Don't Ask Her

Don't Ask Her
Reviewer: mdurshimer
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Nobody Ever Asked Me about the Girls:
Women, Music and Fame
Hardcover: 
256 pages
November 10, 2020
ISBN 10:
1627794905
ISBN 13:
978-1627794909

An intimate look at the lives of our most celebrated female musicians — and their challenges with fame — from a legendary music journalist.

There’s a reason why nobody ever asked Lisa Robinson about the girls. If you read this book, it won’t take you long to see it.

I really wanted to like Nobody Ever Asked Me About The Girls: Women, Music, and Fame. Intriguing title, penned by longtime music journalist Lisa Robinson, who clearly experienced many of the same issues as her gender mates. But several chapters in, I realized I’d been had by someone attempting to capitalize on the #MeToo movement.

What could have been a great tribute to the groundbreakers, the rule breakers, the heart breakers, ends up being a mash up of stories the author has already told, gleaned from her extensive digital library of her career. Robinson is not the first person to use this approach and it’s one I don’t like. It’s hard to follow and it’s not particularly interesting to read the same answers to questions about age, beauty, drugs, relationship, sex, the business, etc., posed to different people. It’s repetitive, it’s unoriginal, and it truly cheapens the struggle of women to not be viewed as mothers and whores. I expected way more from someone who was there, someone who went through some of the same crap, shared that history.

Robinson’s discussion of her own struggles doesn’t come across as supportive. In fact, it’s just the opposite. She admits that she willingly ignored the bad boy behavior so that she could still get interviews and be in the right club, the one run by men. So much for empowering her sisters.

Between that and her nonstop trashing of certain pop stars (she really hates Taylor Swift), I have to wonder what this is all about. I knew I was going to read about the struggles of women, but I didn’t realize that there is a continuum that doesn’t include certain females and that those women don’t deserve respect. There’s something bizarre about Robinson’s hero worship of Rihanna, who willingly went back to Chris Brown after he beat her, while she openly expresses disdain for Madonna, who to my knowledge, has always done things her own way. Even if she hates her music and ego, shouldn’t Robinson be celebrating Madonna’s success? You can’t pick and choose who you are going to support. You either have the back of all womens or you shut up. One might call this selective misogyny. And it makes this book lack credibility.

On second thought, don’t read it. The “girls” deserve better than this.