It's Fall, Y'all!
Episode 9 - Show and Tell: "Fall Songs" Out now. Certain seasons remind us of certain songs - so let's dive into some fall-inspired music!
Windows swung right open, autumn air
Jacket 'round my shoulders is yours
Fall is a special time of year. The air gets crisper. The days get shorter. And Taylor Swift releases new albums! Diving into “Fall” as a topic allowed us to step back and consider Taylor’s more holistic creative strategy - from writing incredible songs to releasing new albums and marketing them. We had so much fun making this episode, so check it out!
Want to go into the episode fully prepared? Listen to the songs we discuss below:
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This Week’s Extra Credit - Brought to You by Jenn
Recording this episode was so much fun because it was such a broad topic that we were able to all come in with totally different takes on what makes a song a “fall” song. But the exact thing that made it so fun is the same reason why I put off writing the extra credit a bit. What can I say to add to the conversation around the entire season of fall?
Before I jump into what I ultimately chose to write about, please take a moment to appreciate these corn-y works of art I created in honor of our impassioned discussion about corn at the end of this episode (trust me - just go listen!).
While I couldn’t decide what to write about originally, fortunately (or unfortunately?) the advent of fall and the success of Taylor Swift has brought up some conversations around “basic bitches” again. So in some ways, my topic was chosen for me!
What is a “basic bitch,” you may ask? According to Charlotte Alter’s 2014 TIME magazine article “How Conformity Became a Crime,” a “basic bitch” is “is a conventional girl who conforms to what all the other girls are doing, but doesn’t know she’s doing it. To be called ‘Basic’ implies that you have made a gross miscalculation of your own specialness, that in fact you are not a twinkly snowflake, and your boringness is obvious to everyone.”
Alter attributes the 2004 film, Mean Girls, as the cultural moment that created the “basic bitch” (even though the term itself didn’t appear in Urban Dictionary until five years later according to Jenna Kirby’s article “New Trend in Media or New Stereotype: The Birth of the Basic Bitch”). However, for the sake of this conversation, the timing of the phrase’s origin isn’t quite as important as what Alter goes on to say next:
“How can you spot a ‘Basic Bitch?’ She Instagrams her pumpkin-spice-latte with #caffeine. She bought a neon croptop from NastyGal to wear to Coachella. She takes quizzes to find out which guy from Sex and the City would be her perfect match. She’s ‘obsessed’ with Taylor Swift and scented candles.” (emphasis added)
Since 2014 people have been associating pumpkin spice lattes (a fall staple), fashion trends, and Taylor Swift with “boring” girls. This follows in the long historical trend of dismissing things women love. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at some now-respected musicians and how they and their fans were viewed at the time.
Franz Liszt
Ever heard of the word “lisztomania?” It’s not just a song by the band Phoenix, it was a phrase coined to describe the passionate fandom that arose around 19th century composer, Franz Liszt. Specifically, the term was created by Heinrich Heine an 1844 article about Liszt.
As you can see by the article subtitle, this was focused on female fans. In the article itself, Heine shares that he spoke with a “physician whose speciality is the disorders of women and with whom I conversed as to the magic which our Liszt exercises on his public, [he] smiled mysteriously and told many things of magnetism, galvanism, electricity, of contagion in an overheated hall.” You can practically hear these men rolling their eyes at the “hysterical” behavior from women.
The Beatles
You may be saying, “sure Jenn, but that was a long time ago.” Fair enough, let’s get more modern. Ask any (white) man what the greatest band of all time was, it’s highly likely that The Beatles will be at least in the conversation. Incredible band, great music, right? Well this article from 1964 might disagree.
Sure this headline is about the “youth” of Britain, but it’s clear that the authors are really referring to the female fans - “ While the music is performed, the cameras linger savagely over the faces of the audience. What a bottomless chasm of vacuity they reveal! The huge faces, bloated with cheap confectionery and smeared with chain-store makeup, the open, sagging mouths and glazed eyes, the broken stiletto heels” (emphasis added).*
"If there is a fandom that is made from mostly women, where men would have to earn their way in rather than just be entitled to membership, it is seen as quite threatening. So what do you do in the face of that? You say that that community is worthless and hysterical and you cast aspersions on it, as a way to delegitimize it, because you are not invited."
Professor Sarah Banet-Weiser
Star Trek
Let’s go outside the world of musicians for a moment and into a world that is strongly associated with men - Star Trek. If I say the word “trekkie,” you likely imagine a man in costume at a convention. But did you know that the original trekkie fandom was run by women? In fact, it was women who spearheaded the early conventions and creating fan content, such as the book Star Trek Lives!
In “Living Star Trek: How Two Women Breathed New Life into the Franchise,” Anthony Darnell spoke with some of the original female fans, and Jean Lorrah specifically calls out the female domination of the fandom. She says, “We were such nerds, and primarily female. There have always been men in Trek fandom, but to be in this [part of the] creative fandom they had to understand that women ran the show. That was not a rule—it simply was that way, as in zine fandom women outnumbered men by about ten to one.”
“Basic Bitch?” Or Just a Woman Who Likes Something?
In her article, “Is Fandom An Obsession Or Is That The Misogyny Talking?” Alicia Lansom summarizes the overall trend well, “plainly, art isn’t seen as viable until men-led audiences and media deem it so.”
In doing research for this bit of extra credit, I encountered dozens of thought pieces about the phrase “basic bitch.” My ultimate takeaway is that a lot of people are spending their time determining what is and isn’t ok to like, while these “basic bitches” are just out there enjoying their lives. So maybe we should all take the advice Taylor gave us. Let’s make the friendship bracelets. Drink your PSL, take pictures with fall leaves, and dance your heart out to “Now That We Don’t Talk” (we certainly are).
*Note: Traditional gender markers such as make-up and stiletto heels shouldn’t be automatically associated with cisgender women; however, I think it’s safe to assume that this rather crotchety author from the 60s was referring to girls.
Sources
Alter, Charlotte. “How Conformity Became a Crime.” TIME, https://time.com/77305/how-conformity-became-a-crime/. Accessed 2 Nov 2023.
Darnell, Anthony. “Living Star Trek: How Two Women Breathed New Life into the Franchise.” Star Trek, https://www.startrek.com/news/living-star-trek-how-two-women-breathed-new-life-into-the-franchise. Accessed 2 Nov 2023.
Heine, Henrich. “Lisztomania.” Lapham’s Quarterly, https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/celebrity/lisztomania. Accessed 2 Nov 2023.
Johnson, Paul. “The Menace of Beatlism.” The New Statesman, https://www.newstatesman.com/archive/2022/10/archive-menace-beatlism. Accessed 2 Nov 2023.
Kirby, Jenna. “New Trend in Media or New Stereotype: The Birth of the Basic Bitch.” Gender and Pop Culture, https://tcnjwgs220.wordpress.com/2014/12/05/new-trend-in-media-or-new-stereotype-the-birth-of-the-basic-bitch/. Accessed 2 Nov 2023.
Lansom, Alicia. “Is Fandom An Obsession Or Is That The Misogyny Talking?.” Refinery 29, https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/misogyny-towards-fandoms-fangirls. Accessed 2 Nov 2023.