The stereotype states: “a woman listens to Adele while she cries, a man listens to Bruce Springsteen feeling like macho macho man, gays listen to Madonna feeling gay”.
I’m a woman and “I only wanna have a good time” because “the best thing about being a woman is the prerogative to have a little fun” and I mainly listen to heavy metal and hard rock. Apparently I have a problem, a huge problem: I don’t fit into the stereotype. It was when I was in high school that I’ve been told for the first time about this lack of taste and of what’s right I seem to have. A classmate made me notice that and said: “What? Aren’t boys listening to that kind of music?”
And here we are, in 2014, still telling apart what kind of music can a certain kind of people listen to. Ages ago women were the ones who had to cry on command at funerals, but maybe, and I say maybe, maybe a long time has passed from the ancient mourners to the metal girl. As if a thing ruled out the other. Don’t we all – men, women, animals, lifeless objects – that particular song that touches those particular cords and that opens the dams in our tear duct?
I’ll briefly explain you something tough, exclusively basing on personal experience: the woman who listens to what it is not considered “music for women” immediately is labelled as unfeminine, ungraceful, as the shadow of that wonderful woman she could be if only her ears lived of italian pop music and not of american death metal. That’s it.
At the same way, c’mon, shall we really consider a real man the who who’s moved by Mia Martini? Is that a kind of man we would love to date, taking the risk of having him crying all night long?
What about gays, shall we talk about it? With all those unlikely moves listening to Britney Spears, so ridiculous.
Dear cliché, I wanna tell you something: the music gets to your ears and those are only a physical means that allow it to get right into your heart. So who are you, stereotype, to tell us what kind of music to listen to, based on our sex or our sexual orientation? It’s all about taste, sudden wishes and moods.
How many times I found myself singing to “Like a virgin” screaming like crazy, and how many times I’ve seen my father moved by “Shine on you crazy diamond” and how many more times I noticed a friend of mine used to Miley Cyrus‘s soft voice keeping the time to an Iron Maiden song.
The truth is we can make all distinctions in all the still categories we want, but the music, that was etymologically born as divine, is not suitable for this kind of subdivision.
We already have to (absurdly) think about lots of social skills, that I just refuse to give credit to you, cliché.
So, if you are from Colombia and you listen to Beethoven or if you’re some macho men with a girlfriend for every day of the week and you love to listen to Beyoncé or again, if you have more studs that cloths on and you love Gregorian chants, if you are all this and much more, do not worry: you’re perfectly normal, the location of all of your internal organs is the same as everyone else’s is and more importantly, this is the place for you. Here stereotype can’t come in, not even through the keyhole.
Has anyone ever labelled you for the kind of music you listen to? Or worst, have you ever been insulted or marginalized? Have you ever feel stereotyped? I’m also very curious to know if you, as well as me, had classmates as open minded as a broken compass.
Oh, and just so you know. I’ve written this post listening to Maria Callas‘ “Best Of”.
