Not THAT many years ago, when I was beginning my career in the male-dominated workforce of commercial radio imaging, back when each station had a producer, and each producer had a sound, I did feel that expressing femininity was a vice.
Luckily I was too poor to be seriously into the grooming / shopping stalwarts of the conditioned Glamour-magazine reader, and so the adoption of a non-gender specific clothing style and blokey social manner for work was easy. I felt I had to look the part, I guess.
But regardless of what I was wearing, and whether I secretly loved high heels and a little black dress, I knew what I wanted to do. I knew how it felt to strive to do something unique with sound, something that worked – that made me excited, that made somebody feel something when they heard it and furthermore gave me that good feeling that comes from just rising above yourself and your own body. What I cared about most of all was the wonderful feeling of speaking to people, albeit invisibly, when I heard something I’d invented on a stolen copy of adobe, in my bedroom, on some cheap as chips headphones, play on the radio and just somehow… work. No matter that I wasn’t being paid, no matter that I didn't see many other women doing it.
When someone DID decide to pay me, a station production job followed. That could be a lonely role for anybody, and in a strange city where I knew nobody, doubted my ability (quite rightly at times) & was desperately homesick, that blokey community of producers welcomed me to the fold as one of them, and although we were dotted at disparate stations all around the country, there was a great solidarity in calling each other up at half six on a Friday, boasting about how many hours work we had left. I only ever felt proud of being a woman, and if I felt alone, it was less to do with that than a general lack of contemporaries.
It’s not to say that there weren't times where I didn’t feel a little uncomfortable that someone called me babe. Sometimes I felt concessions were made for my mistakes, and wondered if it was because of my sex. Sometimes when I struggled to speak up or express myself confidently, I worried that I had to work harder at it than a man might to be heard. But then I realised that I didn't want to have an excuse, and I didn't allow myself concessions.
The social side was always a tad more complicated, but they made room for me and although something made me feel that I wasn’t quite one of them, I think a lot of the time it was my own burgeoning sense of otherness. But that’s fine and to an extent we all have our stock identities in a group, whether it’s the young one, the grouchy one, the musician, the rookie, everyone’s future boss or… the girl.
Age and sex seem to be interesting factors in a new social context. On a night out with other women, in a casual meeting, in the workplace… How long do you find it, as a woman, before the others have directly or indirectly find out your age, whether you have children, and if so, how many?
I resent this, still. I find it disarming in a professional context, to be asked, and then obliged to answer. For in theory I have nothing to hide. I was a young woman, not long out of university when I started paid work. I progressed quickly thanks to the opportunities given and taken. I worked hard. Now, it is less of an issue. I’m in a job more appropriate to my age now, I’m not above my position, whatever that is deemed to be. I have no husband, no children. Perhaps she made a choice? I hear them wonder, as I hear myself wonder just the same, internalising the thoughts we all learn to think.
As for age, I had a male colleague, much younger, progressing quickly up the ladder, passionate, talented and… in the true style of a male imaging producer, just a little cocky about the power he had over sound, and the command that could have over a passing listener. For years he was talked down to, made to feel like the kid, held in his rightful place by the older members of the pack. This is was important, because lessons must be learned and they only come with time, but it makes me wonder what it is about these bright young things that startles us, inspires in us the need to temper, nuture and guide? He still has a chip on his shoulder about his age, but I’ve never seen him come into his own as much as when treated as the adult he is. It just goes to show, if you give someone something to fight against, they’ll fight it. If you tell them you believe it doesn’t hold them back, they won’t let it hold them back.
And I relate this to the context of being a lone woman amongst men. There have been too many respectful colleagues along my career path so far to make the disrespectful ones significant.
It WAS lonely. Sometimes days would go by with me having at least once taken to sobbing alone in my studio (oh the dignity afforded by a studio!) but when I had no equivalent woman to aspire to, some of my biggest champions and heroes have been men.
Whether it was somebody taking the time to help me hone my writing style, asking me to the pub, taking a chance on my inexperience and helping me learn from my mistakes, coaching me patiently on the finer points of studio recording and sound dynamics, or even putting something a little wooly to air, just because they’d known I did my best as a producer – these are the people that never made me anything less than proud to be a woman, to feel I could rise above any inherent misogyny in this industry.
My lonely ‘only girl’ days were gone when I joined a nearly all-women team in a new role. By that time I believe I was surer of myself and who I was, and thus utterly comfortable to one moment be utterly disinterested in someone’s new shoes, and raving over some pretty flowers the next. Such are the idiosyncracies of any person, whatever sex.
Being a woman in minority taught me that you must have confidence in yourself regardless, and that if you feel it is holding you back, it is not because everyone feels you should be held back. It is because a few sorry people do, and they have gotten to you.
That’s not to say I’m not still prone to a sulk now and again, or feel alienated for my sex – it’s just that I don’t really care about the people who stoop to that. The thing I find most admirable in my audio colleagues is a willingness to rise above their situation, and pursue the beautiful sound!
I bothers me when I meet a woman who has let her ‘lone girl’ role define her. That’s not to say I have a problem with women who are proud of themselves and their brood of boys, it’s just that when that is combined with a sense of ownership of that situation, I don’t think it makes the group appealing to other women, and what’s more, it can define you more than the job can. The job. The thing you loved in the first place. The most important thing.
Most admirable are the women who just believe in what they’re doing, and forthrightly don’t give a damn about what anyone says. In my mind, the biggest part of imaging and audio production is about evoking a feeling. To translate that to the listener, you have to be sincere. And being sincere can be REALLY hard. In all honesty I don’t think it’s something you can ever stop working on.
Before this gets irredeemably producer-specific-wanky, I’ll wrap this up with that top notch Alice Walker quote:
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.
In this context, I’ll take that as meaning the following:
It’s only a man’s world if you think it is! Go girls! Be a producer. Be the best goddam producer you can be!
And never stop working really hard at it.
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