Sherrie Tucker’s article When Subjects Don’t Come Out discusses the difficulty of addressing the stigma of homosexuality during the 1940s in all-girl bands, and the difficulty in writing about stigmatized issues in any area of history in general. Tucker discusses her series of interviews with multiple women who were in all-girl bands during this era and how she dealt with the metaphor of “the closet” and women who were unwilling to disclose their personal lives within the interviews.^[1] While her piece is interesting, there are some ideas that she leaves untouched that would be an important part of studying women of the 1940s. The stigma of race and sexuality play a large role in defining both men and women of this time period, and also comparing how these female bands were perceived in comparison to their male counterparts. I believe that these issues are an important analysis that would have benefitted Tucker’s study on this topic.

Tucker focuses on the inherent stigma that many of her interviewees have dealt with their entire careers because of their unique occupation of being an all-girl band musician. One of the points she mentions is the added difficulty of not only sexuality but race for the African American women all-girl bands. She mainly mentions this issue in passing, as a piece of her broader idea of women just dealing with sexuality. Race during this time period defined Americans in such strong ways that any other added stigma could be detrimental to both their social and professional lives. I feel that Tucker fails to illustrate this in her piece, though it is an important part of understanding just how much of a risk these women were taking as not only female musicians, but African American female musicians. I think that addressing this issue of race and dealing with the already stigmatized reality of being a lesbian, during the 1940s would have been something worth addressing in more than just a passing fashion as she does.

Tucker also addresses an interesting issue at the end of her piece that raises the question of why only all-girl bands had their sexuality questioned, when all-male bands never dealt with this issue. While she does make reference to this idea multiple times within her writing, she does not actually take the time to address it as a topic on its own. Since all-girl bands of the era were such a bold phenomenon, perhaps putting it into context by comparing reactions to them and reactions and perceptions of male bands would illustrate her point more clearly. I think that her argument might have been strengthened had she discussed trying to understand the stigmas attached to female bands at the time, compared to male bands.

Overall, Tucker’s piece is interesting, but it leaves questions about how women of this era were defined by both race and comparison to men. It is these issues that Tucker does not fully address that leave the reader wondering how much these factors played a role within these women’s lives. Considering that women were already considered inferior to men at this time, it is worth addressing the question of why all-girl bands sexuality is questioned, rather than men’s. It is also worth considering how these gender roles might have changed since this era when one considers what a modern day perception of an “appropriate” relationship is between people of the same sex. In addition to this idea of female inferiority to men, it is also worth considering the issue of race and how this may have affected these women. For an African American woman to be taking such a bold step at this time is quite extraordinary, especially when one considers the added stigma of sexuality at this time as well. Considering how this affected these specific women, as well as the people in their lives is a major part of understanding the phenomenon of the all-girl band of the 1940s.

^[1] Sherrie Tucker, “When Subjects Don’t Come Out,” in Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity, ed. Sophie Fuller and Lloyd Whitesell (University of Illinois Press,2002), 305.

–Taylor McGoldrick