It is admirable to see an artist achieve greater and greater feats as their career progresses. Witnessing points of success, and sometimes failure, is inherently satisfying as audiences continuously age alongside creators. We have seen it with artists like David Bowie and his beloved discographic journey, or Guillermo del Toro’s graceful glide into some of his best work as he received more mainstream recognition throughout the years. However, when it comes to female musicians, aging in mainstream consciousness is often a more complicated story. In many cases, for a woman, aging is regarded as something that should be hidden from the public eye and even avoided at all costs. Extreme standards of beauty in the entertainment industry dictate how attractive a female artist is, and therefore, how profitable and deserving of mainstream attention that artist should be.
Consider female music pioneers of the ’90s: Madonna and Lil’ Kim, who were each once regarded as the pinnacles of their respective genres, are now subject to persistent ridiculing of their legacies due to cosmetic treatments and plastic surgeries. Björk, whose image in the ’90s became a symbol for electronic music lovers, now receives backlash for wearing face masks and talking about her divorce. These cases reflect societal pressure on female musicians to not only show their face as they promote their music, but to abide by impossible lyrical and beauty standards that appease pop culture, which are often not demanded of their male counterparts. Women in music are expected to remain appealing to the male gaze as they age, but when they try to do that (often relying on cosmetic treatments or simply keeping up with trends), most are ridiculed for their appearance or for acting “outside of their age.”
Many instances of ageism in popular culture go unnoticed as they are masked as shitpost humor, where intentions are more difficult to decipher. The common usage of “hag” as a derogatory term for middle-aged female artists and the birth of the old-face edits of many female artists are examples of this. But it unfortunately does not stop here. A recent video published by Bekuh Boom, a former songwriter for K-pop groups like BLACKPINK under YG Entertainment, went viral on TikTok. In the video, she recounts her struggles with motherhood and how she was ultimately “shelved” by the label, meaning her career was put on an indefinite pause, because of her pregnancy. Even though the songs she had written for the groups were performing well commercially, the label was against her pregnancy and refrained from giving her support to launch her own career. Her label suggested she have an abortion if she wanted to be kept in consideration for a deal they had offered her months prior. This is the case for many female artists in the industry who are subject to dismissal once they represent canons outside of “conventional” youthfulness. It demonstrates how the industry’s obsessive control over pop star imagery shapes pop culture and reproduces deeply-rooted misogynistic attitudes.
However, there have been recent countercultural moves by female artists that are directly challenging these harmful beliefs. Charli xcx’s brat is a definite turning point for the mainstream notion of womanhood and aging in recent memory. When the album cover was first announced, there was backlash not only because of its simplicity, but also because it did not feature an intricate photoshoot showing Charli’s face. Female mainstream pop artists are usually pressured to use their image (especially their faces) in all aspects when promoting their music. Charli’s case is reminiscent of the backlash that Lorde experienced when the Pure Heroine album cover was first announced. However, brat builds upon realities of female representation in pop even further. For example, the track “I think about it all the time” gives us a vulnerable insight into the possibility of motherhood for Charli as she settles into her 30s. Pocketed in the last leg of the album and often placed at the end of most album rankings for its interlude-like nature, the song might be brushed over by audiences. However, I argue that lyrics like “Should I stop my birth control?” or “I might run out of time” stand out as both revealing and out of the ordinary for successful mainstream releases, moving the needle for female artists. As she ponders over a glitchy lo-fi beat, the veil of the party-girl aesthetic drops—revealing layers of self-doubt as she reconciles what it means to be a pop star and mother. For many female artists, besides outliers like Beyoncé, becoming a mother is considered a career death sentence in mainstream success terms. To “make it” in the industry, female artists are expected to uphold narrow standards of beauty, perpetual youth, and sexual appeal that leave little room for identities associated with aging or domestic life. It is only natural that pop stars like Charli xcx have conflicting feelings about motherhood as figures in the public eye.
After brat, there has been a wave of major releases featuring female political displays of anti-ageist protest. Artists like Lorde, Robyn, Peaches, and Kim Gordon are paving a new path where women can talk about their realities with less pressure as they age. For example, Lorde’s Virgin, released right after the success of brat, delved into her questioning what womanhood feels like to her. She introspects on pregnancy, genderqueerness, and being subject to male-dominated spaces when she first started her career at 13. In 2024, at age 70, Kim Gordon released a critically acclaimed trap album called The Collective about mundane tasks and satirical characterizations of men, defying expectations for what kind of music a woman can make at any given point in her career. Robyn and Peaches have embraced sexuality and creativity since the early stages of their respective careers. This has only intensified as they have entered into more mature stages of their lives. Both are set to release albums this year that directly confront how people think of the female artist with respect to both their appearance and adherence to respectability politics.
No Lube So Rude, Peaches’ first project in over a decade, is set to be a manifesto centering her experiences with menopause and her body as a vessel for the fight for human rights for underrepresented groups. The singles and visuals so far suggest liberated and confrontational expressions that are not afraid to get messy and use satire and comedy to highlight the often disregarded reality of ageism.
For Robyn, her newly released title track from her upcoming album, Sexistential, fuses sex and existentialism into a bold, playful concept she describes as “feeling sensual and attracted to the things I enjoy, without letting anything take over that.” In the song, Robyn opens up about her life as a single mother who went through IVF while navigating the world of dating apps as a middle-aged woman, turning vulnerability into wit and self-discovery. The song was unexpectedly inspired by a GQ interview in which André 3000 joked that he no longer wanted to rap because he felt that no one wanted to hear about his adult experiences like getting a colonoscopy. Robyn embraced the honesty and humor of that reflection and transformed it into Sexistential, a project that is set to celebrate growing older while finding desire, curiosity, and meaning in everyday adulthood.
Women are tired of not being allowed to be multifaceted: messy, freaky, bad, happy, sad, and everything in between. We are all freaked-out and deserve the space to share that freely without judgment and retaliation. As Robyn said, we all just “want to go out, wear something nice, and push,” and should be able to feel “sexistential” regardless of what is considered age-appropriate.
