In a 1987 diary she penned while on tour with her band Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon wrote, "The most heightened state of being female on stage is watching people watch you." On stage, with my band White Lung, I know the room is full and staring at me. The lights are in my eyes; sometimes I hide behind my hair. I like it that way. I don't want to see the audience; the thought of them is enough. I'm focused. It's cathartic, the purest interaction I have with myself.
There is a weight to being a woman on stage. You're always sexualized, no matter what kind of music you play, how you dress, or how you move. How your choices as a performer are perceived and judged varies based on your race, age, ability, body, and what genre of music you make. It's understandable that few women want to claim ownership of that objectification—unless you are a straight white dude, your otherness often dominates every discussion of what you do on stage or on your records—it's a burden, a constant reminder of limits and expectations; you are hung with the albatross of other people's narrow understanding of what a woman can be.
I never wanted to want to be the best female front person, I just wanted to be the best. I've known this since I was old enough to understand the attention I got from being on a stage. As teenager, I knew that the "accomplishment" of kissing some rock star I idolized was never going to satisfy me; I wanted to be that rock star myself. I wanted to play music but I also wanted the respect, the audience, the sex appeal that came with it. I wanted that power.
Like most women, I've been socialized to be a performer my entire life: grace, poise, manners, hair, make-up, tits (yes, you can perform "tits")—it's exhausting. Performance of any identity out of necessity, rather than desire, always becomes exhausting. There was a point, earlier in my "career" (I use this term loosely), when I masked my femininity with oversized flannels and stomped around in big boots. I rolled on the floor when my band played; I tucked my body behind my anger. My performance was a way of smothering who I was, who I'd been taught to be. My femaleness was something I wanted to hide, in part, because I didn't feel good about who I was. What's the use dressing up a body when you don't feel it's worth anything?
The saddest part was this archaic notion in my head that if I expressed my femininity I wouldn't be taken seriously; that spending time on lipstick, hair and dress, that dolling up for a performance somehow diminished my skill level as a performer. It seemed safer to try to be one of the guys then to be the girl I was. The message in my head was that music is a (straight) man's world, and that if you weren't one, you don't belong in that spotlight.
Confidence didn't come easily. I had to take a lot of entitled hands on me to get where I am. I built up callouses—that's the cost of ambition. And then one day the light went off, I exfoliated the motherfucker and no longer gave a fuck. I'm no longer interested in working with anything but what I've got. I love what I got because I manifested it. I am in complete control and no one can tell me otherwise. Not anymore.
The truth is this: I'm sick of having to publicly explain my sexuality, my confidence, my womanhood and my power. I am sick of being asked about it in every interview, every piece of press, every review written about me and my band. I would love to just be left to do what I do best: perform it, live it, scream it. I know where I stand now. I don't need to talk about it anymore. Just come stand front row and watch. I'll change your goddamn life.
Mish Way is the frontwoman of White Lung, whose album Deep Fantasy was released in 2014. She is on Twitter as @myszkaway.