Getty Images/E! Illustration
They say that there's assurance in numbers.
Yet for changeable performers, even operating in groups alone provides so abundant aegis from the about male-dominated armament that serve to accumulate women in their abode beneath the guise of deigning to prop them up. To accomplish them stars.
The flood of animal delinquency allegations adjoin Harvey Weinsteinthat burst through a society-imposed dam of blackout over the able anniversary beatific Hollywood's worst-kept abstruse to the top of everyone's account feed, as actresses, above advisers and more came advanced with claims of actuality aggressively propositioned, harassed, abashed and, in some cases, sexually assaulted by the abounding producer. Tales anon involving Weinstein bound gave way to women everywhere demography to amusing media to allotment their own experiences of mistreatment, with belief alignment from the absolutely harrowing to run-ins with the types of behaviors so many have been affected to absolve off out of arduous acceptable alarm to go about one's day afterwards accepting bogged bottomward by the sheer, abominable bent of it all.
Weinstein's atrophy so far has been abrupt and merciless: He was accursed from his namesake aggregation and booted out of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which for so connected counted him as an Oscar-night force to be reckoned with. His wife, Marchesa co-founder Georgina Chapman, appear she was abrogation him. His business accomplice and alone brother, Bob Weinstein, alleged him "depraved" and said he hopes Harvey gets the "justice he deserves."
But his brief collapse from a place that was already broadly believed to be defective in grace, while heartening, is alone a babyish step. And it can alone activate to adjustment the accident he allegedly wrought by decades of bad behavior (he has denied any belief of "non-consensual sex" demography place, but in a account responding to allegations abundant by The New York Times he accepted to agreeable in behavior that he now knows "caused a lot of pain.")
As so abounding women accept appear advanced to point out over the able 12 days, Weinstein was hardly the alone man in a position of ability in actualization business who weaponized his access and connections, who angry the allurement of a career into a trap. Despite the applesauce of Weinstein blaming the accustomed ability of 1960s- and 1970s-era Hollywood for influencing his behavior, the belled "casting couch"—the propositioning and objectification of ambitious changeable stars (and apparently some macho stars too) was and charcoal a absolute thing.
Men pulled rank on women all the time, and "decent" men did annihilation about it because their careers additionally generally depended on a higher-ranking man. Throwing their own consciences to the wind was the amount they paid. And abounding women, too, angry a dark eye to Weinstein because he was so accepted in the Hollywood machine, it was easier to aloof not pay too abundant absorption to what they'd heard (or to attending able what they themselves had experienced) than to abstain him and the endless authority projects he had a duke in.
But while so abundant of the chat has centered about actresses and those animate in TV and film, the male-dominated apple of pop music has aloof as baneful a history of mistreating changeable artists.
Kaya Jones' assertion—denied by founding affiliate Robin Antin—that the Pussycat Dolls was basically "a corruption ring," with associates accepting to beddy-bye with assertive men if they capital to be in the group, was a headline-making accession to the beck of belief this weekend.
Jones spent about two years in the Pussycat Dolls, which disbanded in 2009 as a recording act but spawned a mini authority that included merchandise, absoluteness competitions and a Vegas revue. Back she larboard in 2005 she said in an interview, "When anybody is not on the aforementioned folio it affects the accumulation so that, I think, was the affliction allotment and I absitively to leave. It was not because I capital to be abandoned and I didn't appetite to be in a accumulation anymore, I larboard because it chock-full actuality enjoyable, it chock-full actuality fun."
Seemingly advancing by the cardinal of women speaking out about their own adventures of animal advance and mistreatment, she tweeted over the weekend, "My truth. I wasn't in a babe group. I was in a corruption ring. Oh & we happened to sing & be famous. While anybody who endemic us fabricated the $...How bad was it? Bodies ask—bad abundant that I absolved abroad from my dreams, my bandmates & a 13 actor dollar almanac deal. We knew we were activity to be #1."
Antin, quoted sparingly by The Blast, alleged Jones' claims "disgusting, antic lies."
Jones tweeted aftermost night, "To anyone cerebration I've fabricated this up, why would I appetite to accept a ambition on my back/claim to accept been acclimated & abused?Not absolutely a acceptable look." She additionally wrote, "It's absolutely sad to see about any of Hollywood speaking up on the abusage of artists. Alone artists are speaking up! Not any executives?"
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
However the war of words amidst her and Antin pans out (The Blast appear that Antin's affected was cartoon up a acknowledged letter), Jones' allegations about serve as a reminder that it's still so generally men who authority the keys to a woman's career, not necessarily through animal agency but possibly through browbeating and manipulation. Keshaonly afresh managed to absolution a new anthology in the deathwatch of her years-long acknowledged action with Dr. Lukeover allegations he sexually assaulted and emotionally abused her. He has afresh denied the allegations. Noticeably no one spoke up to avert him as a acceptable guy and abundant changeable artists, including Lady Gaga(who has said she was raped by a producer when she was 19), Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Abrupt (who afresh won a lawsuit against a above radio DJ whom she accused of assaulting her) and Pink, have bidding abutment for Kesha.
Kesha's troubles hearken back to the ancient canicule of changeable music stardom, from Billie Holiday's relationships with one calumniating man afterwards addition that aided her coast into crippling biologic and booze addiction and her abortive afterlife at 44, to Florence Ballard, who was disturbing with a bubbler problem, actuality booted from the Supremes when she clashed with her adolescent singers, arch to absent recording sessions and added aberrant behavior. Ballard—the one who was originally asked if she capital to be in a babe group, afterwards which she connected the allurement to adolescence friends Diana Ross and Mary Wilson—died at 32, of coronary avenue occlusion brought on by booze abuse. Accepting burst her arrangement with Berry Gordy's Motown, she was shut out of any royalties and died in poverty.
At atomic nowadays bodies can usually acquisition a congenital abutment arrangement on amusing media (the adherence about negates all the trolling and online abuse), but there was no such affair back women like Ballard were chewed up and discharge out by a arrangement that accepted aggregate from them and in about-face larboard them with nothing.
Though the abstraction of a babe accumulation amendment up the angle of "girl power" and absolute women teaming calm to be a force to be reckoned with, the absoluteness is generally beneath a adventure of empowerment than one of women alveolate adjoin anniversary other—hence all the feuds (or, absolutely often, absurd feuds) that tend to booty over the anecdotal back talking about changeable artists and co-stars.
Even in the best of times, the sisterhood can accommodate alone so abundant abutment back there are alone careers to be anticipation of, basal curve to be eyed and macho record impresarios or managers to please.
Donaldson Collection/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Ballard—like Billie Holiday a survivor of rape—also suffered from depression, affronted by drinking and the ability attack aural the group, her sister Maxine Ballard remembered to the Daily Mail in 2007 when Dreamgirls—based on the Supremes' agent story—hit theaters, starring Beyoncé in the Ross role and Jennifer Hudson as a beneath blighted adaptation of Ballard. "Diane [her bearing name] was aggressive," Maxine said. "She knew what she capital and she went afterwards it." Aboriginal Ballard was pushed to the accomplishments by Gordy, who fabricated his then-girlfriend Ross the advance singer, and afresh accursed in 1967 amidst accretion tensions with her accumulation mates.
"You're not declared to anytime say that you were a Supreme, or had annihilation to do with the Supremes whatsoever," Ballard said in a 1975 Detroit Free Press interview of the contract. "In added words, you're nothing."
"Diane consistently admired to be the centermost of attraction," Wilson, still aggressive Motown over royalties herself at the time, told Bodies in 1986 aloft the absolution of her account Dreamgirl: My Activity as a Supreme. "If you happened to be in her way while she was activity adjoin the center, that was your fault."
Ross didn't allocution to Wilson for her book or People for their article, nor has she back had much to say about what happened with Ballard and the Supremes, alike in her own memoir, Secrets of a Sparrow. But Diana: A Biography quotes a 1976 account accustomed to Chicago Tribune Magazine in which Ross said, "Florence was consistently on a absolutely abrogating trip. She capital to be a victim. Maybe I should accept slapped her face a few times, approved to beating some faculty into her. She was one of those bodies you capital to grab and agitate and yell, 'Get your [expletive] activity together.'"
Ballard was replaced by Cindy Birdsong. Wilson told Bodies that she begin out Ross had larboard the accumulation to accompany a abandoned career by account about it in the papers—a babe accumulation twist that adumbrated added abreast headlines.
Michael Crabtree; PA Images via Getty Images
"I never larboard Destiny's Child. That is article that bodies say. But who would leave Destiny's Child? That's crazy! I was absolved from the group," LaTavia Roberson, who forth with Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland and LeToya Luckett made up the aboriginal aggregation on hits such as "Say My Name," told People last December. "It was actual difficult because of the way that I begin out about it. I abhorrence alike talking about it, and it's been 20 years—but it is what it is. We saw the 'Say My Name' video on TV, and that's how I begin out I was no best in the group."
Neither Roberson nor Luckett were in the video. Instead, Michelle Williams and Farrah Franklin had abutting longtime accompany Rowland and Beyoncé, whose ancestor Mathew Knowles managed the group. (Franklin was alone with Destiny's Adolescent for a few months, afterwards which it became the ability leash accepted to best fans.)
"It was actual difficult. I'm appealing abiding that it was difficult for all of us—because we were young," Roberson said. "My affair was consistently with the management; it was never with the girls."
Roberson, who had battled biologic and booze corruption and formed through the after-effects of actuality confused as a child, sunk into a abasement afterwards her ouster, but she boring pulled herself out of it.
"I accept that anybody has a chance," she told Billboard aftermost month, talking about a docu-series she was planning to go forth with her memoir, I Am LaTavia. "Someone saw article in me visiting Atlanta, and they believed in me. They said, 'I feel like the cosmos owes you something.' I started authoritative myself arresting again."
Her book would absolutely awning it all, she said, including what happened with Destiny's Child. "A lot of bodies were apprehensive what was activity on with me, and I anticipation that it was fair to let them apperceive absolutely what I was activity through, and allege about my activity in the group. It was article I consistently capital to do."
Ultimately Roberson likened what happened to a "horrible breakup"—but she didn't appetite to be accepted as the alone lover.
"When Beyoncé was accomplishing The Fighting Temptations [in 2003], we saw anniversary other, we hugged anniversary added for a actual connected time," she told Billboard. "There was annihilation but love, and there were bodies surrounding us that saw us interacting. I batten with Kelly briefly some few years ago. LaToya was at the hospital back I gave bearing to my daughter. I absolutely aloof batten with her about her engagement. I allege with LaToya a lot added because she's actuality in Atlanta a lot.
"I accept so abundant adulation for all of the girls and I abutment everything. We were family, they were my sisters. I don't accept why I'd be bitter; it's amazing the things they've accomplished."
And the actualization goes on.
Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for iHeartMedia
Just as Fifth Harmony was really coming into its own aftermost year and at a cardinal moment in their arrangement with Epic Records, Camila Cabelloshocked admirers by abrogation the group, which had been disconnected calm by Simon Cowell on the U.S. adaptation of the X Factor. But alike admitting she planned on authoritative the move, alarm Cabello alike added abashed back Lauren Jauregui, Ally Brooke, Normani Kordeiand Dinah Janeposted a bulletin on amusing media announcement her abandonment afore she had.
Cabello, who was additionally aggressive anxiety, afresh accurate her admiration for a abandoned career (all the girls had affairs that accustomed for abandoned recording opportunities as well) and "could not accept been clearer about her admiration to leave the group," a antecedent told Billboard at the time. The music advertisement appear that a therapist had been brought in an attack advice the girls assignment out their issues and the sessions would "historically devolve into a four-against-one scenario, abundant like the activating in the accepted accessible action of statements we are seeing, and were abundantly unproductive." As for the blow of Fifth Harmony's preemptive strike, "This all [stems from] the girls' jealousy," addition cabal said. "You've apprehend this adventure a actor times."
Despite Fifth Harmony's hard-fought alley as a accumulation to baffle the skeptics and accomplish pop stardom, Cabello told Billboard this past February that she hadn't talked to any of the girls since.
"I hoped that it would be a peaceful axis of the folio and we would basis for anniversary other. But I alone got adulation for them," she said. Meanwhile, in August, back Jauregui, Brooke, Kordei and Jane approved their best to not allocution about Cabello's avenue in an interview with The Sun's Dan Wootton for his podcast Bizarre Life, Wootton alleged it their "diva moment." He afresh tweeted, "Sad but somewhat amusing when you see a adolescent music accumulation you've accurate about-face into absolute divas!"
So back the actual associates of Fifth Harmony were absolutely attractive to abstain fanning the flames, they got dinged for not answering this guy's questions.
Even if the albatross in the allowance that is a member's abandoned aspirations doesn't exist, from day one, assertive expectations are placed on babe groups. If they appetite to address to the widest accessible audience, they accept to be sexy—but not too sexy, or abroad they about-face off the moms who advice facilitate their adolescent daughters' fandom and serve as the coffer from which funds for concert tickets and Apple Music memberships are procured. Yet the criticism—of their looks, their weight, their apparel and maybe, sometimes, their voices–will come, no amount how abundant accomplishment goes into all of those aspects of their image.
The hours are long, there are acutely a dozen cooks in the kitchen back it comes to the autograph and assembly of every song, and the changeable admiral administering any of this are few and far between.
Cabello said on Lena Dunham's podcast in January that she acquainted afflictive actuality "oversexualized" both as a affiliate of Fifth Harmony and as a abandoned artist.
"There's been a lot of times area bodies accept approved to sexualize us to aloof get added attention," she said. "Unfortunately, sex sells. There's absolutely been times area there's actuality that I accept not been adequate with and I've had to put my bottom down...I feel like it's been catchy because we've had to abound into ourselves while actuality in advanced of the apple and while authoritative songs that did accept a lot of animal undertones." And while there's annihilation amiss with all-embracing your female or attractive sexy, Cabello added, "I anticipate the affair that I would say to adolescent women is, if you're not accessible for it, put your bottom down."
As for authoritative music with Fifth Harmony, she told Billboard, "We didn't address our records. We were interpreting somebody else's story. Fifth Harmony is an article or character alfresco all of us, and I don't anticipate anybody acquainted alone represented by the sound—we didn't accomplish it."
British babe accumulation Little Mixis no drifter to actuality scrutinized over their apparel choices, the ladies accepting faced criticism from those who don't anticipate their accoutrements is adapted for a accumulation that has so abounding adolescent girls as fans. But while they've done their best to absolve that off, the perils of acclaim are animate and well.
GregNoire for iHeartRadio
Leigh-Anne Pinnock obtained a abstinent adjustment aftermost ages adjoin a 27-year-old man who slapped her in a London restaurant—an argument bent on CCTV—after he attempted to sit bottomward with her and her acquaintance and they rebuffed him.
"The aggressiveness of the guy to advance me like that larboard me in a accompaniment of shock, embarrassment and humiliation," Pinnock said in a victim appulse account apprehend on her account in court. Describing a book that sounds all too accustomed in the deathwatch of the Weinstein allegations, the adjudicator who accepted the abstinent adjustment bent that the man—a anatomy architect with a ample amusing media following—used his "size and intimidation" in afflictive the 26-year-old Pinnock.
"Miss Pinnock is advantaged to go out in accessible and eat in a restaurant afterwards actuality confused in the way that you did on this occasion," the adjudicator said, per the Daily Mail.
Melanie Chisholm—aka Mel C, aka Sporty Spice—opened up aftermost year about developing an bistro ataxia during the aiguille of the Spice Girls' acclaim in the 1990s, accepting talked ahead about the assessment all the analysis took on her aplomb at the time, how the tabloids could be absolute "cruel" about her appearance, labeling her adult because she was the "sporty" one.
"I was in the spotlight, actuality photographed constantly, and I started to become affected of my anatomy image," she said in an account with the BBC's Acceptable Foods in December. "I was in abnegation for a connected time but I consistently capital to get better— I had talking therapies and holistic therapies, like acupuncture," she continued. "Sport became absolutely important to me too."
Geri Halliwell, the aboriginal to leave the group, battled bulimia as well. She acclaimed in a 2003 account that the ataxia was added about ascendancy than aliment or weight. "It's aloof a way of ambidextrous or arresting with life," she said.
Meanwhile, on any accustomed day for the aftermost 20 years, any one affiliate of the Spice Girls has been accounted to be at allowance with another.
Though they were "girls accomplishing it for the girls," as Melanie Brown (aka Mel B, aka Scary Spice) put it on Larry King Now in 2014, they fought "like bodies and dogs," abridgement their five-year plan to three.
"When Geri larboard the group, it was bad," Brown recalled. "She larboard on my birthday, and didn't acquaint anybody… Aloof didn't actualization up. We had the blow of the tour. The American allotment of the tour." And admitting the aboriginal bristles accept back reunited, including at the aperture commemoration of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, and abide in touch, Brown accepted that she had adamantine animosity about Halliwell "for a connected time."
Brown and Halliwell accept back appear their ambition to accumulate as GEM with Emma Buntonbut the altercation rumors were animate and able-bodied back Chisholm and Victoria Beckham autonomous not to accompany in.
Chisholm, however, had never been one for a less-than-five-strong group—though they acutely attempted that afterwards Halliwell at first.
"I affectionate of feel like it's not absolutely accomplishing the bandage amends to go out as a four piece, whoever's missing it doesn't matter," she said on The Nightly Actualization in March. "I anticipate for me, Spice Girls, it's like a jigsaw puzzle. It's not the same."
It's still early, but is abiding belief about the accompaniment of their accord what Fifth Harmony and Cabello accept to attending advanced to as well?
They couldn't accept possibly not anticipation it wouldn't accession a few eyebrows, but the ladies were asked to explain their MTV VMAs achievement afterwards best bodies affected the angel of a fifth affiliate casting herself off-stage as the achievement got underway wouldn't be interpreted as a jab at Cabello.
Brooke insisted on Acceptable Morning America that the moment was a acknowledgment to them accepting asked all the time if they were activity to accompany on a new fifth member.
"We wanted to actualization the apple in an aesthetic way that, hey, the four of us are Fifth Harmony," she said. "We're stronger and bigger than we've anytime been. Honestly, it was such a awe-inspiring moment for us. We were at the VMAs. We had rain. We had the splits. We had a mic drop!"
Indeed.
