Remember when women in music could keep their clothes on?

IT can all be summed up in the evolution of one song. In 1975, an all boy band called The Arrows released a music clip for their single called I love Rock N Roll. It featured young guys with bad mullet hairdos and matching brown sports jackets singing somewhat saucy lyrics for the time as politely as possible.

Fast forward to 1982 and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts remake the song, this time with raunchy Jett on vocals, snarling in to a microphone in full leather (note her jacket was zipped to the top) and more bad hair, only Jett owned it and rocked it.

I was a young girl just starting to be seduced by rock n roll and when I saw Joan straddle her guitar with a sexual confidence I’d never associated with a woman before in that clip and it blew my tiny mind. I was sold. Music and sex became one for me in. I wanted to be Joan Jett and well, nothing much has changed.

Let’s now go to Britney Spears’ video of the song Jett made an international hit shall we? Brit too chose leather for her version of I Love Rock N Roll in 2002, only a lot less of it than Jett. Opening shots are close-ups on her tight belly in low-slung pants and her black lace see-through bra. Britney purrs and pouts and all but pole dances on her microphone stand in her version, in my mind failing miserably. You see, Brit had drunk the record company Kool-aid long ago. We’d seen it all before. All that hair-tossing and pouting, suggestive gyrating and naked flesh was now so commonplace it was a mere candle compared to the libidinous bonfire of Jett’s upturned lip.

And this is the problem with popular music today and the clips that promote it – women aren’t just being forced to sell sex, they’re selling their souls in the process. It’s like it’s not enough to be a pop star, you need to be a porn star too.

Have a look at how female singers changed and it’s all too plain to see. Chrissie Hynde didn’t need to twerk in a g-string to be potently sexy. Pat Benatar had countless top 10 hits without having to fellate her microphone and the girls from the Bangles managed to be sex symbols on oversized jumpers and scrunchies. So, where and when did it all change?

I blame MTV, which made the music video more important than the music. It was probably Madonna who changed music for female artists, writhing on a garden path like she had swallowed a swarm of Spanish flies in her clip for Burning Up in 1983. She set a high bar on sexual charge that other female performers since have felt forced to jump. Cher did so in Turn back Time in 1989, wearing a jumpsuit that made the pudenda a fashion statement. But still the bar kept rising.

Try this: That awkward moment when you realise your favourite song is actually about crystal meth.

For Britney Spears to become a global sensation in 1998 she peddled pederast porn, working schoolgirl sexuality in pigtails and skimpy skirt, purring, “Hit me baby one more time”. Her Mickey Mouse alumni, Christina Aguilera, upped the bar again in 2002 in her clip Dirrty, wearing little but arseless chaps and a thin layer of sweat. And so it goes until last year when another former Disney star, Miley Cyrus, raised that bar even higher and dispensed with clothes all together for her song Wrecking Ball.

How much further can it go? Girls having actual sex while lip-synching or inserting speculums to show us their insides? Don’t laugh, right now there is a greedy manager thinking, “hmmm why not?” I’ll put money on it.

News Ltd national music editor Kathy McCabe agrees it is the managers and record company executives who are pushing the sex. “Video directors use clips as a platform to express their art and are pushing new concepts. It’s the company executives who sit around and say, “nah, bring on the butts”. And I can tell you those committees making such decisions are mainly men.”

As for how overt the practice has become, McCabe has a theory. “Sexy girls have always sold music but after the hyper feminism of the Seventies, a generation of young women like Madonna were inspired to reclaim and celebrate their sexuality. It is the same women who applauded this platform who now seem to be the ones telling today’s Madonna, Miley Cyrus, to put her clothes back on. Do we all forget the about Madonna’s Sex book, how it shocked and titillated at the same time? Sure, it’s out of control in music videos but if you go to a festival such as Laneway, you won’t see girls in g-strings. They’re all in hipster gear and floaty dresses. It seem to be the big money artists who are most likely to be getting their gear off, which goes back to the pressure from record companies out to make the biggest bang for their buck.”

Leanne Kingwell agrees that the focus on the music video has taken the spotlight off the music, and women are the big losers in the shift. A talented singer/songwriter/performer, she’s feeling the pressure to conform to promote her latest album, the brilliant Choking on Halos (check it out at leannekingwell.com), but is fighting it with all her might.

“Writing it and singing does something for my soul,” she says. “Making videos does nothing for my soul. I want to focus on music. I don't want to spend energy even think about the video. I don't want to be seen. I want to be heard. It horrifies me that in some circumstances the video is considered just as or more important than the music.”

So, what to do if you are a talented female artist who would prefer to have her music noticed without adding bouncing bums and breasts? In Leanne’s case, she self-produced her album as a means to sidestep the industry pressure and bull she encountered with albums past. And, as a woman, not a girl, she knows how easily her music could be overlooked should she not fit the nubile bustier and stockings stereotypes dominating Saturday morning music shows.

“Too many mainstream clips help reinforce a subliminal perception that only young sexy women are welcome in the music biz,” she rightfully complains. “There are stubborn indies who persevere through this. But we'll never know how many women stopped trying to make music because the couldn't ignore the subconscious message screaming that they should stop because they were old to crack it now.”

For every Adele, Megan Trainor or Taylor Swift who has managed to let her talent and not her tail do the talking, I wonder just how many gifted young girls are being rejected because they are not deemed clip worthy in some misogynistic music mogul’s view. Let’s face it, there aren’t too many women cracking the charts these days who are over 40 without having the body of someone 20 years younger a’la J Lo, and not afraid to flaunt it goose bump close.

What especially riles me is that mainly, apart from some shirtless men, only female artists are forced to market their music with their bodies. Ed Sheeran doesn’t need to don a leotard and shake his booty to get his music across. Kayne West isn’t stuffing his pants so as not to be judged on the size of his package. So, why does Beyonce seem to wear less in each clip she releases? What would happen if she put on 20 kilos? Would her music be judged as sexy as it is now?

Click below to see how the attire has changed for women in music.

POST CONTINUES AFTER GALLERY.

“Engineers, scientists, lawyers and CEOs are allowed to grow older wiser, more experienced and respected,” Leanne Kingwell points out. “Music videos that pull focus on and exploit youth and sex do the opposite, especially for women. Age only improves my ability to write, record and sing better songs. But I'm constantly battling my own subconscious hang-ups on whether or not an audience will find me acceptable.

“If I was a novel writer it would be like the book cover being more important than the pages between. And on top of that also having to spend considerable energy and acquire the skills to conceive and illustrate a front cover. But all a novel writer really should have to do is write an amazing novel.”

If only it was that simple. After all, music is made for the ears, not the yes. But as long as the music clip lives, I fear the song will remain the same and sex will sell singles and taut tail will tag along with talent. At least for women, that is.