Name: Ryan Christian S.

Martinez
Course/Year/Section: ABELS 3-2
Newspaper Name/Channel: The Guardian UK - ENTERTAINMENT 1

‘His music kindled my agency and hunger for self-definition’: why women adore Bruce
Springsteen

Herpreet Kaur Grewal

Tue 4 Jul 2023 13.00 BST
* * At Bruce Springsteen’s recent show in Edinburgh, a fan managed to hand the 73-
year-old rock icon a copy of his dissertation about masculinity. Pondering the
masculinity of the Boss is logical: his themes include brotherhood, father-son
conflict and the trials of physical labour; his songs are populated with
downtrodden blue-collar workers, suicidal firefighters, forgotten soldiers
returning from various wars, and economically disempowered men driven to murder.
Indeed, he’s seen as one of the quintessential writers of the male experience. So
why does he appeal to so many women?
A new book by Lorraine Mangione and Donna Luff, Mary Climbs In: the Journeys of
Bruce Springsteen’s Women Fans, explores the reasons why. Both authors were aware
of the stereotypes of female fans, be it the groupie or infatuated screaming teen,
and their findings happily upended them: fans found community through concert
experiences, and related to Springsteen as a result of loss, suffering, the quest
for self-knowledge and for meaning in life. Luff says: “When I talked with other
women fans, they were mostly not giddy about Springsteen in terms of sexual
attraction. Instead, they spoke about identification with his writing and the
emotions, experiences and feelings in his songs and concerts.”
That was certainly the case for me. When I first saw the music video for the song
Born to Run in 1996 it demanded my full-bodied attention, and with my working-class
immigrant roots, there was a lot for me to identify with in his work: the
possibilities that could exist beyond my immediate circumstances; living life,
rather than merely surviving it. It also felt spiritual, as if I had been living in
a dark cave and someone had ripped the top of it off to let the sunlight flood in.
The music kindled my own agency, and a hunger for self-definition.

Patti Smith and Bruce

I’ve since been to dozens of concerts, contributed to books about Springsteen,
presented papers about him at conferences and made lifelong friendships through his
work. While he appears to be a virile sort, I always saw him more as a wise,
shamanic uncle. You can clearly see his tender and profound empathy for the human
condition – including women. It runs both ways: two of the most popular covers of
his songs have been by Patti Smith and the Pointer Sisters; more recently
Springsteen has inspired the likes of Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift, the former citing
Springsteen’s focus on the underdogs of the US, who would one day be the winners.
As the authors of Mary Climbs In point out, rock music, like many industries, is “a
traditionally male forum – women can often be and feel marginalised, unheard,
unseen, stereotyped, or idealised” within it. You could feasibly make that
criticism of Springsteen’s songwriting: his earlier material is more or less devoid
of anything meaningful said to women, save a handful of lovers. He got told off in
the 1980s by a feminist organisation for using pre-feminism cliches like “little
girls” in his work (his defence was that it was a “rock’n’roll term”). Many of his
female characters are passive and acted upon rather than actors.
Yet in the 1973 song Thundercrack he calls the female subject his partner –
Mangione and Luff say that for Springsteen, “relationships are partnerships” – and
his songs offer complex portrayals of women. Of the 2,000 female fans interviewed
in the book, many spoke of Springsteen’s evolution as a songwriter of women “that
mirrored their own journeys and the social changes of the past 40 years”, write
Mangione and Luff.
His portrayals are diverse and nuanced. While in playful, celebratory songs such as
Ramrod and Pink Cadillac, Springsteen sexualises himself, the female character and
cars, in others he sings about women who are alienated outsiders. In For You, he
longs to rescue a suicidal woman from her own psychological prison only to learn
that he cannot. In My Lover Man and Car Wash, Springsteen sings from the point of
view of women – one singing of a painful relationship, the other a working mother
stuck in a thankless job and yearning for success as a singer. In Spare Parts he
encourages female independence by showing the protagonist letting go of a toxic
partner by pawning her engagement ring to provide for herself and her child.
Springsteen’s male figures are trying to escape the dead-end post-industrial life,
and the female characters are too – both are often partners in the escape. Luff and
Mangione write that “the theme of strong female characters ran through many
responses” to the survey. One fan said: “I have felt supported by Springsteen’s
music in the way he depicts women in his songs. They are independent, smart,
hardworking; admired and desired by men yet respected (and those who are
disrespected do something about it).”
Perhaps Bruce holds women in reverence partly because he is so in touch with those
in his life – he recounted in his autobiography how, when he was nine or 10, he
defended his mother from his father’s violent moods by attacking him with a
baseball bat. He has said his mum and aunts “put the rock’n’roll in me” – his
mother bought him his first guitar – and he of course married Patti Scialfa, a
creative partner in the E Street Band. He also paid tribute to his sister Virginia
in the song The River about a young couple who readjust their dreams due to a
teenage pregnancy. It is well known in his home state of New Jersey that he
generously donates to domestic violence shelters.
One fan in the book says: “He clearly loves women – his mom, his sisters, his wife
and his daughter. You have to love a man who brings his mom on to the stage to
dance with her.” Another fan says: “Bruce really understands women, and loves us,
and knows the words to say … I don’t get that sense from any/many other
performers.” Surely it won’t be long before one of those fans is handing their own
dissertation up to him.
Mary Climbs In: the Journeys of Bruce Springsteen’s Women Fans is out now,
published by Rutgers University Press. Bruce Springsteen’s UK tour continues at BST
Hyde Park, London, 6 and 8 July