TEST
SUPERVISOR: You only had women performers in your study. Was that because male musicians are
less worried about fashion?
JOANNA:
I think a lot of the men are very
much influenced by fashion, but
in social terms the
choices they have are more limited … they’d really upset audiences if they strayed
away from quite narrow boundaries.
Q27
SUPERVISOR: Hmm. Now, popular music has quite different expectations. Did you read Mike Frost’s
article about the dress of women performers in popular music?
JOANNA: No.
SUPERVISOR: He points out that a lot of female singers and musicians in
popular music tend to dress
down in performances,
and wear less feminine clothes, like jeans instead of skirts, and
he suggests this is because otherwise they’d just be discounted as trivial.
Q28
JOANNA:
But you could argue they’re just wearing what’s practical … I mean,
a pop-music concert
is usually a pretty energetic affair.
SUPERVISOR: Yes, he doesn’t make that point, but I think you’re probably right.
I was interested by the
effect of the audience at a musical performance when it came to the choice of dress.
JOANNA:
The subjects I interviewed felt this was really important. It’s all to do with what we
understand by performance as a public event.
They believed the audience had certain
expectations and it was up to them as performers to fulfil these expectations to
