Music allows people to express their gender and sexuality in either an advert or a subtle way. The Spice Girls used the phrase 'Girl Power' which could not be less feminist in a 'We are Women, step aside men' way, 'boy Power' doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Girls in rock bands are women trying to fit into a male orientated environment by acting masculine, for example Courtney Love acts tough yet still gets away with wearing pretty little girlie slip dress's in the same way that Mick Jagger confused / crossed the line between male and female and met somewhere in the middle, he was pretty and androgynous and delighted as did David Bowie in 'gender bending', he even said himself "What really upsets people is that I am a man and not a women... what I do is very much the same as a girls strip tease dance." He confused the idea we had of gender. Where as more recently Spice Girls were defiantly female, Madonna goes about it in a very powerful way going about her work showing everything it is to be a woman in a masculine way.

Bands these days are very much manufactured, Take That all though are admired by flocks of adoring female fans were actually quite camp. Boyzone with th

Until the mid 1980s, one of these three strategies excerption, misogyny and androgyny dominated heavy music. (Ruth Padel 2000:279) However another approach in recent years did soften metal with songs about romance, this kind of music particularly has drawn female attention to heavy metal. It is not only lyrics or visual imagery but also the music it's self that construct gender experiences.

Ruth Padel 2000 I'm A Man: sex, god, and rock 'n' roll. Faber

In summary androgyny offers male performers the chance to play with colour, and movement, which is basically an escape of the expected man. . Music produced by bands like Cast, Space and the Lightening Seeds, suggest a masculinity that is soft, vulnerable and all together less macho, less threatening and less aggressive. (Sheila Whitely 1997:29)

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Approximate Word count = 1580
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)