Sexuality in Heavy Metal Music

The heavy metal music genre arose in the early 1970s from rock and roll, but it has distinctive differences from that genre (Weinstein 11). Groupies in the heavy metal environment are not just adoring fans but "essentially and exclusively sexual beings" (Weinstein 36). The portrayal of women in heavy metal videos is decidedly sexual, as the Western culture's music mythology is expressed in the "visual language of music video...[in] that it acts as an expression of sexual desire and that voice, in particular the female voice, is a representation of the body" (Heile). Gender roles in heavy metal music are bent and stretched. Heavy music aficionados, commonly termed "metalheads" or "headbangers," understand the heavy metal world as "an arena of gender, where spectacular gladiators compete to register and affect ideas of masculinity, sexuality, and gender" (Arnett 7). The portrayal of men in heavy metal music is-like that of women-also decidedly sexual. The heavy metal music realm is a world unto itself, where men are not men and women are not women but merely people playing the roles of those genders. Not surprisingly, both the musicians and their followers are to varying degrees disenfranchised in the everyday world and often comfortable only in the constructed world of heavy metal.

Weinstein (228) depicts groupies as a "specialized subset of the audience that bonds with and expres

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l confusion, and hopelessness" draw concern about the possibility that these videos may influence adolescent female listeners toward depression and suicide, especially "given the poor self-esteem that seems likely to accompany membership in this group." Men, on the other hand, are portrayed as being extremely sexually successful with women and as dominating them. Gender roles A study investigating sex-role stereotyping in a random sample of 782 music videos found that both male and female characters were portrayed in sex-related occupations (Seidman). While the male characters were "more adventuresome, domineering, aggressive, violent, and victimized," the female characters were "more affectionate, dependent, nurturing, and fearful than males" (Seidman). The study also found that "a large percentage of female characters wore revealing clothing and that they initiated and received sexual advances more often than males" (Seidman). Heile points out that gender roles in heavy metal music are constructed rather than natural. Women's bodies as depicted in Western culture "have almost always been viewed as objects of display" (McClary 138). Because gender roles are constructed, they can a

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