Giving Grudging Props to She Pop

I came late to She Pop, a short-lived blog on a generally female-oriented pop music on Bitch Magazine’s website. Sady Doyle has made a bit of a name for herself in feminist blog circles, and Bitch Magazine expanded her reach by having her comment thrice weekly on whatever was big in the pop music world.

She was not an ideal blogger on this subject, and it came through in her posts, some of which I criticized sharply, since she knew little of what she wrote about, and dismissed it all as spectacle. As she wrote in her opening post,

Pop stars, finessed and manufactured though they may be, are reflective of wider cultural attitudes. They have to be: that's how they get to be popular in the first place. If they weren't speaking to people, no-one would listen. And the way that we talk about them is often extremely revealing.

No kidding, Sady. It’s obvious when reading this that she never before considered the influence that popular culture has on people, why people like pop stars for other reasons besides their music. No wonder, when you equate pop stars—generally, living, breathing, active people—with toasters, inanimate appliances, and then wonder why people get so worked up. I can see why her outlook, curious to a music fan, would be interesting to the editors, but as a reader, it was an insult to those who did think about the messages sent.

In her final post, she acknowledges how naïve she was when she began the project, and how much she’s learned, which was nice to hear. I’m not of fan of Sady’s style; it’s too overblown, and structurally there are too many loose threads. My biggest problem was that she did little research and no fact-checking, a no-no. I also did not agree with many of her feminist principles, though I support the idea of the blog and hope that other guest bloggers will fill the space.

So farewell, She Pop. You inspired a lot of ire, and got me working. I hope you return—there will always be songs to mine, artists to deconstruct, and gender roles to parse.