Alice Cooper guitarist Nita Strauss has spoken out about the pressure that female guitarists face both from the music industry and from fans.
During an interview iHeart Radio, Strauss was asked what advice she would give to aspiring female guitarists.
“It’s so funny that you say that right now. Because just as I was walking into the bus right now from soundcheck, there was a little girl waiting outside the bus. Six, seven years old, and she was too shy to even talk. And her mom said ‘She’s been playing guitar for a year and she wanted to meet you.’ And she goes, ‘What do you want to say, to Nita?’ And the girl, she just looked at me [and said] ‘I want to be like you want to grow up.’ And I was like… *sobs* I had to like compose myself and come in here to come and talk to you,” Strauss reflected.
The legendary guitarist went on to say that female guitarists face gender-specific pressure.
But the best piece of advice that I can ever give and always give, especially to young females in this industry, is just to be yourself. And it sounds like a bit of a played-out piece of advice. But I think, as women in the music industry, it goes a bit deeper than for most people because you’re always being pushed and pulled in one direction or another,” she said.
Strauss added: “And there are these pressures from all different sides of our industry and from fans saying you should act this way, you should dress this way, you should dress more sexy, you should dress less sexy, you should sing you should act, you should model you should this, you should that, play here, don’t play there, perform like this, don’t perform like that, you whip your hair around on stage too much, you don’t move enough on stage… There’s no right way or wrong way to create our art and do what we do.”
Strauss became the touring guitarist for Alice Cooper in 2014 and has worked with the band ever since. Prior to joining Alice Cooper, she had a successful career as a solo artist. During the same interview, Strauss said that she was a victim of trying to conform to expectations.
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“Express yourself in your own individual way and shut all of that out. Because I was a victim of that very, for a very, very long time of trying to conform to some idea of what I was supposed to be as a female guitar player. You have to dress sexy, you have to show off what you got, and that’s how you get attention,” she said.
“Then you start getting that kind of attention and you realize, ‘Oh, that’s not what I want at all.’ [laughs] And I’d do it the opposite way and I would wear like, you know, a men’s t-shirt and baggy cargo shorts on stage and no makeup. I’m just only gonna be taken seriously as a guitar player. And I don’t want to be even looked at as a female. And that wasn’t me either. So just finding that balance, finding who you are, finding what you are about as an artist, and bringing that to the world is the most valuable thing that you can do as a female in music. And as anybody in music.”
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