It's really interesting to look back on it now and realise that not liking the music was totally valid, you like what you like and at the time I didn't like it but thinking anything negative about Hayley Williams was just internalised misogyny. I feel like I heard people saying things about how "actually she's really difficult and annoying" "she's just a bitch" and if I hear things like that now I instantly question it but I just accepted it because I didn't know any better. "Yeah, she probably is." Why though?! I didn't know anything about her.
Looking back at it these claims don't seem to have had any basis in anything except people hating on her because she was a girl. A successful girl, that probably wasn't doing as she was told.
A typically pretty girl too, they were the worst. There was an ingrained hostility towards other girls. If a girl turned up and was lame, she'd make us all look bad. Plus she probably wasn't even actually alternative, she was probably just doing it for attention or something...It's all pretty fucked up, we were (are?) taught to hate each other so that we could fit into what the boys had decided was cool.
I was always a tomboy and as I got older I had to reclaim a lot of love for "girls" things because without even knowing it was a thing I'd taken on the whole "girls stuff is lame" "not like other girls" "urgh, I hate pink" sexist mentality. Not that you need to be into "girly" stuff but I definitely noticed times as I was getting older when I've liked something and felt like I had to justify it because it was pink and frilly (read: possibly lame) or whatever. And don't even get me started on the nonsense that is gender anyway, tbh using the binary "girls" and "boys" as "me" and "the other" has made me feel kind of weird but that's how I was experiencing it and how almost everything in our society is set up so let's keep it simple for now.
I love getting older. I like what I like now, and I like a confusing mash of things that doesn't make any sense, without worrying about it. I mean, I didn't consciously worry about liking the right things when I was a teenager but I've noticed since then that I must have been missing out on stuff. The not liking of something would have been genuine but I just didn't know it was because I was living surrounded by a quiet hatred of girls, especially in the alternative scene. Listening back to some music I did love is kinda horrible, singing along to some of that toxic bullshit was bound to worm it's way into how you see the world. It's nice to know it now and to know that something being made for and by girls doesn't make it lame. Ever.
Anyway, I'm glad I'm better informed now. And don't get me wrong, I thought Hayley Williams was lame and it turns out it was based in misogyny but I didn't think everything by women was lame, I was very much in love with Brody Dalle for example, oh Brody...
Finding out about how sexist everything is as I got older really opened me up to a lot of stuff and now when I hear something bad about a front-woman or equivalent I always question it for myself. I'd rather blindly have faith in someone and be proven wrong than to dismiss them based on false ideas.
And, for the record, I quite like listening to old Paramore now and let's face it, Hayley is super cool. And I kind of enjoy the irony that based on the lyrics in Misery Business, she was probably having to deal with similar issues.
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