| | |  | Shirley Manson News & Gossip
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| | Shirley Manson: 'Rihanna is the closest thing we have' to a rockstar' | | Added 7 years ago | Source: CeleBitchy |
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Shirley Manson and her band, Garbage, are in the midst of a career resurgence. And I, for one, welcome our new Scottish ginger feminist overlord. Garbage is heading out on tour this summer with Blondie, plus Garbage has a new coffee table book coming out called This Is the Noise That Keeps Me Awake. It does feel like we?ve been in having a lot of 1990s/grunge nostalgia, and I?m really feeling it. That era was awesome. Shirley Manson is awesome too. She sat down with New York Magazine and sprinkled throughout the piece are quotes from fans and other grunge-feminists about how Shirley was one of the few women from that era who never disappointed, never sold out, never stopped resisting and telling her truth. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
The last of the rock stars: ?[Debbie Harry and I] are some of the few women left who do what we do in the way that we do it. We?re getting rarer and rarer. I think people understand that this breed is dying. Literally dying?. I was having a funny conversation with Karen O about this at a party the other night. We were like, ?We?re the last of the rockers!??
On Rihanna: ?Rihanna is the closest thing we have in the pop world to a rockstar. If Rihanna wanted to make rock music, I?m sure she could. But unless you?re playing rock music, you?re not a rockstar.?
Early success: ?When success occurred to us, it didn?t feel personal? I understood logically that this was a zeitgeist moment. We were in the right place at the right time and we were making the right kind of music. I?m the right kind of voice. I had the right look. It wasn?t that we were brilliant. I have friends who could have peed all over our talent.?
She?s never been a Taylor Swift: ?Now, our culture doesn?t value anything that?s not massive. It seems like people are in awe of mass consumption. The bigger the artist, somehow the more special. That?s just not what I was brought up to believe in at all. I?ve never been a Taylor Swift, I?ve never been that famous. I can?t begin to imagine what that must be like. But you don?t get to that level accidentally ? you court that level of success. The generation that I was brought up in, we were embarrassed if you were successful, (which was also f–ked up, by the way). We found that vulgar. Nobody wanted to sell out ? but now everybody is happy to.?
She can admit she was wrong: ?When I was 30, I thought I had everything sussed out. I thought I knew everything. Then I hit 40, and I looked back at 30 and thought, ?What a clown. I knew nothing.? I thought I was ancient at 40, but now I?m 50 and I realize I was really just a young woman. You can change your f–king mind. I want to be able to be agile enough and brave enough to say I was wrong.?
She?s even more outraged as a feminist today: ?To me, [feminism] is about equality. It?s nothing to do with whether we like makeup or don?t like makeup.? (Manson does.) ?Feminism has nothing to do with whether you have children or not.? (She doesn?t.) ?It?s really just: How about you pay me the same f–king amount that you just paid him? I just did the same f–king job. If your husband gets this, so do you. If your boyfriend is doing this, and you want to do that, then you get to do it, too. It?s that simple.?
[From The Cut]
I enjoyed everything she said here. She says she?s a Rihanna fan and she listens to a lot of pop music, but Rihanna isn?t technically a rock star, which I agree with. Rihanna lives like a rock star and has that rock swagger, but Rih is a pop star (which is not a diss). Shirley?s point about mass consumption and Taylor Swift is on point too: society currently values the mass-appeal more than the niche appeal, homogenization over everything, especially in music.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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| | Shirley Manson: 'There's a global movement towards eradicating women's rights' | | Added 7 years ago | Source: CeleBitchy |
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Here?s something nice: Shirley Manson is still pretty awesome. If you were around in the 1990s, chances are pretty good that you loved Shirley Manson and/or her band, Garbage. She was part of the female-led rock band revolution, along with Hole, The Breeders, Ani DiFranco, Siouxsie and the Banshees, No Doubt, Portishead, Bikini Kill and more. It?s sort of painful to realize that the era of mainstream, badass Riot Grrl-driven alt-rock music is over. Anyway, Shirley is still around, and Garbage is still around. They?re touring, and to promote their latest album (Strange Little Birds), Shirley spoke to an Australian TV show about the state of feminism today and what she thinks of the young girls growing up in the current social media-driven culture. Shirley is 50 years old, by the way. And yes, she still kicks ass. Some quotes from her interview:
On identifying as a feminist: “Why any woman would want to divorce themselves from the idea of equality is beyond my understanding. With September 11 I think the world got really conservative. And whenever the world gets conservative, women are affected.”
The erosion of women?s rights across the world: “There’s definitely a global movement towards eradicating women’s rights. You’ll see it in Poland, you’ll see it in Argentina, you’re seeing it in the States. I mean, it’s just everywhere.”
Women got complacent: “I think that’s a result, in some ways, of a generation that followed the 90s, and women took for granted their rights, their human rights. [They] thought they were there to stay, not really understanding that human rights get eroded constantly and you always have to be really vigilant to make sure that these rights that women have fought so hard for remain in place. Instead we got a whole generation of young women who maybe thought they were living in the Garden of Eden. I’m not entirely sure what went wrong or what’s happened but they divorced themselves from the idea of feminism.”
The women fighting the good fight: “I think any woman that breaks conventional rules, stereotyping, is fighting the good fight. Whether that’s Michelle Obama, whether it’s Serena Williams, whether it’s Grimes ? any successful athlete, any engineer, any producer, I mean, everybody’s at it.”
On social media: “There’s so much pressure on young women to be beautiful, to put a photograph up on social media and have people go, ‘Wow, you’re so beautiful.? Unfortunately it’s such an empty pursuit, really, to be told you’re beautiful. It’s kind of meaningless because there will always be another beautiful woman to follow. Ironically, when I was my youngest and most beautiful I felt the most pressure. I was always feeling that I was falling short and, you know, looking back, I was young and beautiful, and I didn’t know I was, I was oblivious to that fact. I think women really need to shift their focus onto something that creates a foundation for them as they grow through life. Nobody stays young and beautiful forever; therefore, build a platform on which you can stand through storms. As I’ve gotten older ? I have focussed on things that I consider much more important. I want to be a great writer, I want to be good at what I do, I want to go on stage and blow people away.”
[From ABC]
During the presidential election, I watched an interview with Gloria Steinem in which she talked about watching women in their 20s come to the slow realization that the world was still a really sh-tty place to be a woman. While Steinem said some/many problematic things during the election, the fundamental truth of that interview stuck with me: that teenage girls and women in their 20s grew up in an era where they were told they were equal, that they had a level playing field, that they could do anything a man could do. And by the time we get to our 30s, we?ve seen enough of the world to know that all of that was a lie. I imagine women are feeling that even more in the wake of the election. Anyway, I agree with what Shirley says here, although I wouldn?t necessarily call it ?complacency.? I think ?naivet? might be a better word for it, especially since two generations of women have now been raised with the fundamental lie that they are equal, that there is a level playing field, that there isn?t a separate set of rules for them.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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| | Shirley Manson Doesn't Take Kindly to Women Beating | | Added 12 years ago | Source: The Blemish |
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It’s safe to say that Chris Brown will never be welcome at a Garbage concert. While performing Stupid Girlat the House of Blues in Atlantic City, Shirley Manson witnessed a man hitting a woman behind him. Shirley called for a record scratch and reamed the guy out. The guy says the girl started it but Shirley don’t care. You don’t hit a woman in Shirley’s book. Which is why I always put on a dress whenever I yell at someone bigger than me.
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