why sound vibrates & shit

someone who she used to party with & be wild with ( could be from chi or nyc because she visited alot as a kid ) and now they feel like she’s a lame bc she’s sober

she’s a good influence on them ? they’re a bad influence on her ? ride or dies ? partners in crime ? only friends when there is a substance involved ? sugar baby vibes ? unlikely friends ? flings ? crush ? friends with benefits ? everytime they are around one another its a fight ? someone she lets crash at her parents place sometimes ? someone she’s backstabbed but like she got tricked into doing it ? anything fluffy , anything angsty ... reall just anything you got , i’ll take ! 

[rickadkinsartist1]

Two New Holiday Themed Online Classes Announced!

Two New Holiday Themed Online Classes Announced!

Today I am announcing two new online classes that I have designed, for everyone to create some great Holiday projects.  One class focuses on Halloween Treats using products from the new Holiday Catalog, while the other focuses on Christmas (and is part of my new Christmas Card Class Series).  I have designed these classes for any level stamper or crafter.  The deadline to register and preorder is…

[lodelss]

Evelyn McDonnell | Longreads | March 2019 | 11 minutes (2,166 words)

  When Janelle Monae inducts Janet Jackson into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on March 29, it will be a beautiful moment: a young, gifted, and black woman acknowledging the formative influence — on herself and millions of others — of a woman who seized Control of her own career 33 years ago. It will also be an anomaly.

Jackson is one of only two women being inducted into the hall this year, out of 37 inductees, including the members of the five all-male bands being inducted. The other woman is Stevie Nicks. During the 34 years since the hall was founded by Jann Wenner and Ahmet Ertegun, 888 people have been inducted; 69 have been women. That’s 7.7 percent. The problem is spreading.

A November Rolling Stone article announced that the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, was collaborating with the Rock Hall on a new exhibit of “iconic instruments of rock ‘n’ roll” called Play It Loud. Scheduled to open on April 8, the list of acts whose instruments would be on display included only one woman. My social media feeds exploded with rage and quips, as we wondered whether St. Vincent made the cut because the curators assumed from her name that she was male. Since then, the Met has added several women (and men) to the exhibit list, including Patti Smith, Wanda Jackson, and Joan Jett. It isn’t clear whether the Met added these women as a result of the internet outrage or if they were part of the show all along. After all, all three institutions — the hall, the museum, and the magazine — have, as Jett might say, a bad reputation for excluding women from their reindeer games.

People and institutions have to stop defining rock and rock ‘n’ roll as music played by men, especially white men, with guitars.

The Rock Hall is the most obvious offender in what I’ll call the manhandling of musical history. Manhandling is akin to, and often — as with the Rock Hall — intersects with, whitewashing. Manhandling pushes women out of the frame just as whitewashing covers up black bodies. People of color account for 32 percent of Rock Hall inductees, a far better figure than for women, but still not representative of the enormous role African Americans and Latinx people have played in American popular music. Manhandling is standard practice on country radio; there were no women in the Top 20 of Billboard’s country airplay chart for two weeks in December. Manhandling is standard practice on classic rock radio, where women are relegated to token spots on playlists, and are never played back-to-back. It’s standard in histories of music; there are no women featured in Greil Marcus’s seminal book Mystery Train: Images of Rock ‘n’ Roll in America. And of course, it’s standard practice at IM Pei’s partial glass pyramid in Cleveland. One year of affirmative action at the Grammys cannot wipe away decades of manhandling.

The problem is pervasive, and it is ideological. It is a way of seeing and presenting the world that is based on projections of power and control, not on reality. People and institutions have to stop defining rock and rock ‘n’ roll as music played by men, especially white men, with guitars. We have to change this image, this historiography, this institutionalization, this lie. In short, you do not need a cock to rock.

Kickstart your weekend reading by getting the week’s best Longreads delivered to your inbox every Friday afternoon.

Sign up

Exhibit A: Sister Rosetta Tharpe. In the 1930s, the blues and gospel singer began picking her guitar in a way that we now recognize as the foundation of rock ‘n’ roll playing — she laid the foundation upon which Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly built. There’s footage of her with a Gibson that’s been viewed 2.7 million times on YouTube. If you’re not one of those viewers, become one now. Tharpe was finally inducted into the Rock Hall in 2018.

Holly and Berry were both among the first 16 acts inducted in the Rock Hall, in 1986. All their fellow inductees were male. Built on such grotesquely imbalanced footing, the institution may never get itself right. After all, its main instigator was Ahmet Ertegun, an admittedly legendary records man who treated women abominably, according to Dorothy Carvello’s 2018 memoir Anything for a Hit. Carvello is a music executive who began her career working for Ertegun at Atlantic. Ertegun subjected her to crude sexual harassment and once fractured her arm in anger. The Rock Hall named its main exhibition hall after Ertegun. How can this ever be a place where women feel welcome, let alone safe? Just as universities have removed from buildings and fellowships the names of film executives who gave them money, such as USC renaming their Bryan Singer Division of Critical Studies, the Rock Hall should remove Ertegun’s name from the building and from the annual industry executive award that bears his name. It’s an award that has never been given to a woman.

I would like to not care about what institutions such as the Met and Hall of Fame do.

I pick on the Rock Hall because I care. I love rock ‘n’ roll, to borrow a phrase. I attended the building’s inaugural event, and despite my ever-growing disenchantment, I always pay attention to who is nominated and who wins. I even get to vote — finally. Aware of the way it was increasingly being seen as a sort of hospice for aging white men, the hall has been trying to diversify its voting body, or risk obsolescence. After two decades as a professional rock writer, I was finally asked to vote a few years ago, and to recruit friends. The problem is, every inductee also gets a vote. So every year, more and more men get the franchise and vote in their friends and heroes, who tend to be men. The hall rigged its own system with its testosterocking inaugural class, and despite efforts to add gender and color balance, the numbers are getting worse.

It’s tempting to just say so what. I would like to not care about what institutions such as the Met and Hall of Fame do. They are essentially shrines to white men created by white men, so of course, they honor white men. But they pretend to serve the public — and in the Met’s case, it is in part a publicly funded institution. The Hall of Fame and its associated museum have enormous cultural power, writing in stone the historical importance of individuals in a way that no other institution or publication or organization does. They also create real economic benefits for culture workers. Being inducted into the Rock Hall doesn’t just look good on your resume, it helps sell records and tickets. Most importantly, these institutions provide inspiration — role models — for future generations. And if the only women you’re going to see receiving awards on that stage at the Barclays Center are Janet Jackson and Stevie Nicks, would you, if you were a little girl, go pick up a guitar?

Time’s up for the Rock Hall and the music industry. The Grammys got called on its #GrammysSoMale gender gap in 2018. After women complained that they were largely shut out of the telecast winners, Recording Academy president Neil Portnow responded that female artists needed to “step up” and they would be welcome. Needless to say, that patronizing, clueless comment went over like a lead zeppelin; there were calls for Portnow’s head, including an online petition for him to resign. So this February, the telecast featured an impressive roster of contemporary and historic talent, from Lady Gaga and Brandi Carlile to Dolly Parton and Diana Ross. But then Portnow stepped on stage and publicly patted himself on the back for the show’s sudden gender balance, like he was our white savior, our knight in shining armor coming to our emotional rescue with this feel-good moment.

Moments are not enough. Thankfully, Portnow is stepping down from his position in July. And yes, I’m sure a woman would be happy to take his place. This is part of the change that must happen in the businesses and nonprofits that support music. Women must be hired and promoted across all facets of the industry: as the editor in chief of Rolling Stone, the chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the CEO of Universal Music Group. After all, a recent study from the University of Southern California shows that women are outnumbered in most aspects of the business, accounting for only 2 percent of producers and 12.3 percent of songwriters, for instance.

Some of this imbalance is a result of outright exclusion or unwelcoming environments. (Just ask any woman who has worked at a music magazine or a recording studio what it’s like to be, as former Rolling Stone writer Robin Green titled her 2018 memoir, “the only girl.”) Some is a result of sexual harassment or assault, which leaves women so traumatized that their careers stall or even stop. Ever wonder why a favorite artist, songwriter, or DJ ghosted for years? Increasing revelations about the predatory behavior of musicians, publicists, producers, managers, and executives show that, as a whole, the music industry can be a frightening place to be female, whether you’re a young intern working for R. Kelly or a talented country singer married to Ryan Adams. Mandy Moore married Adams in 2009, and hasn’t released an album since. They divorced in 2016. A New York Times investigation of Adams’s alleged predatory behavior toward younger women described him as “psychologically abusive” to Moore.

Guys like Ertegun, who died in 2006, reportedly manhandled in the workplace, in addition to creating the Cleveland shrine to gender inequity. Carvello’s book documents in scandalous detail how he and other executives created a boys’ club environment where women had to either pretend to be one of the boys, betraying their sisters, or trade sex for promotion. In Ertegun’s world, women were not allowed to step up; they were stepped on. Having systematically excluded and oppressed women from the business of making music, Ertegun and his cronies at the Rock Hall then carved that exclusion into stone by essentially writing them out of history, year after year after year. When women do get let into the Rock Hall boys’ club, it is on the arms of men: Carole King is there for her songwriting with Gerry Goffin, not as the woman who recorded numerous hit songs herself, including those on the record-smashing album Tapestry. Tina Turner was inducted alongside her abusive ex-spouse Ike. Indeed, the hall seems to define rock in a way that is disturbingly masculinist, as opposed to expansive and risk-taking — the qualities I like to think of as defining popular music. How about a Hall of Fame that includes Selena, TLC, Patsy Cline, and Grace Jones?

There’s nothing so scary to certain men as a bunch of women banding together. That’s another tool of the patriarchy: divide and conquer.

I’m delighted that two deserving female artists, Janet Jackson and Stevie Nicks, will be inducted this year. It’s particularly noteworthy that Nicks is getting the nod as a solo artist, after she was already inducted as part of Fleetwood Mac; she’s the first woman to be inducted twice, joining 22 men in the so-called Clyde McPhatter Club. Next year, the Hall must do the same for Tina and Carole. After being nominated so many times, Chaka Khan must finally be inducted as well.

That still won’t be enough to counteract the sheer numerical voting power of all the male musicians who get in as members of bands, especially if the men of Rufus, Khan’s collaborators with whom she has thrice been nominated, are inducted alongside Khan. There are three things the Hall of Fame can do to rectify that imbalance: 1. Flood the nominating committee and voting membership with more women. Six out of 29 members of last year’s nominating committee were women; the notoriously tight-lipped hall has not revealed this year’s committee members. 2. Reduce the voting power of members inducted as players in bands (so, say, the five dudes in Def Leppard each get one fifth of a vote). 3. Nominate a shit ton of all-female bands next year.

Female musicians and groups are particularly absent from the Rock Hall, as from the industry. There’s nothing so scary to certain men as a bunch of women banding together. That’s another tool of the patriarchy: divide and conquer. It’s why Lady Gaga is basically the only woman in A Star Is Born, a film ostensibly celebrating female artistry. She has no mother, no sister; even her girlfriends are male, and they’re drag queens. By focusing on individual artists, not a collective, the entertainment-industrial complex elevates the star, not the gender. The lioness is separated from her pack.

That’s why some women involved in music have formed an activist group, named Turn It Up! As our mission statement says, we “advocate for equal airplay, media coverage and industry employment of groups who are historically and structurally excluded from the business and the institutions of music-making.” And yes, we’re coming for you, sons of Ertegun.

Here’s who I’d like to see inducted in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame next year:

Tina Turner

Chaka Khan

Carole King

Diana Ross

Dolly Parton

The Go-Go’s

L7

The Runaways

Bikini Kill

The Crystals

Labelle

Salt N Pepa

That would add more than 30 women to the voting rolls. It’s not enough to correct the historical record, but it’s a step up.

***

Evelyn McDonnell is associate professor of journalism at Loyola Marymount University. She has been writing about popular culture and society for more than 20 years. She is the author of four books: Queens of Noise: The Real Story of the Runaways, Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids and Rock ‘n’ Roll, Army of She: Icelandic, Iconoclastic, Irrepressible Bjork, and Rent by Jonathan Larson. She coedited the anthologies Women Who Rock: Bessie to Beyonce. Girl Groups to Riot Grrrl, Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop and Rap, and Stars Don’t Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth and edit the Music Matters series from University of Texas Press. She lives in Los Angeles.

Flor Amezquita, Marika Price and Adele Bertei assisted with research for this article. Figures are based off the official Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s induction page, which was then cross-referenced with multiple lists and sources.

Editor: Aaron Gilbreath; Fact-checker: Matt Giles

[lodelss]

The Manhandling of Rock ‘N’ Roll History

Evelyn McDonnell | Longreads | March 2019 | 11 minutes (2,166 words)

  When Janelle Monae inducts Janet Jackson into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on March 29, it will be a beautiful moment: a young, gifted, and black woman acknowledging the formative influence — on herself and millions of others — of a woman who seized Control of her own career 33 years ago. It will also be an anomaly.

Jackson is one of only two women being inducted into the hall this year, out of 37 inductees, including the members of the five all-male bands being inducted. The other woman is Stevie Nicks. During the 34 years since the hall was founded by Jann Wenner and Ahmet Ertegun, 888 people have been inducted; 69 have been women. That’s 7.7 percent. The problem is spreading.

A November Rolling Stone article announced that the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, was collaborating with the Rock Hall on a new exhibit of “iconic instruments of rock ‘n’ roll” called Play It Loud. Scheduled to open on April 8, the list of acts whose instruments would be on display included only one woman. My social media feeds exploded with rage and quips, as we wondered whether St. Vincent made the cut because the curators assumed from her name that she was male. Since then, the Met has added several women (and men) to the exhibit list, including Patti Smith, Wanda Jackson, and Joan Jett. It isn’t clear whether the Met added these women as a result of the internet outrage or if they were part of the show all along. After all, all three institutions — the hall, the museum, and the magazine — have, as Jett might say, a bad reputation for excluding women from their reindeer games.

People and institutions have to stop defining rock and rock ‘n’ roll as music played by men, especially white men, with guitars.

The Rock Hall is the most obvious offender in what I’ll call the manhandling of musical history. Manhandling is akin to, and often — as with the Rock Hall — intersects with, whitewashing. Manhandling pushes women out of the frame just as whitewashing covers up black bodies. People of color account for 32 percent of Rock Hall inductees, a far better figure than for women, but still not representative of the enormous role African Americans and Latinx people have played in American popular music. Manhandling is standard practice on country radio; there were no women in the Top 20 of Billboard’s country airplay chart for two weeks in December. Manhandling is standard practice on classic rock radio, where women are relegated to token spots on playlists, and are never played back-to-back. It’s standard in histories of music; there are no women featured in Greil Marcus’s seminal book Mystery Train: Images of Rock ‘n’ Roll in America. And of course, it’s standard practice at IM Pei’s partial glass pyramid in Cleveland. One year of affirmative action at the Grammys cannot wipe away decades of manhandling.

The problem is pervasive, and it is ideological. It is a way of seeing and presenting the world that is based on projections of power and control, not on reality. People and institutions have to stop defining rock and rock ‘n’ roll as music played by men, especially white men, with guitars. We have to change this image, this historiography, this institutionalization, this lie. In short, you do not need a cock to rock.

Kickstart your weekend reading by getting the week’s best Longreads delivered to your inbox every Friday afternoon.

Sign up

Exhibit A: Sister Rosetta Tharpe. In the 1930s, the blues and gospel singer began picking her guitar in a way that we now recognize as the foundation of rock ‘n’ roll playing — she laid the foundation upon which Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly built. There’s footage of her with a Gibson that’s been viewed 2.7 million times on YouTube. If you’re not one of those viewers, become one now. Tharpe was finally inducted into the Rock Hall in 2018.

Holly and Berry were both among the first 16 acts inducted in the Rock Hall, in 1986. All their fellow inductees were male. Built on such grotesquely imbalanced footing, the institution may never get itself right. After all, its main instigator was Ahmet Ertegun, an admittedly legendary records man who treated women abominably, according to Dorothy Carvello’s 2018 memoir Anything for a Hit. Carvello is a music executive who began her career working for Ertegun at Atlantic. Ertegun subjected her to crude sexual harassment and once fractured her arm in anger. The Rock Hall named its main exhibition hall after Ertegun. How can this ever be a place where women feel welcome, let alone safe? Just as universities have removed from buildings and fellowships the names of film executives who gave them money, such as USC renaming their Bryan Singer Division of Critical Studies, the Rock Hall should remove Ertegun’s name from the building and from the annual industry executive award that bears his name. It’s an award that has never been given to a woman.

I would like to not care about what institutions such as the Met and Hall of Fame do.

I pick on the Rock Hall because I care. I love rock ‘n’ roll, to borrow a phrase. I attended the building’s inaugural event, and despite my ever-growing disenchantment, I always pay attention to who is nominated and who wins. I even get to vote — finally. Aware of the way it was increasingly being seen as a sort of hospice for aging white men, the hall has been trying to diversify its voting body, or risk obsolescence. After two decades as a professional rock writer, I was finally asked to vote a few years ago, and to recruit friends. The problem is, every inductee also gets a vote. So every year, more and more men get the franchise and vote in their friends and heroes, who tend to be men. The hall rigged its own system with its testosterocking inaugural class, and despite efforts to add gender and color balance, the numbers are getting worse.

It’s tempting to just say so what. I would like to not care about what institutions such as the Met and Hall of Fame do. They are essentially shrines to white men created by white men, so of course, they honor white men. But they pretend to serve the public — and in the Met’s case, it is in part a publicly funded institution. The Hall of Fame and its associated museum have enormous cultural power, writing in stone the historical importance of individuals in a way that no other institution or publication or organization does. They also create real economic benefits for culture workers. Being inducted into the Rock Hall doesn’t just look good on your resume, it helps sell records and tickets. Most importantly, these institutions provide inspiration — role models — for future generations. And if the only women you’re going to see receiving awards on that stage at the Barclays Center are Janet Jackson and Stevie Nicks, would you, if you were a little girl, go pick up a guitar?

Time’s up for the Rock Hall and the music industry. The Grammys got called on its #GrammysSoMale gender gap in 2018. After women complained that they were largely shut out of the telecast winners, Recording Academy president Neil Portnow responded that female artists needed to “step up” and they would be welcome. Needless to say, that patronizing, clueless comment went over like a lead zeppelin; there were calls for Portnow’s head, including an online petition for him to resign. So this February, the telecast featured an impressive roster of contemporary and historic talent, from Lady Gaga and Brandi Carlile to Dolly Parton and Diana Ross. But then Portnow stepped on stage and publicly patted himself on the back for the show’s sudden gender balance, like he was our white savior, our knight in shining armor coming to our emotional rescue with this feel-good moment.

Moments are not enough. Thankfully, Portnow is stepping down from his position in July. And yes, I’m sure a woman would be happy to take his place. This is part of the change that must happen in the businesses and nonprofits that support music. Women must be hired and promoted across all facets of the industry: as the editor in chief of Rolling Stone, the chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the CEO of Universal Music Group. After all, a recent study from the University of Southern California shows that women are outnumbered in most aspects of the business, accounting for only 2 percent of producers and 12.3 percent of songwriters, for instance.

Some of this imbalance is a result of outright exclusion or unwelcoming environments. (Just ask any woman who has worked at a music magazine or a recording studio what it’s like to be, as former Rolling Stone writer Robin Green titled her 2018 memoir, “the only girl.”) Some is a result of sexual harassment or assault, which leaves women so traumatized that their careers stall or even stop. Ever wonder why a favorite artist, songwriter, or DJ ghosted for years? Increasing revelations about the predatory behavior of musicians, publicists, producers, managers, and executives show that, as a whole, the music industry can be a frightening place to be female, whether you’re a young intern working for R. Kelly or a talented country singer married to Ryan Adams. Mandy Moore married Adams in 2009, and hasn’t released an album since. They divorced in 2016. A New York Times investigation of Adams’s alleged predatory behavior toward younger women described him as “psychologically abusive” to Moore.

Guys like Ertegun, who died in 2006, reportedly manhandled in the workplace, in addition to creating the Cleveland shrine to gender inequity. Carvello’s book documents in scandalous detail how he and other executives created a boys’ club environment where women had to either pretend to be one of the boys, betraying their sisters, or trade sex for promotion. In Ertegun’s world, women were not allowed to step up; they were stepped on. Having systematically excluded and oppressed women from the business of making music, Ertegun and his cronies at the Rock Hall then carved that exclusion into stone by essentially writing them out of history, year after year after year. When women do get let into the Rock Hall boys’ club, it is on the arms of men: Carole King is there for her songwriting with Gerry Goffin, not as the woman who recorded numerous hit songs herself, including those on the record-smashing album Tapestry. Tina Turner was inducted alongside her abusive ex-spouse Ike. Indeed, the hall seems to define rock in a way that is disturbingly masculinist, as opposed to expansive and risk-taking — the qualities I like to think of as defining popular music. How about a Hall of Fame that includes Selena, TLC, Patsy Cline, and Grace Jones?

There’s nothing so scary to certain men as a bunch of women banding together. That’s another tool of the patriarchy: divide and conquer.

I’m delighted that two deserving female artists, Janet Jackson and Stevie Nicks, will be inducted this year. It’s particularly noteworthy that Nicks is getting the nod as a solo artist, after she was already inducted as part of Fleetwood Mac; she’s the first woman to be inducted twice, joining 22 men in the so-called Clyde McPhatter Club. Next year, the Hall must do the same for Tina and Carole. After being nominated so many times, Chaka Khan must finally be inducted as well.

That still won’t be enough to counteract the sheer numerical voting power of all the male musicians who get in as members of bands, especially if the men of Rufus, Khan’s collaborators with whom she has thrice been nominated, are inducted alongside Khan. There are three things the Hall of Fame can do to rectify that imbalance: 1. Flood the nominating committee and voting membership with more women. Six out of 29 members of last year’s nominating committee were women; the notoriously tight-lipped hall has not revealed this year’s committee members. 2. Reduce the voting power of members inducted as players in bands (so, say, the five dudes in Def Leppard each get one fifth of a vote). 3. Nominate a shit ton of all-female bands next year.

Female musicians and groups are particularly absent from the Rock Hall, as from the industry. There’s nothing so scary to certain men as a bunch of women banding together. That’s another tool of the patriarchy: divide and conquer. It’s why Lady Gaga is basically the only woman in A Star Is Born, a film ostensibly celebrating female artistry. She has no mother, no sister; even her girlfriends are male, and they’re drag queens. By focusing on individual artists, not a collective, the entertainment-industrial complex elevates the star, not the gender. The lioness is separated from her pack.

That’s why some women involved in music have formed an activist group, named Turn It Up! As our mission statement says, we “advocate for equal airplay, media coverage and industry employment of groups who are historically and structurally excluded from the business and the institutions of music-making.” And yes, we’re coming for you, sons of Ertegun.

Here’s who I’d like to see inducted in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame next year:

Tina Turner

Chaka Khan

Carole King

Diana Ross

Dolly Parton

The Go-Go’s

L7

The Runaways

Bikini Kill

The Crystals

Labelle

Salt N Pepa

That would add more than 30 women to the voting rolls. It’s not enough to correct the historical record, but it’s a step up.

***

Evelyn McDonnell is associate professor of journalism at Loyola Marymount University. She has been writing about popular culture and society for more than 20 years. She is the author of four books: Queens of Noise: The Real Story of the Runaways, Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids and Rock ‘n’ Roll, Army of She: Icelandic, Iconoclastic, Irrepressible Bjork, and Rent by Jonathan Larson. She coedited the anthologies Women Who Rock: Bessie to Beyonce. Girl Groups to Riot Grrrl, Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop and Rap, and Stars Don’t Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth and edit the Music Matters series from University of Texas Press. She lives in Los Angeles.

Flor Amezquita, Marika Price and Adele Bertei assisted with research for this article. Figures are based off the official Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s induction page, which was then cross-referenced with multiple lists and sources.

Editor: Aaron Gilbreath; Fact-checker: Matt Giles

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2I1axsh via IFTTT