On weekends, when I’m not teaching art to preschoolers, I’ve started hanging out at the Fresno anarchy café with well, anarchists. The last time I was at the café, I came across a box which held a complete collection of Bikini Kill fanzines from the early and mid-nineties. They were great fun to look over, even if they already seem a bit dated (Kathleen Hannah also recently said the same thing.) And they got me thinking once more about the change in gender rolls for women in rock over the last few decades and this little spiel about Janis Joplin and Bikini Kill is the result (you can blame the anarchists.)

As with all rock ‘n roll heroes/heroines, Janis Joplin’s legend centres around just as much around drug taking, drinking, and sex, as it does around her music, but the difference between her legend and that of her male counterparts (Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison to name a few) is that much is made about her gender and her rebellion is seen as gender based rather than being centred around class struggle or politics- both of which Janis’ music also emphasized. Janis Joplin was one of the hippy movement’s biggest stars, and one of its most controversial personas; her story of rock ‘n roll rebelliousness has reached almost mythological proportions. Janis is painted as the archetypal rebel, who stood against all the conservatism of the 1950s and epitomized the hedonism of the 1960s. While in reality the decades of the 1950s and 1960s are not in stark contrast to each other, as the stirrings for the social change of the 60s, certainly began in the 50s with the Beatnik movement and the anti-racism movements, Janis’ own social upbringing in a conservative small town in Texas, does fit in with the stereotypical 1950s ideal of the nuclear family living in a house with a white picket fence, in which a woman’s place was clearly defined. Because she rejected the expected women’s roles of her upbringing- that of a housewife and mother, to take part in the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll of the hippy movement, and she can be seen as something of an antithesis to her angelic female contemporary folk singers such as Joan Baez, or Laura Nyro, Janis did not fit into any traditional roles allocated for women of the post war era. Interestingly, most writers do make note of the duality expressed in Janis’ character, as she was known for her eccentric, yet feminine wardrobe, but also her strong, gravely voice which harkened back to blues singers such as Bessie Smith, her lesbian affairs, and her “manly” drinking and drug taking. As an archetypal heroine which they had created, the music press needed Janis to undergo a transformation and thus in the legends built up through popular culture, she changed from a small town Texas girl to a counterculture queen the “manly” part of her character was emphasized and she was often described as being somewhat androgynous or “one of the guys.” For instance, in the biography Love, Janis by Laura Joplin, Janis’ producer Paul Rothchild is quoted as saying:

“How can I say this without sounding sexist? Janis was one of the guys. When I was with her, there was no sense of she’s female, I’m male… Her male balance was as strong as my female balance. We both acknowledged that place, the other side of our sexual whole.”

And in another book entitled Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin, the folk musician Don Sanders is quoted commenting on one of Janis’ performances:

“girl folksingers were kind of ethereal and fine-featured… Janis got up there and wailed… her face turned red… and [she] sang with all her body. I was so shocked it didn’t even make me critical. I had no reference point for it… [it] so powerfully crossed the gender line.”

Such viewpoints only recognize two genders and see those genders as set categories, rather than as existing upon a spectrum, thus because Janis was not a traditionally feminine woman, she was like a man; there is no other category to place her in. The de-emphasis of her feminine side in popular literature also helps build her status as a rebel, because traditional femininity was something she supposedly rejected. This image was built up by the press and partially by Janis herself, whether or not her fans back in the 60s actually saw her as un-feminine is another matter (many people who I’ve talked to say they always thought she was quite feminine.)

Fast forward a bit into our own century and it seems absurd to look at old photos of Janis Joplin or listen to her music and understand how people could have called her masculine- a strong, gutsy person, sure, but she was still womanly and quite glamorous to boot. It was women like Janis Joplin who made it okay for women to act or look somewhat androgynous and it was bands like Bikini Kill who made the whole concept of androgyny seem ridiculous. Girls in bands like Bikini Kill shouted, screamed, and played punk rock, just like the boys, but no one could lump them in with the men, because they refused to let that happen, by at times, deliberately emphasizing their girlishness. And I think that was their big gender achievement, they made it okay for girls to act like boys and still be girls. Once androgyny in any facet of culture is achieved, the concept itself slowly fades away as the behaviour becomes normalized. In rock music culture, however, the concept of androgyny was bashed to the ground.