Found a bunch of old hard rock mags yesterday. Wow – it was such a total blast from the past! As I was flipping through them, it reminded me of the “good ol’ days” when hard rock was SEXY! 
Us women often complain about guys being sexist, but truth be told – we were ALL simple cavewomen and cavemen back in those days!

I didn’t start listening to rock’n’roll because of hot dudes. There WERE no hot dudes in metal back in the very early 80’s. What, you had Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Sabbath, Accept, Scorpions, whatever… Butt-ugly men playing mainly for other men. That’s what it was about around 1980-1984.

[No drool-objects]

But then something started happening in the mid 80’s and between 1985 and 1995, things changed – a LOT! All the super-sexy guys drew girls to the shows, which of course served them as well – cause along with that, came the Kelly Bundy groupie-boom. 
All the girls looked kind of the same, in skin-tight outfits and high heels. I used to look like a hooker back then as well and I loved it. It was a kick picking out outfits that you knew would make heads turn. It gave us girls a sense of empowerment. 

[Most girls who went to gigs and rock clubs in the mid-80’s until the early 90’s used to look and dress like Kelly Bundy]

I remember once at this club, I had picked out a dress with a quite revealing cleveage. A guy stopped me, stared at the “Twin peaks” and went: “Holy fuck! Are those REAL? Are you aware that people can see your boobs?”  Well… DUH! Yes, of course. That was the idea. I had no problem with it.
I had an okay body back then, I could wear “slutty clothes”, and it was fun. It was rock’n’roll!

Looking like a hooker was the “thangg” in the eighties. And boy was it worth the trouble! The GUYS were super HOT! :-D

When I’m flipping through those mags now, I remember how I used to buy PILES of those magazines: RIP, Hit Parader, Metal Hammer, Raw, Kerrang!, Metal Edge…. It was like PORNOGRAPHY! There were super-duper sexy rocker-guys on every page.

Quite seriously, I didn’t give a rat’s ass if Slaughter’s Blas Elias was a good drummer or not, I bought his instruction video because he was hot! :-) 
(Yeah, don’t tell me you bought Playboy magazine for the articles, mister! We’re all the same. ;)

There were all those guys who appealed to the most primal, the most basic desires in us all. They were wearing VERY tight ripped jeans, tight leather pants that did very little to hide cucumbers and asses, unbuttoned shirts – or no shirts at all, and all that….LOVELY amazing, fantastic HAIR!!! Oh yes. I was a hair fetishist, I could die to just run my fingers through those manes! Dark, long hair, wow. Rachel Bolan’s hair in 1989 for instance, unbelievable.

It was simply a time when hard rock was very sexy – on both sides. Women were competing for male attention, and I remember being in my early 20’s, walking around in high heels even on regular weekdays, or going to the university in a tight, short, black leather skirt! I was the only one in my class who dressed like that, but I loved to point out that just because you liked wearing cool outfits, didn’t mean you had to be stupid.

MEN cared about their looks too – to say the least, there were no checkered flanel shirts of baggy pants anywhere, the guys were strutting their stuff!

[Joe Perry, Aerosmith – strutting his stuff]

I guess you could say that the so called sexism went both ways, because we were ALL sex-objects! The songs were about parties, Harlies and sex, and frankly – the lifestyle of most rockers was about that – in a nutshell.

[One of the first “strutters” – David Lee Roth giving the ladies all sorts of ideas…!]

I miss those days a bit. It was a good time in the sense that it was actually when we were equals as crazy as it sounds. We all chose to be shallow sex-objects. It wasn’t just guys being pigs – us girls were no better. We were perfectly okay with the situation and we owned it! Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be – really?

[One of the main drool-objects back in the day – Stephen Shareaux, frontman of Kik Tracee:]

So, I’m thinking – hard rock has often been accused of being sexist – and musicians of being pigs. And god knows I’ve been pissed off at stupid Beavis and Butthead-type of guys many times, but if you look at it from a wider perspective, maybe rock was actually the most equal type of music there ever was.

Because where else were men as eager to show off and strut their stuff for the ladies, as they were in rock? Nowhere. 
Just saying – maybe it’s time to reevaluate some things, as we’re looking in the rearview mirror….. :-))

 

[Some guys you wanted to see more of – and some… not so much!]

 [And one last poser band – Hardline with the Gioeli brothers]