Izzy Fincher is a classical guitarist, writer, and activist based in Milwaukee. As a queer Japanese American woman, Izzy is passionate about sharing the stories of diverse BIPOC and LGBTQ+ creatives through research and activism.
Izzy is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Classical Guitar Performance and Graduate Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research focuses on journalism, media and mass communication, popular music, intersectional feminism, racism, and LGBTQIA+ rights.
Izzy’s honors thesis, “An examination of mainstream media’s treatment of female guitarists,” has been published in the Journal of Popular Music Studies and featured in Guitar World. She has presented her research at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, the UW-Madison Women’s and Gender Studies Consortium, the Guitar Foundation of America Conference, and the International Communication Association Conference.
In 2023, Izzy graduated from CU Boulder with bachelor’s degrees in Classical Guitar Performance and Journalism. She received the Outstanding Graduating Senior Award from the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Music and the College of Media, Communication and Information’s William W. White Outstanding Graduate. Awards include the Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation’s Gerke Collegiate Award, the Presser Foundation’s Undergraduate Scholar Award, and the UW Milwaukee Women’s and Gender Studies Department’s 2024 Florence L. Healy Scholarship.
What initially inspired you to focus your research on the representation of female guitarists in mainstream media? Has your own experience as a female guitarist and journalist influenced your research?
As a queer Japanese American woman, I am interested in researching the intersection of journalism, media and mass communication, feminism, racism, LGBTQIA+ rights, and popular music. The inspiration for this project, “Mainstream Media’s Treatment of Female Guitarists,” came from my personal experiences of the sexism and gender-based barriers faced by women in guitar and my passion for music journalism. As a young musician, I didn’t have any female role models in guitar and rarely saw women featured in male-dominated music magazines, such as Guitar World, Guitar Player, Acoustic Guitar, and Rolling Stone.
With my experiences as a female guitarist and journalist, I am very passionate about representation for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ creatives in the arts and media. For my undergraduate honors thesis in journalism, I decided to research media representations of 43 influential female guitarists in 10 mainstream publications from the 1960s to 2023.
This is the first research paper published in a peer-reviewed academic journal about this topic; therefore, it is an important step toward raising awareness of the erasure and marginalization of female guitarists in the music press.
Photograph of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, taken by James J. Kriegsmann. Courtesy of user Blz 2049 of Wikimedia Commons.
Who are some of the 43 female guitarists you mention in your analysis?
The list of 43 players comes from a combination of three lists: Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists” (2015); Guitar Player’s “50 Sensational Female Guitarists” (2020); and She Shreds Media’s “7 Guitarists That Prove Black Women Were Pioneers In Music History” (2020).
The study features many pioneering female guitarists in blues and rock, including Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the “Godmother of Rock ’n’ Roll”; Lady Bo (Peggy Jones), the “First Lady of Guitar;” Memphis Minnie, the “Queen of Blues”’ Elizabeth Cotten; Poison Ivy (Kristy Marlana Wallace), the “Queen of Psychobilly Punk”; Annie Clark (“St. Vincent”); Kaki King; Joni Mitchell; Joan Jett; and Bonnie Raitt.
What were some of the most surprising or unexpected findings from your research?
Although the underrepresentation of female guitarists is hardly surprising, the extent to which women in guitar have been systematically erased and marginalized in the American music press is still surprising. The findings of this study illustrate how the systemic gender and racial inequities of the press, the masculinization of guitar, and the whitewashing and patriarchal structures of rock have contributed to the erasure of female guitarists over six decades. According to this study, 16.3% of the women didn’t appear in a single article, and 46% were mentioned in fewer than 10 articles. In particular, Black women received even less press coverage: 27.9% of the women featured are Black, yet they were only featured in 10.6% of the articles analyzed.
How did the representation of female guitarists differ across various decades, from the 1960s to the present?
During the golden age of music journalism, male journalists rarely featured female guitarists and displayed blatant sexism in their coverage when they did. For example, In “Fanny, a Four-Girl Rock Group, Poses a Challenge to Male Ego,” the critic writes, “ Going to see an all-girl rock group, one has to bring a mixture of condescension and paranoia. What if they are good? What will that possibility do to the old male ego?” With the diversification of newsrooms and the rise of digital journalism, the representation for female guitarists has increased and improved in legacy mainstream media. The music press has begun to produce more content about female guitarists, such as the coverage of Susan Tedeschi, Orianthi, Kaki King, and Nita Strauss.
In particular, St. Vincent has received far more coverage relative to her career length (70 articles in 2009-2023) than Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt in their entire careers (91 articles each since the 60s and 70s). Certain publications, such as NPR, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times, have started producing retrospective articles about influential female guitarists from the past, such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Memphis Minnie, and Elizabeth Cotten, to honor their legacies and contributions to popular music.
However, despite the significant progress from the 1960s, the underrepresentation and marginalization of female guitarists, especially women of color, is still a pervasive issue in the contemporary music press.
What role did race play in the media's portrayal of female guitarists, particularly Black women, according to your findings?
Black female guitarists face intersectional invisibility in the music press as a result of the double burden of sexism and racism. Of the 43 guitarists studied, 12 are Black women (27.9%); however, they are featured in only 79 articles of the 744 articles analyzed (10.6%). Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the “Godmother of Rock’n’Roll," appears in 29 of these articles (all written posthumously). The top five female guitarists are white women: Bonnie Raitt and Joni Mitchell (91 articles), St. Vincent (70 articles), Ani DiFranco (53 articles), and Joan Jett (48 articles).
Furthermore, the marginalization of Black women in guitar illustrates the whitewashing and cultural appropriation of rock music culture, which has attempted to separate itself from the genre’s Black musical roots. Due to the masculinization of the electric guitar, influential pioneering musicians have received even less recognition than their male peers, such as Jimi Hendrix and Chuck Berry.
As Daphne Brooks writes in Liner Notes for a Revolution, thus illustrates the quandary faced by many Black women in the music industry– as“the world adores them and yet mishears them, celebrates them and yet ignores them, heralds them and simultaneously devalues them.”
In your opinion, what steps can be taken by journalists and media outlets to improve representation?
To address these systemic inequities in media coverage, the music press needs to feature more female guitarists, especially women of color.
Although the press has produced more content about women in guitar in recent years, the gender gap in media coverage is still a significant problem. The racial and gender inequities of the music press continue to undermine and limit the potential of professional female guitarists in the music industry, while also discouraging and disempowering young female players.
Next, the media needs to move away from the category of “women in guitar, which highlights the gender of female guitarists and reinforces the status quo of guitar as a male-dominated instrument. In addition, journalists should reduce the use of gender binaries and female markers and the hypersexualization of female guitarists in coverage – discursive frames that exclude women from serious consideration.
Over the past few years, representation for female and non-binary guitarists has improved in the media, as illustrated in retrospective articles in NPR and prolific coverage of St. Vincent. For example, Rolling Stone’s revised “250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” list features 48 female and one non-binary guitarist, including 17 women featured in this study. The list includes several influential Black female guitarists, including Sister Rosetta Tharpe (#6), Elizabeth Cotten (#36), Memphis Minnie (#147), and Barbara Lynn (#229).
Do you think social media and digital platforms are changing the narrative for female guitarists today?
In the digital age, the diminishing power of the music press and the democratization of content creation has empowered diverse female and non-binary guitarists, such as Yvette Young and St. Vincent, to define their artistry and music on their own terms. Furthermore, the proliferation of independent digital publications led by women and people of color is shifting the narrative for female guitarists today, thus challenging the gender and racial inequities of the mainstream music press. For example, She Shreds Media (c. 2012) and Guitar Girl Magazine (c. 2018) exclusively feature female and gender non-conforming guitarists, including diverse musicians of color. Thus, these publications critique the discourse and representations found in male-centric guitar magazines, such as Guitar Player and Guitar World. By challenging the underrepresentation, marginalization, and hypersexualization of female guitarists, these feminist publications model an alternative framework that needs to be reproduced on a larger scale in the music press.
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Website: izzyfincher.com