![]() ![]() Tramp Stamps’ music thus far isn’t dissecting or interrogating male privilege, nor is it calling attention to sexism or uplifting women their songs are instead upholding tired tropes and encasing them in a popular aesthetic, and potentially even reinforcing the objectification and sexualization of women, as some TikTok users have alleged. Many also noted that lyrics like this fetishize people who are not straight white men, rendering marginalized groups like women, nonbinary people, queer people, and people of color into a perfect, desirable monolith. Tramp Stamps’ track “I’d Rather Die” features the line, “I’d rather die/ than hook up with another straight white guy.” This is despite the fact that, as TikTokers pointed out, one of the members, Blue, is married to a white man. (Many fans were under the impression that the entire band was queer, leading the band to deny this and Maino to confirm, both on TikTok and on Instagram, that she alone is queer.) Championing this aesthetic without recognizing its limitations is another failure on Tramp Stamps’ part to do justice to its message of inclusivity.Īnd then there are the band’s lyrics, which come across as uncomfortable and unnatural, playing into the man-hating trope often used to deride feminists. Despite riot grrrl’s feminist roots, the dissonance of its reality seems emblematic of Tramp Stamps’ own issues: Tramp Stamps are a band made up of three white, cis women, who refuse to own any of the privilege they obviously have. The band has positioned itself as feminist (“What does a tramp stamp stand for? Women’s rights,” Baker said in a TikTok), but TikTok users claim that they’re co-opting a riot grrrl aesthetic, a punk music movement that failed to be intersectional and was exclusionary, centering white women’s experiences and essentially ignoring people of color. Protective fans deeming Tramp Stamps as inauthentic is damning, but there are other complaints that hold even more water. (This line of thinking is rife with its own, often sexist or racist issues, and it is important to note that pop-punk has had its own history with misogyny.) This is why pop-punk fans on TikTok were shocked to see that, while doing an emo song challenge, two of Tramp Stamps’ members didn’t recognize My Chemical Romance’s “I’m Not Okay (I Promise).” Not only is that an affront to pop-punk and one of the genre’s biggest artists, but it’s also hard to imagine that a pop-punk fan their age wouldn’t recognize that seminal song. That, combined with the fact that the genre and its fans were often criticized for being uncool, outdated, or melodramatic, has led many longtime pop-punk fans to be skeptical of people jumping on the bandwagon, sometimes even gatekeeping the genre from people they don’t deem worthy. The resurging popularity of pop-punk means that it’s ripe for artists and labels to start dabbling in social media, especially TikTok. It’s time for bands like Tramp Stamps to be honest about what industrial privilege they hold, what systemic problems they’re playing into.īut it’s not just that Tramp Stamps are misleading their followers about their origins or connections in the music industry that’s riled TikTok up in particular-it’s that the band’s feminist punk image might also be disingenuous. ![]()
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