Amy Winehouse's passing last month made me very upset. I have been meaning to write about this for a while, but with all the changes and things going on, she ended up on my mental back burner.
I have been a big fan of hers for years. When Adele came out with Rolling in the Deep this year, she reawakened my love for Amy Winehouse and I have honestly been listening to her non-stop since February. She had a wonderful voice, sarcasm and wit in her lyrics, and something to say about what it means to be a woman in this era. Amy was unafraid to say what what on her mind, however crude or politically incorrect it may have been, she had a voice and was unafraid to use it.
When she died last month at the age of 27, I was horrified by her passing and the commentary it evoked in the public realm. People typically responded with a kind of nonchalant, She-was-a-druggie-so-I'm-not-surprised kind of attitude. It made me very sad because others who are not very different from her who died at her age were celebrated and immortalized: Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Heath Ledger and so on. Amy didn't get one magazine cover that I saw anywhere, and her death seemed to evoke a kind of holier than thou attitude from people that I know. This is particularly disturbing, because everyone I know who expressed that kind of sentiment is/was hardly a priest. All of them have done drugs or drank at some point in their lives, maybe not to the extent that Amy did, but none of them were virgins until marriage if you know what I mean.
I haven't really heard her music on the radio lately in any noticeable way. Let's not forget that Michael Jackson also died of drugs, they may have been "prescribed" but it was drugs none the less that took his life. When he died, the whole city of Los Angeles shut down (I was there, I know), his music was overplayed, and a parade was held in his honor.
Now, I can anticipate my readers thinking that Amy Winehouse only had one real hit and a few albums, which pales in comparison to Jackson's long and prolific career. However, that is not my point. What I am getting at is that drugs are drugs, but somehow an addiction to legal drugs is considered exempt from criticism and illegal drugs are open for mockery, judgement and disdain.
Another factor that seems to play into this is that Amy was not a man. When I think about the young celebrities that have died of drug overdoses in my lifetime and in my mom's generation, the ones who are celebrated postmortem are all men. With the exception of Janis Joplin, none of the women I can think of who passed in this fashion are celebrated in any substantial way. Brittney Murphy received a short nod and scant press, Heath Ledger got an Oscar. Cobain, who was a totally irresponsible asshole who killed himself and left a small child behind is completely immortalized, and he wasn't much more prolific than Amy Winehouse (2 studio albums, a b-side album, a garage band recording, and later an MTV taping). Yes, Smells Like Teen Spirit defined a generation, but, he got much more press once he was in the ground than he did when he was alive. To make matters worse, he chose to die, was totally absolved of all responsibility, and had been in rehab only weeks before.
So what is going on here? This strange contrast appears counter to everything feminism teaches us about constructions of womanhood. If women are always seen as having less agency and as victims far more often than men, why is it that young women celebs seem to be blamed for their deaths, whereas men who die in the same way are immortalized and celebrated? I don't think I can answer this question, but it makes me angry and that's where I stand. So I had my hairdresser style me a mini-beehive today as a little ode to Amy and I held my tongue when he and everyone in the salon began to badmouth her on cue.
I love you Amy Winehouse. Rest in peace.
