Popular Culture Review Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1992 | Page 24

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the "contradiction of women in language," arises as women "attempt
to speak as subjects of discourses which negate or objectify" them,
discourses for which they are not inscribers or subjects, but conquered
territory; their bodies, the ledgers upon which another's desire is
forged, both sexually and ideologically (1987, 127). The ritualistic
discourse of rock'n roll is no exception for, as Simon Frith points out in
"Rock and Sexuality," it may have liberated women to be more
sexual; however, it continued to cast female sexuality in the same
terms, that of serving and reflecting male desire (230-31). Not
expected to play instruments or to write songs, female rockers have
clearly been the object of a male gaze; their bodies, traditionally
inscribed and appropriated to male sexual fantasies, obscure or
marginalize their own desire.
In the 80's, women like Annie Lennox of the Eurythemics
began to use their bodies in "instrumental" ways, by creating an
androgynous appearance before the video cameras (Marsh, 160). To
escape the gaze or the confinement to the prescription of Woman,^
these female rockers renounced the feminized model and imitated
tough male talk and gesture. Despite appropriation of the male
"look," Frank Oglesbee argues that female rockers, Lennox and
Benetar, become female "heroes" in the narrative tradition^ usually
reserved for men alone by charting new territory in their material
that is decidedly female (172-79). Nonetheless, embracing toughminded masculinized images has distinct problems for women. Not
only does it imply a certain acceptance and incorporation of those
tough guy values—values which women often find themselves in
conflict with-it also places women in the compromising position of
lack, where, onc