femme mag

especially within the indie scene,
are highly disregarded across the
board as the big dogs are booking/promoting
people-pleasing
(male) acts more than ever. Yet,
Yassassin certainly don’t let this
dissuade them from writing and
playing music. “We view ourselves
equally to other bands. Like, we
don’t think of it as a novelty that
we’re an all-female band, we just
create the music we want” says
Anna, Yassassin’s front-woman.
Somehow, girl bands are still
widely seen as a novelty act, like
a bearded lady in a circus. Passers-by
gawk in disbelief at women
being any part of a band other
than a singer, backhandedly complimenting
female instrumentalists
for being “pretty good for a girl”
- PSA, it’s not a compliment. One
thing that all members of Yassassin
made clear was how fed-up
they were of being asked what it’s
like to be a woman in the music
industry. Of course, it does play a
huge part for Yassassin lyrically as
“all of [our] uniquely female experiences
go into our songwriting,
like being catcalled or sexualised”,
however, there is a huge differ-
ence between commenting on oppressive
gender experiences your-
self and being deprecated down
to solely your gender by others.
“Even though we’re women, we’re
musicians too,” says Anna.
It’s understandable how Yassassin
would want to avoid the
gender topic altogether when it
seems to be the only thing some
people focus on, however it does
still play a huge part in terms of
their influence on younger women.
The band made clear that
although they don’t have a set
target audience, what they really
hope to achieve is playing an
all-ages show. “We got so much
feedback when we supported
GIRLI at her all-ages show. Young
girls came up to us after our set
and told us we’d inspired them to
start a band. I guess that’s quite
an important thing to factor in, as
when I was young I didn’t really
have that role model or idol”.
And fantastic role models they
are, with lyrics surrounding the
subjects of sticking out from the
crowd and being yourself in the
ode to social standards ‘Social
Politics’ and defiance to conform
to society’s standards of beauty
in ‘Pretty Face’, hurling “If you like
my pretty face, I’ll wash it off”.
Admittedly, I wish I had role models
like Yassassin to look up to
when growing up – kick ass girls
with a brilliant message; be your-
self and fuck social standards.