Joe Strummer is a baby boomer. Billie Joe Armstrong is a Gen Xer. But we, in college, are millenials. We have new concerns, fears, angers, joys, triumphs and, most importantly, we have new politics.
Politics in punk rock is nothing new. Punk musicians have written countless songs attacking former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Green Day wrote an entire album called “American Idiot.” And all of punk is pervaded by a general devil-may-care anarchistic attitude and decidedly subversive aesthetic. Taking on “the establishment” is pretty much a given in the genre.
But the definition of “the establishment” has changed. It isn’t up to punk music to protest the government. Anarchy isn’t cool anymore. Anti-establishment in 2017 doesn’t have the same meaning as it did in the 1970s.
Anti-establishment in 2017 largely means anti-gender binary, gender bias and gender roles. Front woman of Diet Cig, Alex Luciano applies a feminine and tough attitude to her songwriting. “And I’m starting to get real sick of/ Trying to find my voice/ Surrounded by all boys,” she sings in Diet Cig’s newest release, “Tummy Ache.” Luciano manages to pack the song so full of significance and nuance that I’m thankful she writes songs instead of newspaper articles or I might be out of a job. Later Luciano adds in her refrain, “And my stomach hurts/ Because it’s hard to be a punk when you’re wearing a skirt.” She captures millennial anxiety, femininity, tenacity and a critique of the punk scene in fifteen words. It’s “hard” to be punk, she says, but not impossible. She’s tired of the scene, but she’s there. Nothing’s stopping her, despite her tummy ache.
While Diet Cig celebrates Luciano’s womanhood, fellow punk-rock duo PWR BTTM exists outside of the gender binary. Members Liv Bruce and Ben Hopkins eschew masculinity. Both perform in thrift-store polyester dresses and Hopkins regularly douses his beard, face and hair in loose glitter while Bruce wears red lipstick and the occasional sequined party dress. But beyond their flamboyant aesthetic is real action. “Queer is invincible,” they often say (and tweet) to their largely gay, transgender or otherwise queer fans. It may not seem like much, but self-love, especially for LGBTQ youth is radical. And since Liv Bruce’s gender is nonbinary – neither male nor female, but somewhere in between – the band requires that the venues at which they play have gender-neutral bathrooms for their transgender and nonbinary fans.
The world is changing, and punk music isn’t being left behind – it is leading the way. Bands like Diet Cig and PWR BTTM are all around and taking down the establishment’s ideas of gender everywhere they go.