Country Music Video
Country Music Video in Country’s Year
of the Woman
by Julie L. Andsager and Kimberly Roe
Because of the success of its new female stars, the country music industry declared
1997 its Year of the Woman. We examined how country video portrays female
artists and characters. Research on other genres suggests that women are symbolically annihilated in music video. By analyzing 285 CMT videos, we found that
most female artists’ videos portrayed women progressively, whereas male artists
portrayed them stereotypically. The ratio of male to female artists’ videos was 3 to 1.
Although the data suggest country video is similar to pop or rock video of the mid1980s, the country videos were qualitatively different in their portrayal of gender
roles.
In the past few years, all major genres of music have seen the emergence of
female megastars, those capable of turning an album release multiplatinum. This
phenomenon has been particularly noticeable in country music, a genre that generally has been driven by the star power of its male performers. Artists such as
Wynonna and Mary Chapin Carpenter saw tremendous success in the early to
mid-1990s, earning platinum albums and headlining concerts. They were just the
first wave in a new storm that hit with the release of The Woman in Me, Shania
Twain’s 1996 album that became the all-time top-selling female country album,
surpassing even Patsy Cline albums (CMA Marketing, 1998). At the same time,
LeAnn Rimes’s hit single, Blue, launched her into the ranks of megastardom. The
phenomenal success of these women has undoubtedly been a factor in expanding
the boundaries of country music, making it the top radio format in the United
States (CMA Marketing, 1998).
The success of Rimes, Twain, and their colleagues at award shows and at cash
registers led the country music industry to dub 1997 the Year of the Woman. Our
purpose in this essay is to examine how well female country artists fared in that
Julie L. Andsager (PhD, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, 1993) is an assistant professor in the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University. Her research interests
include media framing of health and risk issues, free expression, and gender and the media. Kimberly
Roe (MS, Middle Tennessee State University, 1997) works in private industry. Her research interests
include computer-mediated communication, and women and the media. This study was conducted
when both authors were at Middle Tennessee State University. The authors thank Alan Rubin and three
anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Copyright © 1999 International Communication Association
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Journal of Communication, Winter 1999
specially designated year by analyzing ways in which artists and female characters
were portrayed in country music video, an important medium in launching the
careers of both male and female country artists.
Country music, like rock music before it via MTV, uses music video to establish
artists’ images and sell their music. New country artists can “go cut an album,
produce a couple of videos . . . and they’ve got national exposure” (Pinkston,
1997, p. 2E). Country music videos are found primarily on two networks: Country
Music Television (CMT), an all-video format that is seen in 38 million TV homes
nationwide and reaches into 56% of all cable TV households, and The Nashville
Network (TNN), which plays about 2 hours of videos each day and reaches 68
million U.S. households (“When the Dust Settles,” 1997). CMT remains one of the
few all-music, all-the-time channels on the cable roster, with industry stalwarts
such as MTV and VH-1 opting for a mix of video and original programming.
Nielsen figures indicate that CMT viewers spend more time watching than viewers
of either of the other two channels. The average CMT viewer watches 2 hours and
25 minutes during an average week, thus beating out VH-1 by 77 minutes and
MTV by 13 minutes (CMA Marketing, 1998). The average CMT viewer is a married,
White, female homemaker between the ages of 35 and 45, with some college
education (Country Music Television, 1997).
Music video research may experience a resurgence as video outlets expand.
Although mainstream media outlets may suggest an overall decline in the popularity of music videos, the opposite is true for the so-called “new media” outlets,
particularly the Internet (“Decline in At-Home Media,” 1998). Once largely the
marketing ground for independents, with its capacity for viewers to download the
videos of their choice, the Internet is now attracting the attention of record industry leaders. Advertisers are following the market as well, including many traditionally aligned with country music marketing. K-Mart recently launched a music
video channel on the Web, and Levi-Strauss is targeting an entire media campaign
(called I-Candy) that uses popular music video as its driving force. The clothing
company has also launched a joint venture with Internet music site SonicNet,
called Streamland, which provides for download on demand of music videos
(Cuneo, 1997). However, the viewers accessing country videos via this medium
may differ somewhat from CMT viewers. The average Internet user is a collegeeducated, White male between the ages of 35 and 55, who is married and employed full-time in professional or sales environment (Mediamark Research Inc.,
1998).
Music videos, however, are more than marketing tools. Aufderheide (1986)
contended that they are “powerful, if playful, postmodern art. Their raw materials
are aspects of commercial popular culture, their structures those of dreams, their
premise the constant permutation of identity in a world without social relationships” (p. 77). In his unsettling analysis of sex and power in music videos, Jhally
(1995) argued that, in part, because 90% or more of video directors are male and
many of the performers are male, music video perpetuates a narrow, dangerous
set of systematic representations of women that are so ubiquitous in the medium
that they become virtually invisible. He noted that women serve primarily as
sexual objects or predators. Researchers have found that females in music videos
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Country Music Video
are limited to stereotypical occupations and portrayals (e.g., Brown & Campbell,
1986; Seidman, 1992; Sherman & Dominick, 1986).
Such imagery may span across musical genres because lyric content often appears unrelated to the visual imagery of the video. Indeed, Aufderheide (1986)
noted that the “thin narrative threads” in song lyrics rarely provide the basis for
video imagery. Because an early study of MTV videos suggested that viewers
consider music videos more favorably and as more active and potent than the
audio version of the same songs (Rubin et al., 1986), the visual aspects may have
effects distinct from any accruing from the musical message.
Rock music videos have been criticized repeatedly for their patriarchal promulgations of sexism and violence toward women (Aufderheide, 1986; Baxter, De
Riemer, Landini, Leslie, & Singletary, 1985; Jhally, 1995; Seidman, 1992; Vincent,
1989). Videos featuring female artists, however, may offer these women a unique
opportunity to promote themselves as performers and to negotiate gender politics
(Lewis, 1995). In the rock genre, Madonna, Tina Turner, and Cyndi Lauper, among
others, were able to dominate the charts, due, in part, to their success in music
videos (Lewis, 1995). Rap videos have allowed African American women rappers
to negotiate sexual politics as well (Perry, 1995). For country music, whose female
performers have been described as “girl singers” (Bufwack & Oermann, 1993),
music video also has the opportunity to offer a wider variety of roles and images.
Indeed, country music historians Bufwack and Oermann (1993) noted that country music video “demanded new faces; and this revolutionized a music style known
for its perennial personalities” (emphasis added; p. 482).
However, music videos, regardless of genre and how much power female artists seem to exert, appear to have followed in the footsteps of early television with
regard to gender roles, particularly in the portrayal of women. As discussed below, researchers have shown that female artists’ videos tend to receive less airplay
than male artists’ videos, the women are more likely to appear in scanty clothing,
and they are often portrayed as sexual objects or in other condescending ways.
These types of portrayals are consistent with symbolic annihilation, Tuchman’s
(1978) notion of how women were typically portrayed on television. Symbolic
annihilation consists of absence, trivialization, and condemnation. In country music
video, as in other genres, absence would be evidenced by a strong disparity
between men’s and women’s videos in terms of frequency of play. Trivialization
and condemnation would be apparent through sexist portrayals of women’s roles,
overt emphasis on women’s bodies and youth, and scanty or alluring clothing that
would increase the potential for objectifying women.
Research Questions
The growing popularity of country music in the U.S. and around the world suggests that country music needs to be examined. Given the industry’s self-proclaimed Year of the Woman in 1997, the time seemed ripe to analyze how country
music video portrayed women’s roles and, perhaps more importantly because of
their status as role models, female country artists. Do country music videos symbolically annihilate women? The research questions we addressed in this study
were these:
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Journal of Communication, Winter 1999
RQ1: How are female and male artists portrayed in country music video, in
terms of their roles and appearance?
RQ2: How are female characters portrayed in this genre? Whose vision is represented?
Literature Review
After slightly more than a decade of content analyses of gender in music videos,
country music video has been a neglected genre. Much attention has been devoted to rock and rap music video (as shown on MTV) and some to soul (as
shown on Black Entertainment Television [BET]). No studies, though, have focused exclusively on country music. Tapper, Thorson, and Black (1994) included
country videos from The Nashville Network in their comparison of music videos
across genres. They found, not surprisingly, that all the country music videos in
their sample were performed by White artists, 79% of whom were male. The
authors noted that it “is inappropriate to talk about music videos as if they were
homogeneous” (p. 111). Given the paucity of previous research on this genre, it is
important to develop a basic understanding of the attitudes about gender that
country music videos tend to convey.
Gender roles in music videos have been extensively examined since MTV’s
inception, however, and our study was based heavily on these earlier studies.
Aufderheide (1986) suggested that music videos are natural subjects for study of
gender and gender roles because the short, imagery-based video’s “lack of a clear
subject carries into its constant play with the outward trappings of sex roles” (p.
69). As Bem (1993) noted, gender roles are so pervasive in the ways that they
shape how people construct social realities that we may as well be looking through
“lenses of gender.” Given the constraints of music video, then, playing upon gender-role cues may be an expedient way of telling a story. Due to its traditional
association with conventional gender roles, country music may be especially limited by these outward trappings. Perhaps one reason for country music’s traditional portrayals was its function as an “adult medium . . . addressing adult concerns” (Altman, 1997, p. 256)—a place in which men and women do not feel the
need to challenge gender norms, as opposed to youth-oriented genres such as
grunge or alternative rock that offer oppositional views of mainstream society and
its mores.
Early studies of gender in music videos focused primarily on sexism on MTV.
Using a sexism scale comprising four levels of portrayal (i.e., condescending,
keep her place, contradictory, or fully equal), Vincent, Davis, and Boruszkowski
(1987) found that 56.9% of 110 rock music videos contained condescending portrayals of women. Videos by male artists, in particular, were considered condescending in the way they used women (59.8%); female artists tended to be portrayed either in a condescending (34.8%) or a fully equal (30.4%) manner, with
few occurrences of the middle categories. When Vincent (1989) replicated this
analysis 1 1/2 years later, he found that 41.8% of MTV videos analyzed were
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Country Music Video
condescending in their treatment of women. Although this type of portrayal remained prominent in male artists’ videos (52.2%), female artists were much more
likely in the second study to be portrayed as fully equal (63.3%). This generally
was how women were portrayed in rock videos by the end of the 1980s.
More recently, Alexander (1997) found that three gender-oriented themes
emerged from a sample of MTV and BET videos aired during 1995. Alexander
categorized these themes as follows: “conventional woman,” in which the emphasis was on physical appearance and the woman’s role was merely to satisfy a
man’s desire; “independent woman,” where women were strong, self-reliant, and
demand equality, even in sexual relationships; and “internal paradox,” in which
male or female characters were portrayed in conflicting gender roles in a single
video. The juxtaposition of these three categories allowed female viewers to construct a satisfactory gender identity from the various images presented. It is apparent from these studies that female artists and characters tended to follow some
fairly well-defined conventions in their roles in music video. They tended to be
either the victims of sexism or the leaders of independence.
Rock music video analyses have found that artist gender was unrelated to the
allure of the clothing that females wore, whether they were artists or characters.
On MTV, about half the videos featured females in alluring clothing, which Vincent
(1989) defined as lingerie and “highly seductive outerwear” (p. 158). The level of
allure had increased from an earlier study using the same operational definitions
(Vincent et al., 1987). In both these studies, a significant, positive relationship
emerged between the allure of the clothing and sexism toward female artists and
characters. More recently, Seidman (1992) found that females were more likely
than males to wear sexually revealing clothing. Researchers in a similar study of
MTV commercials found that female characters were much more likely to wear
“skimpy or sexy” clothing than males, who usually wore neutral clothing (Signorielli,
McLeod, & Healy, 1994).
Method
To explore how men and women are portrayed in country music videos, we
obtained a random sample of videos aired on CMT during the last 2 weeks of
January 1997. Coincidentally, the TNN variety show Music City Tonight was celebrating country music’s Year of the Woman during the week of January 20 to 24.
We randomly sampled and recorded 24 hour-long periods of CMT videos to reconstruct a full day of programming. We restricted the sample to Monday through
Friday, because the station regularly broadcasts special programs on the weekends. This sampling strategy resulted in 285 videos, several of which were aired
more than once during the sampled periods.
Coded Variables
For each video, we noted the artist’s name and gender, and the director’s name
and gender. We kept track of the songs to determine the number of repeated
videos. We also coded for the type of song, which sometimes had little to do with
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Journal of Communication, Winter 1999
the video imagery, to add more information about male and female artists and
their portrayals. If male artists tended to sing more songs about working and
female artists sang more frequently about romance, for example, there would be
some rationale for differences in their video roles. Based on our familiarity with
today’s country songs, we developed the following categories: romance, heartbreak, cheating, family tradition or nostalgia, female emancipation, working, fun
or recreation, and other. We also coded for consciousness level of both female
artists and main characters, the role of the main characters, body type of artists
(male and female) and main characters, clothing of each, approximate age range
of males and females appearing in the video, and number of minority characters.
We operationalized consciousness level using the 4-point ordinal scale that
Vincent (1989) modified from Pingree, Hawkins, Butler, and Paisley’s (1976) sexism scale in his study of music videos on MTV. Thus, in ascending order, female
portrayals could be characterized as condescending—two-dimensional, sex object, decoration, or victim; keep her place—some strength and skill but in traditionally woman’s roles, may be outside domestic or decorative situations but was
always submissive to men; contradictory—dual role in which the woman had
some independence but also maintained traditional, subservient roles that came
first; or fully equal—nonstereotypical portrayal with no mention of the woman’s
private or domestic life. As in Vincent’s study, when multiple levels were portrayed, we coded only the highest level. We coded female artists and female main
characters for the consciousness level they portrayed. When the artist was male,
and when there were no discernible female main characters, zeros were assigned.
To add more depth to the consciousness level, we also coded the roles main
characters played. These included lover (girlfriend or boyfriend, spouse, intended,
or ex-); dancer; musician; child; working (we noted the occupations); and can’t
tell.
We coded artists and main characters of both genders for the intended allure of
their clothing, based on the clothing that appeared most in the video. Slightly
modifying Signorielli et al.’s (1994) 4-point scale to reflect better the clothing
observed in previewing videos before constructing our coding sheets, we coded
clothing as follows: neutral—nonsexy, jeans, long sleeves, loose-fitting clothes;
somewhat alluring—sundresses, shorts, short skirts, very tight pants, overalls with
no shirt; alluring—swimsuit, skimpy dresses, lingerie; or nudity—either outright
or implied.
Finally, we estimated the age ranges of both males and females appearing in
each video, including the artists, to get an idea of how well the videos represent
the U.S. population. We counted the number of African American, Asian, Native
American, and Latino or Hispanic characters, including the artists, who appeared
in each video.
Coders and intercoder reliability. After extensively reviewing the coding form
and the operational definitions of the variables, the two authors coded the videos
separately. We reviewed several nonsampled videos to discuss how each of the
variables should be coded. Then, without discussing coding, we viewed 1 1/2
hours of videos from the sample together to check intercoder reliability. Although
viewing these videos together may have increased reliability coefficients slightly,
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Country Music Video
Table 1. Gender of Main Characters by Artist Gender
Main Character Gender
Artist Gender
Female
(n = 97)
Male
(n = 64)
Both
(n = 18)
None
(n = 104)
5.2%
53.1%
16.7%
36.5%
Male
94.8%
46.9%
83.3%
63.5%
Total
100%
100%
100%
100%
Female
Note. χ2(3, N = 283) = 49.76, p < .001.
the coefficients were substantively above minimal requirements, and there is no
reason to believe that the reliability would be less than acceptable if the videos
coded during the intercoder reliability check had been viewed separately. Using
Scott’s (1955) pi, acceptable intercoder reliability begins at .70. Our reliability
coefficients were as follows: type of song, .83; consciousness scale, .85; main
character role, .98; clothing, .95. Intercoder reliability was not calculated for artist,
director, or main character gender. Individually, each author viewed and coded 12
hours of videos. Because several videos appeared more than once in each author’s
set, we often were able to double-check ourselves for intracoder consistency.
Results
A wide variety of male artists were prominent in the sample, as 60 different male
artists appeared at least once in the 24-hour period, compared to 25 female artists.
We had 18 bands or duos in the sample; 14 of these were all male, 2 all female,
and 2 mixed. As noted above, several videos appeared more than once in the
sample. Several artists also received more airplay than others. Three male artists
(Brooks & Dunn, Alan Jackson, and Tracy Lawrence) had eight videos in our
sample. The median frequency of appearance for artists was 2, with a mode of 1.
Clearly, the artists who had hit songs during the sampling period tended to receive a greater amount of airplay than others. However, several artists appear, by
the frequency and variety of their videos, simply to be more popular than others.
For example, Tracy Lawrence’s eight videos contained seven different songs.
By combining all-male bands with male artists and doing the same with female
bands and artists, we found that 71.2% (n = 203) of the 285 videos featured male
artists, whereas 28.1% (n = 80) featured female artists. Less than 1% (0.7%, n = 2)
of the videos were done by male and female artists together. Female main characters appeared much more often than male characters, however, as women or girls
were the main characters in 34% of the videos. Male main characters were featured in 64 (22.5%) of the videos. However, this finding does not mean that female
lead characters are more interesting in and of themselves. As indicated in Table 1,
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Journal of Communication, Winter 1999
Table 2. Consciousness Levels for Female Characters and Artists by Artist Gender
Consciousness Level
Gender of Artist
or Main Character
Condescending Keep Her Place Contradictory
(n = 51)
(n = 43)
(n = 54)
Fully Equal
(n = 56)
Total
Female (n = 93)
Row
12.9%
7.5%
30.1%
49.5%
Column
23.5%
16.3%
51.9%
82.1%
Row
35.1%
32.4%
23.4%
9.0%
Column
76.5%
83.7%
48.1%
17.9%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
Male (n = 111)
Total
100%
Note. χ2(3, N = 204) = 55.90, p < .001.
female main characters were more likely to appear in male videos. Therefore, the
disparity between male and female artists’ videos alone would explain this finding, χ2(3, N = 283) = 49.76, p < .001. The lack of a main character (36.8%) was
more likely to occur because the artist appeared alone or because no other person
was prominent in the video. Still, females were totally absent from 24 videos
(8.4%). Males were not present in 11 (3.9%).
To facilitate analysis of how women and girls are portrayed in country music
videos, we combined the two consciousness scale variables. This allowed us to
compare our findings to previous research on MTV (Vincent, 1989; Vincent et al.,
1987), in which only the dominant female character was coded. We combined the
female artists and the female main characters appearing in the videos to analyze
how women were portrayed in female artists’ videos. Only 13 female main characters appeared in female artists’ videos, and they were distributed across the
consciousness levels. As can be seen in Table 2, a significant relationship occurred
between artist gender and consciousness level, χ2(3, N = 204) = 55.90, p < .001.
Females in female artists’ videos were much more likely to be portrayed as fully
equal than characters in male artists’ videos. The women and girls in male artists’
videos were most likely to be placed in the condescending or the keep her place
categories.
Female main characters were most often someone’s lover (75.5% of their occurrences), whereas male main characters were pictured as a lover less than half the
time (42.2%). Male main characters were more likely to be working (21.9%) than
were female characters (6.2%). About equal numbers of males and females were
primarily dancers or “can’t tell.” These figures were reported only as percentages
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Country Music Video
Table 3. Clothing Allure by Artist Gender
Clothing Type
Neutral
(n = 236)
Somewhat
Alluring
(n = 37)
Alluring
(n = 7)
Row
57.5%
33.7%
Column
19.5%
Row
Column
Artist Gender
Implied
Nudity
(n = 2)
Total
7.5%
1.3%
100%
73.0%
85.7%
50.0%
94.1%
4.9%
0.5%
0.5%
80.5%
27.0%
14.3%
50.0%
100%
100%
100%
100%
Female (n = 80)
Male (n = 202)
Total
100%
Note. χ2(3, N = 282) = 57.17, p < .001.
due to the disparity between the numbers of female and male main characters
(each gender was examined independently).
Given that the bulk of the songs represented in this sample focused on romance (34.0%) and heartbreak (36.8%), it is not surprising that the characters
should so often portrayed a lover or spouse. Male and female artists were about
equally likely to sing these kinds of songs. Female artists also performed “female
emancipation” songs (6.3% of sample) in which they described how a woman
burned down the house with her husband and herself in it to end his abuse
(Independence Day), or how a young woman would be able to take off on a
vacation by herself and fall in love again (One-Way Ticket). Male artists sang about
fun or recreation (7.4%) and their philosophies of life, raising children, or fixing
cars (coded as “other,” 5.9%).
Clothing
Next, we examined the physical attractiveness of the artists and their main characters by coding their clothing. Female artists were most likely to wear neutral
clothing, usually casual suits or jeans (57.5%). However, in more than one third
(n = 27) of their videos, female artists wore somewhat alluring clothing (often
very short dresses or shorts). Alluring clothing appeared in six female artists’
videos (7.5%) and usually consisted of wet t-shirts, lingerie, or men’s tailored
shirts with apparently nothing on underneath. Neutral clothing was the most likely
apparel for male artists (94.1%). Male country artists typically wore blue jeans and
long-sleeved Western shirts. Ten of the male artists’ videos (4.9%) included somewhat alluring clothing (i.e., skintight leather pants or transparent shirts). The relationship between artist gender and clothing type was significant, χ2(3, N = 282) =
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Journal of Communication, Winter 1999
57.17, p < .001. These findings are displayed in Table 3. Again, the data on main
characters followed the same patterns. However, alluring clothing or implied nudity was more common for female main characters (15.8% of their appearances in
videos) than for female artists (8.7%).
Vision
Country music videos in our sample were overwhelmingly the products of male
directors (n = 269; 94.4%). This is higher than Jhally’s (1995) figure of 90% across
genres. Videos by female directors comprised 2.5% (n = 7) of the sample, and 9
(3.2%) of the videos came from directors whose genders we did not learn. Many
directors had only one or two videos in the sample. It was fairly obvious that a
handful of directors dominate the country music video arena, as they had 20 or
more videos in our sample. Many of the videos appeared to be produced by
women, though we did not collect data on this.
The world according to country music video is largely White, as well as male.
Minority characters (or artists) were present in small numbers in the videos, usually one per video, and we had to look closely to see them. African Americans
appeared in 49 (17.2%) videos; Latinos in 44 (15.4%); Asian Americans in 19
(6.7%); and Native Americans in 9 (3.2%). It should be noted that the videos
including Latinos or Native Americans were usually shot in the Southwest or in
Puerto Rico, making the characters appear almost part of the scenery. Most minority characters were male. Indeed, the only female African American characters in
the sample were back-up singers, a stereotypical role.
Age did not appear to be representative of society, either. We estimated the
ages of the youngest and oldest males and females appearing in each video (including the artist). For both genders, the age ranged across all videos from 1 to 80
years. The average age for males was 33.13. The average age for females was
27.18. An independent samples t-test indicated that this difference was significant,
t(533) = 8.48, p < .001. Age also seemed to be less of a factor for male artists in
video. Male artists in their sixties appeared in our sample, whereas the oldest
female artist was in her early forties. Thus, women in the videos, whether artists or
characters, tended to be younger than men, especially when the women appeared
as lovers for male artists-main characters.
Discussion and Conclusion
In terms of the frequency of female artists’ appearance, portrayal of women’s
roles, and appearance, our findings suggest that country music video is remarkably similar to other genres. Despite the country music industry’s proclamation of
1997 as the Year of the Woman, the number of female artists featured on its
premier video channel, as well as the ratio of male to female videos played,
suggest that women have not reached an equal footing with male artists. A handful of female artists received nearly as much airplay as the top male artists during
our sampling period. However, the nearly 3 to 1 ratio of male to female videos
played suggests that female artists, by and large, do not receive the same status.
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Country Music Video
Even the female megastars in country music (e.g., LeAnn Rimes and Shania Twain)
did not appear in our sample as often as some of their relatively unknown male
counterparts (e.g., Paul Brandt, Rick Trevino, and Brian White). This disparity
suggests that female artists were underrepresented on the video channel. Although
it was not accurate to conclude that this constituted absence in terms of symbolic
annihilation, the finding that male artists’ videos were played almost three times as
frequently as female artists’ suggested that the traditional male domination of
country music has yet to fade.
The ways women and girls were portrayed differed substantially, depending
on the gender of the artist in question. In their own videos, female artists were
generally portrayed as fully equal to men, though the main female characters in
female artists’ videos were spread across the consciousness scale. Content analysis
does not tell the whole story about female artists, however. In our analysis, two
types of female artists emerged. The most prominent type, as shown by the frequencies of the “fully equal” portrayal, were strong women who appeared to be
in their early thirties, who dressed in casual suits, and looked straight into the
camera. They sang romance, heartbreak, and female emancipation songs like the
rest of the female artists, but they did not compromise their video images. Mary
Chapin Carpenter (Tender When I Wanna Be), Trisha Yearwood (Everybody Knows),
and Terri Clark (Emotional Girl) were examples of this type. On the other end of
the spectrum were several female artists who fell into the lowest level on the
consciousness scale. The most obvious of these was Deana Carter, who in We
Danced Anyway not only displayed canting behavior in a low-cut sundress but
rolled on the beach in a wet t-shirt. Faith Hill (It Matters to Me) and Mindy McCready
(Maybe He’ll Notice Her Now) laid on their backs in sleeveless, low-cut black
dresses as they lamented the ways their men treated them. In future research, a
more in-depth analysis of the qualitative differences between these apparent categories should prove fruitful.
Male artists, on the other hand, were most likely to incorporate condescending
or very traditional portrayals of their female main characters. One reason for this
was that women in male artists’ videos were usually lovers. Their charge was to
concentrate on the artist or his male surrogate, rather than on their own interests.
The consciousness scale did not allow for full explanation of the range of these
portrayals, however. For example, “condescending” could include both the female lead in Clay Walker’s If I Could Make A Livin’—who, according to a verbal
exchange at the beginning of the video, apparently owned her own ranch, but all
we as viewers saw of her were close-ups of her lower body in very short cut-off
jeans—as well as the female lead in Dwight Yoakam’s Suspicious Minds, a scantily
dressed young woman chained to Yoakam in a misogynistic portrayal. Certainly,
the latter portrayal would denote condemnation according to Tuchman’s (1978)
definition of symbolic annihilation. It should also be noted that, although female
characters in male artists’ videos tended to be portrayed stereotypically (very often as brides and pregnant wives), they seem to have had a wider range of activities than did the male artists themselves, who appeared to be limited to playing a
guitar and singing. Activities of males in music videos, regardless of genre, but
especially in this traditional style of music, warrant further research.
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Journal of Communication, Winter 1999
Further supporting the notion of symbolic annihilation in country music videos
were the data on clothing and age. Women were more likely than men to be
attired in alluring or somewhat alluring clothing. This finding was especially true
for the characters, supporting the notion that the vision presented in the videos
was male oriented. Females in the videos were significantly younger than males.
This may, in part, reflect the traditional value that men should be older than their
mates. More likely, however, it is an artifact of society’s preoccupation with youth,
especially for women, that is perpetuated by the media (Wolf, 1991). Regardless,
our viewing indicated that looks and conventional modes of beauty were more
highly emphasized for females than for males.
Finally, the vision directing country music videos was male. Nearly all the
videos in our sample were directed by men, and frequently by the same men. We
observed that qualitative differences would likely emerge among several directors
in terms of their portrayal of women. Therefore, it is not adequate to suggest that
the directors are homogeneous based solely on their gender. For example, one
male director, whose videos appeared frequently in the sample, tended to incorporate a montage of brightly colored images and symbolism rather than a story
line into his videos. He usually portrayed female characters in fully equal ways.
Another male director’s videos consisted of traditional stories, such as a man
rescuing a woman in distress, or a man coming to work on a ranch owned by a
lonely widow. His videos tended to present women in very traditional and occasionally condescending ways. The few female directors in this sample portrayed
women at each level of the consciousness scale, but most of their female characters and artists were fully equal. However, a more in-depth examination of the
differences among the directors was beyond the scope of this study. Still, if more
women directed the videos, perhaps a stronger and more diverse set of representations would emerge for both females and male artists in country music. A vision
produced by a fairly homogeneous set of directors is likely to be narrower than
one emanating from people with more varied backgrounds and experiences.
Given country music’s traditional association with lower and middle-class Whites,
our findings on the low levels of inclusion of minorities were not surprising. One
character in John Berry’s She’s Taken a Shine represented a positive departure
from the videos’ overall portrayal of minority women and, for that matter, female
main characters. In Berry’s video, “Rosie” was a Latina in her early 30s, singlehandedly running her own diner until she fell in love with one of her patrons,
won the lottery, and built a restaurant. It was more usual for minority characters to
appear in a motionless close-up in an obvious attempt to provide color to a video.
Country music video producers and directors might do well to take a closer look
at how, and how often, they portray minorities, if indeed they are truly interested
in expanding their markets.
As the popularity of country music grows, it seems ironic that country music’s
videos continue to present traditional gender roles, which often trivialize women.
These traditional gender roles occur almost exclusively in male artists’ video depictions of female characters. However, a handful of female artists portray themselves in traditional ways, mostly as sex objects. Some videos portray men and
women in equal roles, but these tend to occur primarily in female artists’ videos.
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Country Music Video
Thus, they are notable as exceptions because they appear less frequently. Unlike
some videos from the rock and rap genres, though, country music video does not
contain sexual violence against women. It also does not feature sexual predators
(male or female) or portray women as strippers and prostitutes. We did not code
for violence because country music video has taken a strong stance against it. For
example, Garth Brooks’s video, The Thunder Rolls, was originally banned from
CMT due to its portrayal of domestic abuse, and the only video containing noticeable violence in this sample was Martina McBride’s Independence Day, described
above. Perhaps the indictment against country videos is much the same as that in
other genres: The videos present a narrow and systematic representation of women’s
roles, but it is merely a much different set of roles from that found in the rock and
rap genres. By restricting women’s roles, ages, and clothing styles, country music
video fulfills the trivialization requirement of symbolic annihilation.
As a first step in understanding country music and its images, our study provides some important insights into how women, and especially the artists themselves, were treated in the industry’s Year of the Woman. Like previous years that
have been so designated, most women do not seem to have fared well, whereas
a few are cited as evidence that it was indeed the Year of the Woman. Future
research into this topic using a textual analysis, including an examination of lyrics
and interviews with viewers aimed at understanding their interpretations of country music video, would provide an excellent foundation for explaining country
music’s enduring popularity. Moreover, country music offers a fertile arena for
tapping into the ways in which society grapples with the transition from traditional to not-so-traditional gender roles.
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