A 90’s Reckoning Or; Being a Female Music Fan

I was a Nine Inch Nails super fan. Photos of Trent Reznor printed from the internet, as well as clippings of photos from Spin and Rolling Stone, decorated the wall of my closet (I was too embarrassed of my parents finding them, so in the closet they went). Wherever I went, my Discman went with me and in the CD of Pretty Hate Machine would go. In 8th grade math class, I convinced a boy who loved rap to give it a chance and we bonded over the scratching breakdown at the end of ‘Ringfinger’. My love for this band was tied to my pre-teen crush on Trent Reznor. I made friends with a girl from the internet who lived thousands of miles away. We would both sync videotaped viewings of ‘The Perfect Drug’, and draw fan art while on the phone with each other.

I loved Nine Inch Nails, but I also loved music in general. Being a crazed music fan has become one of the defining characteristics of my life. NIN’s music was one of my first obsessive music fandoms, but later would come equal teenage obsessions with The Smiths, Belle and Sebastian, Radiohead and later, a life dedicated to being a radio and live DJ, which I still do to this day. Sure, I thought Trent Reznor was cute, but I also adored NIN’s industrial synth-pop sounds that would eventually lead to a further obsession with synthesizer music of all kinds. It was a foundational music that led me to a love of bands like Coil, early Human League, and genres like Italo Disco, goth, cold wave, etc.

I was a female music fan coming of age in the late 1990’s. Today, news stories and criticisms and reckonings abound for music and culture of that era, most notably in the reassessment of Britney Spears’ career and allegations of abuse by Marilyn Manson. Well, okay you say, what do Britney and Manson have to do one with one another?

Britney Spears and Marilyn Manson, were for the U.S. public in the late 90’s, posited as polar opposites musically. If you turned on Total Request Live, you would see broadcasts of Britney’s latest video alongside Manson’s. They were diametrically opposed, but by both existing, they supposedly showed what real music was versus fluffy teen pop music. As a teenage girl, I viewed Britney initially as someone completely unlike me. That was music for preps and cheerleaders, I thought. But secretly, I enjoyed the songs, just as I enjoyed Christina Aguilera and songs like Mandy Moore’s “Candy”. The dynamic of Britney and Marilyn is one that represents a later conversation among rock critics on the matter of poptimism versus rockism.

In some ways, poptimism was a feminist idea. It was based on the notion that for decades, music that rock and pop critics had largely considered ‘important’ and worthy of acclaim was usually rock-oriented, and almost always made by men with some notable exceptions. The 00’s found a newfound love for bubblegum pop and appreciation for the songcraft of pop hits. Books like Bubblegum is the Naked Truth were published. Mashups of Kylie Minogue and New Order blurred the lines further on the subject of fluffy pop music (represented usually by female artists) and music more traditionally considered important (New Order). Pitchfork started out as an indie rock-centric review site, but started broadening to cover pop music.

While the arguments of poptimism versus rockism have died down from their heyday in the 00s, I still consider poptimism a useful idea that was prescient for this present moment. They are useful especially for a feminist approach to reevaluating a time that felt very inhospitable to being a female fan.

The 90’s were also a time of endless Monica Lewinsky jokes, Lilith Fair punchlines, and constant ads for Girls Gone Wild on TV. This isn’t to say that everything is rosy now (obviously it is not!) but as a teenage girl in the 90’s with a burgeoning feminist sensibility, I felt at odds with this aggro-guy universe of nu-metal and the sarcastic tone of South Park. I absorbed subtle messages about music that was considered good and important versus frivolous. In the case of Nine Inch Nails, my love affair with Reznor mostly ceased after I started learning more of Reznor’s antics.

I bought a copy of the double-VHS concert/music video type Closure at the local Sam Goody. In footage of a tour Reznor went on with Manson, I dimly remember footage of scantily clad women having deli meat thrown on them in a tour bus, and other such antics obnoxious rock star antics. At the same time, I read quotes about Courtney Love by Reznor that disgusted me further. In 1999, the video for “Starfuckers, Inc” came out, and it featured Manson and Reznor using a visual doppelganger of Courtney Love and dunking her in a water tank. All of this made me feel icky and it was the beginning of the end of my fandom of Nine Inch Nails. I also wasn’t a huge Marilyn Manson fan, but definitely enjoyed some of their music, but musically, Nine Inch Nails was just more interesting.

I am 38 now and it feels personal for me that as a culture we are reckoning with the way women were treated in the 90’s as exemplified by Britney Spears. But this also applies to people like Courtney Love too. After all, she was another out-of-control woman who was definitely nowhere near as talented as her deceased husband — right?? And Lewinsky, what a total slut right? And Britney, her music, as I still here people say, is the EPITOME of mindless and dumb. That was a big dollop of sarcasm in case you didn’t notice. To this day, evoking Britney’s name is supposed to represent vapid, silly music. Which, you know, shows maybe things haven’t improved all that much.

I grew up alongside Britney in a way. I am her age and have experienced deep depression and mental breakdowns. I have long felt a great deal of sympathy for her and also unabashedly enjoy her music. I am happy to say as a female fan, that there is more of a sense of accountability for music and art and culture. Some spew the words “cancel culture” like that is an actual thing. Don’t get me even started on that. When people throw that word around they mean to oppose any kind of criticism of harmful behavior or attitudes. How less warped would I be now if the small, insidious things I had absorbed as a young female fan had been found less acceptable?

Nowadays, I wholeheartedly embrace and love music that is still somewhat not as respected as “rockist” type music like the rock canon of The Beatles and classic rock that most men still consider “real music” versus say, Britney. I love pop music, I love dance music, and music made by women, queers and people of color most of all. This isn’t the 90’s, where I have little choice but to take what I could get culture-wise.

I am still shaking off the insidious lessons I learned as a female music fan in the 90’s, and it seems I am not alone. I am hopeful for a future where the world opens up for expressions of gender, desire and fandom that are not so focused on men and their experiences. I still enjoy Nine Inch Nails music to some extent, but it will always be mired by my experience as a 13-year old girl first encountering music that was “supposed” to speak to me as a weirdo outsider type. Music like Reznor’s and Manson’s was one of my first entry points to underground music, and it was frequently a path laid with misogyny. Now I would mostly just rather listen to Britney’s “Boys”, thank you.