Ingrid Andress's bad singing was a massive act of bravery

In an industry that remains disproportionately unfair and unsafe for women, simply walking on stage is an act of rebellion.

Photo by BRUNO CERVERA on Unsplash

Hi cacti! If you’re new to my newsletter, welcome! This week I’m “zooming out” to look at a systemic problem that makes me prickly: Sexism against female artists.

Even in a progressive city like Austin, I’m all too often reminded of the gender imbalance that still so heavily tilts toward male musicians and artists.

Case in point: This email I received yesterday from Live Nation, the massive entertainment company that owns Ticketmaster. Out of 20 acts in their upcoming concert lineup for Austin, only two were female, and one of them (Sophie of Sofi Tukker) was wearing a strapless bra made out of bread (to promote a tour named, yep, you guessed it, Bread).

This is typical of Live Nation promotions, not an anomaly, and Live Nation is typical of the entire music industry.

Perhaps that’s why I was acutely attuned to the news about country artist Ingrid Andress. If your head was blissfully buried in the sand this week (and that was super smart of you, btw!), Ingrid struggled to sing the national anthem at the MLB All-Star game (the MLB organiation of course being a male-only institution with a sexism problem).

Because we all love to watch a train wreck not of our own making, her vocal “flub“ generated tons of news coverage, memes, and social media analysis. Given how overblown the reaction was, I went to her Instagram page. How was she discussing the situation?

She had one new post, stark in black and white:

ingridandress

A post shared by @ingridandress

Oh. Geez, I felt bad for her. And then I did something stupid. I read the comments. People (mostly men) couldn’t resist making a crass Trump-related joke.

That trend was intertwined with comments from self-righteous pseudo-patriots who I guarantee had nothing better to do on a weekday afternoon than try to shame a woman on the internet:

And, inevitably, there was the completely unsurprising comments about her appearance that simply aren’t true — she looks neither drunk nor 55 in her music videos. (And if she did? WHO CARES.)

Y’all.

It’s one thing to watch a clip of someone do something embarrassing, it’s another thing to hunt her down and gleefully take verbal shots at her. Fortunately, after the bullying began, several dozen women and a handful of men jumped in to combat the haters, with supportive comments like these:

It all left me feeling in awe of Ingrid Andress, to put herself out there like that, because for women in music, the potential devastating outcomes are all too real. There’s the risk of being ignored (Live Nation), mocked (Ingrid), or assaulted, as a New York Times essay on the sexist legacy of P. Diddy so painfully summed up:

Louis McKay physically and financially abused Billie Holiday. Ike Turner physically and emotionally abused Tina Turner. Ted White beat Aretha Franklin. Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin, who, when filing for divorce more than a decade later, in 1970, claimed that she had been “subject to every type of physical and mental abuse imaginable.” Both David Ruffin and James Brown beat Tammi Terrell. The convicted killer Phil Spector locked Ronnie Spector in their home. Miles Davis’s marriage to the funk singer Betty Davis reportedly ended because of what she called his “violent temper.” Donna Summer was abused by her boyfriend Peter Mühldorfer. Dr. Dre beat the singer Michel’le and the journalist Dee Barnes. Chris Brown hit Rihanna. More than a dozen women have accused Russell Simmons of sexual assault, and in some cases rape, all of which he denies. (He also has denied that he moved to Bali to avoid extradition.) L.A. Reid stepped down as the chief executive of Epic Records following a 2017 accusation of sexual harassment by an assistant (a lawsuit filed last year accuses him of sexual assault and harassment). Tory Lanez shot Megan Thee Stallion. Last month, the producer Diplo was accused of distributing sexual images and videos of a woman without her consent. (His lawyer cast doubt on the accusation.) And then there are the countless women who remain unnamed or choose to be anonymous or decide not to report at all.

It’s a systemic problem that is worth shrieking about, especially at a time when male right-wingers are suddenly moaning and bitching about DEI, as if we’re now living in a world where nine out of 10 heavily promoted concert acts are female, and not the other way around. From tech to politics to science to art to religion to academics and on and on and on, the people in power remain overwhelmingly male. To go against that grain—and to be willing to fail—is not shameful, it’s heroic.