Harvard President Larry Summers caused quite a hubbub recently when he suggested that women might have more difficulty with the sciences because of genetic predispositions. Now, my knowledge about genetics doesn’t extend much farther than “Jurassic Park,” so I won’t make a scientific inquiry here. But the question has still been nagging me: Why are most of the hardcore record collectors men?
That’s not to say that women don’t like their music. It’s just that when you think of the truly obsessed junkie, images of unkempt middle-aged men and eager, antisocial college boys spring to mind. Like Steve Buscemi’s character Seymour from “Ghost World,” record collectors are presumably male misfits who return home from dead-end jobs to find solace in old Hank Williams albums.
My own experiences lend themselves to this androcentric view. Not only are all my favorite record haunts populated by ghostly old dudes, swapping inane trivia about Nick Lowe side projects, but almost all my collecting habits have worked this way too. Whether it was cards, comic books or music, my addictions have been, so to speak, sausage fests. Where are the ladies?
One easy answer is that those pursuits are aimed, you know, AT MEN. We won’t go into too much detail with comics, except to say that any medium that crams in as many hyper-masculine meatheads and spandex-busting superheroines as possible must have something to do with the adolescent boy demographic. Just check out Rebecca Romijn’s body paint-sporting character from the “X-Men” movies and you’ll see that the tradition is alive and well.
Similarly, music has been a predominately male industry, with everyone from Mick Jagger to Motley Crue extolling the virtues of masculinity, usually from the vantage point of a hot tub filled with naked women and champagne. Also notable are the phrases “rock out with your cock out” and just plain “cock rock” (a genre that Velvet Revolver recently resuscitated). As James Brown once said, in my least favorite song of his, “It’s a man’s, man’s, man’s world.”
Another idea could be that men are culturally programmed to acquire. Whether that means sports cars or Bright Eyes albums, it’s all the same. Perhaps there is a demand for men to have gigantic, wall-spanning CD collections. (Although this is not likely to have aided many guys in their romantic pursuits. Especially if you’re pretty poor otherwise. Then it implies that you’d rather spend your money on music than, say, food or toilet paper.) And, of course, with a giant collection comes a giant mental landfill stocked with random factoids that you can use to impress others. For instance, did you know that Keith Richards came up with the riff for “Satisfaction” in his sleep? Or that Bob Dylan once sang “Hava Nagila” at a Bar Mitzvah with Harry Dean Stanton? Wait, wait, come back!
But seriously, despite those slapdash theories, there remains another question, the most important question. Is there something about men that makes them enjoy music as an activity in itself more than women? Certainly not. For one thing, I know plenty of girls who know more about music than me and my record-collecting brethren. Lest we forget, just a few years ago former editor Jess Minnen built an empire out of the Cadenza music section. Similarly, a quick perusal of thefacebook reveals plenty of ladies with a “favorite music” section that reads like a novella. I just think the disproportionate numbers have to do with music’s decidedly chauvinistic past. As the intimidating geezers who currently frequent the record stores pass on, more and more women will fill the gaps. And if some men would stop talking about their Smiths singles long enough to hear a girl’s opinion, the process might become even faster. In any case, the democratization of music marches on, which is always for the best. And now that we’ve established that gals can be just as fanatical as guys, I might add, “SWM seeks F for musical enjoyment. Must like Al Green, Frank Zappa, and Sleater-Kinney…”