feminish

A sneak preview of the latest edition of BUST magazine - “For girls with something to get off their chests” - slipped into my inbox yesterday.

My eyes were swiftly drawn to three words:

The Long Blondes

Now it’s a long time since on a grey winter morning, Kate and I were walking across a muddy Suffolk park to History class. I can’t remember on what basis, but one of the blokes had just said that of course I was a feminist. It had never occurred to me I might be: I was just doing my thing my way. Sure, I knew I wouldn’t take any nonsense… but what’s so special about that?

But I took the words to heart. “Am I? What if I am?” And then I hear Kate, picking her way through the damp grass in heels: “Of course you are, Tash. So what?!”

Now our Kate has become the “icily glamorous”, vintage-chic, “fabulous frontwoman” of the aforementioned Long Blondes (a three-girl, two-bloke Sheffield punk quintet). She’s “slipped, along with her four bandmates, between the glossy sheets of Vogue”, her ‘glamorous punk’ look has been featured in the Guardian style pages and she was recently voted one of the coolest people in the world by NME Magazine.

The Guardian describes Kate Jackson’s lyrics as “spiked with feminist attitude”. The Independent claims Appropriation (By Any Other Name) to be a “sexual politics manifesto” and checks the “contemporary post-feminist vibe” of Weekend Without Make-Up. “After the laddish Britpop revival”, it continues, and with the Long Blondes storming the stage, “2006 ought to see tastes swing towards a more feminine input.”

I immediately remember Ann at Feministing’s post back in July, bemoaning the fact that the female presence on the music scene is reduced only to “sexed-up” single female singers. Punk is just as dominated by blokes as mainstream music, with few all-girl bands - and still fewer girl bands with feminist spike:

…it’s undeniable that great all-woman (and pro-woman) acts have a hard time getting airtime once they’ve been pegged as feminist or political.

Knowing the sharp intelligence, glamarous pizzazz and sheer feminine power of Ms feisty Jackson, I’ve been wondering can we claim the Long Blondes for the feminists?

… And what good would it do if we did?

As Dusted Magazine recently asked,

Are the Long Blondes turning into the feminist answer to Pulp? Appropriation (By Any Other Name) would seem to say so.

Kate herself has said, in an online interview at Crashin’ in, the music world is so distracted by the girls’ presence, that their lyrics and music don’t get the attention or credit they would if they were all male.

And does she think they’re the feminist answer to Pulp?

We’re not a feminist band, but we do play in quite a feminine way.

I’m pretty sure that the force and power of The Long Blondes is in the fun and laughter and control they’re having over femininity. They claim Nico, Nancy Sinatra, Diana Dors and Barbara Windsor as their icons: “Sexy and literate, flippant and heartbreaking all at once”.

They’ll play up fifties woman in their hard-hunted vintage but damn her in their lyrics: Where do you go when you’ve finished work?/ You should have been home an hour ago/ I’ve got your tea laid out like some kind of fifties housewife/ …I don’t like giving you the third degree/ I just want what’s due to me (Weekend Without Make-up).

And Kate will tease and taunt, but she won’t bite: Is she a femme fatale?/ That’s what she wants you to think/ She’ll never lead him astray!/ But it’s the best she can do/ But is she going away? / No, she’ll always be here/ Waiting for you/ Back here on earth (Giddy Stratospheres)

Of course Kate won’t say they’re feminist: they’re not going to be boxed and packaged and appropriated by anyone - neither by feminist friends nor the record-label suitors they’ve held waiting for months on the front doorstep, cash-in-hand contracts wilting like a young man’s roses.

I do want to claim The Long Blondes for feminism, but I don’t want to appropriate them. I want to simply say: Thank God they are up there exercising our widest possible freedoms as women.

It helps us all that they’re dressing as they want, not in the name of profit or trends, but to challenge and provoke our expectations of sexiness, of style, of blonde bimbos and female power. (That’s why sex siren Kate will, on occasion, shroud herself in the clothes and horn-rimmed glasses of a 50-something 1970s librarian.) It’s important that the Long Blondes can (and do) tease, joke and laugh at sexual power-games, in full knowledge that they’re as much victims as voyeurs. They’re not trapped in the gender framework but surfing it and toying with it.

What really matters, and what ultimately makes them a great thing for 21st century lasses, is that they’re doing their thing with force, femininity and - above all - talent. They’re delighting in being girls and they’re enjoying the ride.

A sneak preview of the latest edition of BUST magazine - “For girls with something to get off their chests” - slipped into my inbox yesterday.

My eyes were swiftly drawn to three words:

The Long Blondes

Now it’s a long time since on a grey winter morning, Kate and I were walking across a muddy Suffolk park to History class. I can’t remember on what basis, but one of the blokes had just said that of course I was a feminist. It had never occurred to me I might be: I was just doing my thing my way. Sure, I knew I wouldn’t take any nonsense… but what’s so special about that?

But I took the words to heart. “Am I? What if I am?” And then I hear Kate, picking her way through the damp grass in heels: “Of course you are, Tash. So what?!”

Now our Kate has become the “icily glamorous”, vintage-chic, “fabulous frontwoman” of the aforementioned Long Blondes (a three-girl, two-bloke Sheffield punk quintet). She’s “slipped, along with her four bandmates, between the glossy sheets of Vogue”, her ‘glamorous punk’ look has been featured in the Guardian style pages and she was recently voted one of the coolest people in the world by NME Magazine.

The Guardian describes Kate Jackson’s lyrics as “spiked with feminist attitude”. The Independent claims Appropriation (By Any Other Name) to be a “sexual politics manifesto” and checks the “contemporary post-feminist vibe” of Weekend Without Make-Up. “After the laddish Britpop revival”, it continues, and with the Long Blondes storming the stage, “2006 ought to see tastes swing towards a more feminine input.”

I immediately remember Ann at Feministing’s post back in July, bemoaning the fact that the female presence on the music scene is reduced only to “sexed-up” single female singers. Punk is just as dominated by blokes as mainstream music, with few all-girl bands - and still fewer girl bands with feminist spike:

…it’s undeniable that great all-woman (and pro-woman) acts have a hard time getting airtime once they’ve been pegged as feminist or political.

Knowing the sharp intelligence, glamarous pizzazz and sheer feminine power of Ms feisty Jackson, I’ve been wondering can we claim the Long Blondes for the feminists?

… And what good would it do if we did?

As Dusted Magazine recently asked,

Are the Long Blondes turning into the feminist answer to Pulp? Appropriation (By Any Other Name) would seem to say so.

Kate herself has said, in an online interview at Crashin’ in, the music world is so distracted by the girls’ presence, that their lyrics and music don’t get the attention or credit they would if they were all male.

And does she think they’re the feminist answer to Pulp?

We’re not a feminist band, but we do play in quite a feminine way.

I’m pretty sure that the force and power of The Long Blondes is in the fun and laughter and control they’re having over femininity. They claim Nico, Nancy Sinatra, Diana Dors and Barbara Windsor as their icons: “Sexy and literate, flippant and heartbreaking all at once”.

They’ll play up fifties woman in their hard-hunted vintage but damn her in their lyrics: Where do you go when you’ve finished work?/ You should have been home an hour ago/ I’ve got your tea laid out like some kind of fifties housewife/ …I don’t like giving you the third degree/ I just want what’s due to me (Weekend Without Make-up).

And Kate will tease and taunt, but she won’t bite: Is she a femme fatale?/ That’s what she wants you to think/ She’ll never lead him astray!/ But it’s the best she can do/ But is she going away? / No, she’ll always be here/ Waiting for you/ Back here on earth (Giddy Stratospheres)

Of course Kate won’t say they’re feminist: they’re not going to be boxed and packaged and appropriated by anyone - neither by feminist friends nor the record-label suitors they’ve held waiting for months on the front doorstep, cash-in-hand contracts wilting like a young man’s roses.

I do want to claim The Long Blondes for feminism, but I don’t want to appropriate them. I want to simply say: Thank God they are up there exercising our widest possible freedoms as women.

It helps us all that they’re dressing as they want, not in the name of profit or trends, but to challenge and provoke our expectations of sexiness, of style, of blonde bimbos and female power. (That’s why sex siren Kate will, on occasion, shroud herself in the clothes and horn-rimmed glasses of a 50-something 1970s librarian.) It’s important that the Long Blondes can (and do) tease, joke and laugh at sexual power-games, in full knowledge that they’re as much victims as voyeurs. They’re not trapped in the gender framework but surfing it and toying with it.

What really matters, and what ultimately makes them a great thing for 21st century lasses, is that they’re doing their thing with force, femininity and - above all - talent. They’re delighting in being girls and they’re enjoying the ride.