When you have woman-parts.

A few weeks ago I did a video interview for Planet X, hosted by my good friend and musician-extraodinaire Inch Chua.  The show was ahead of the She Rocks Awards, which focuses on women in the music industry, and so I was asked about any difficulties I run into as a woman in the "music business." At the time I couldn't think of what to say - I had never felt like my gender got in the way of progress, and even if it had, nothing in my memory felt worth mentioning.

Recently I ran into a bit of a head-butt with a sound guy.  I know this isn't exactly unique - every working musician runs into this kind of snafoo - but I couldn't help wondering if my gender had anything to do with the blowout we exchanged.  In short, I was the only female in the line-up, and in trying to verbalize my sound needs, I noticed he was getting very short and sarcastic with me. I couldn't imagine what I might have said that quickly switched the tides - I'd barely been onstage for 2 minutes when I felt his attitude flare. At one point, he even compared me to the other acts, saying they were all "cool", except me.

There are two things at work here. First, are the circumstances causing a certain level of self-consciousness: being a woman, I am used to being underestimated in many cases, and have learned to be forthright about my sound needs. I'm not mean about it, I just know what I want to hear through the monitors. I see that this can probably be misinterpreted as "attitude", particularly if the sound engineer isn't used to a woman asking for certain adjustments to be made for more than 30 seconds. Now it's very possible this could apply to every artist in particular, but I ask you - if a guy got on stage and asked for the sound through the monitors to be made "more intimate", do you think the sound engineer would snap back at him?  Doubt it.

Second: ego.  The guy had a big ego about what his capabilities were; he thought it insulting that I wanted adjustments made, and furthermore, seemed to want me to "coddle" him in the way I asked for certain changes, as evidenced by him mistaking my simple sound requests as attitude. Of course I'm sure my own ego had something to do with it too - I instantly took his shortness with me to mean he didn't think I was a knowledgeable musician, and the snowball began.  Ego is such a funny thing, though. We love it in men but hate it in women - why?  It's a by-product of working at something we love; it isn't always good and it isn't always bad, and that goes for both genders.

In the end, the show was great and went off without a hitch, but I couldn't help wondering how it all would have gone down if I weren't a female. The expectation for us women is to be softer, less targeted in our demands; and it's a shame all sound guys can't just set aside those expectations and be real pros.