Review

The grand finale of Lilith Fair featured all the artists singing "Because the Night."

The cover of Eye Weekly caught my eye Saturday.

I was on my way to the Molson Canadian Amphitheatre for Lilith Fair 2010 when Eye called to me.

“Do we need a Lilith Fair in 2010?” The cover asked.

When I arrived at the Amphitheatre, the answer hit my like a tonne of bricks as I glanced at the women — the thousands of women — around me. Yes.

The article made all the points one would expect an article like it to make

• Lilith Fair is, like, so 1999.
• We have successful solo women’s artists now (see Gaga, Lady).
• Um, no one cares about girls with guitars anymore.
• Lacklustre ticket sales prove all the above.

Some highlights from the article:

In this epoch, where widely circulating upskirt photos of an underage Miley Cyrus are only a minor scandal, it’s difficult to communicate what Lilith meant back then. The 1990s featured a remarkable dissonance between the mainstreaming of underground, girl-made rock and big-money pop. It was when riot grrrl begat “girl power,” and representations of women were available in reclaimed foxcore slut codes (Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Hole), jeans-and-tees alt-rock (the Breeders, Sleater-Kinney, Veruca Salt, Liz Phair), WTF pop-rock (Gwen Stefani, notably) and schoolgirl-era Britney Spears. In the many years since, but especially in the past decade, the multitude of ways for women to exist as artists and project their artist-images have largely disappeared — nobody would get away with cords and no makeup on MTV anymore — creating a cottage industry of 1990s girl-culture nostalgia.

And then it’s ultimate conclusion on why Lilith Fair is a waste of time 10 years later:

So, no. We don’t need Lilith Fair, at least not as an awkward stand-in for a giant social problem that’s resolvable only by a shift in cultural attitudes and behaviours. And Lilith, the one that exists in reality rather than as an ideal, doesn’t need the critical hurricane it’s in the middle of because it fails to do the impossible, or because it’s just a standard, for-profit tour with a marketing strategy that uses sisterhood to sell singers in the same way Warped Tour uses punk’s legacy to sell shoes. As a platform for artists, and as a catalyst for discussion, sure, Lilith is a valid project. But, on its own, it’s just a show.

A few observations about whether we still “need” a Lilith in 2010 that came to me while at the concert Saturday night.

What is being forgotten in this Eye Magazine article is as Lilith was going on in the ’90s, the Spice Girls were dominating the charts — so there were successful women acts on the pop charts. Alanis was never part of any Lilith lineup, that I can tell.

Lilith seemed to be then, and is now, a collection of smart women who write their own music and play an instrument. The Eye article points out the Lights recently “released an acoustic EP that is more Lilith-appropriate than her usual electronics-heavy pop-rock” — yet she only played one tune from that EP. The rest of her set Saturday in Toronto was the music she has created and become a success with.

I’ve been to many concerts over the year, but I have never, ever seen so many women in one place (I’m going to put my odds at 20 women for every one man). It actually brought tears to my eyes at times. Yes, we have Lady Gaga and all these other women who are doing things their way with a lot of success, but Gaga is no girl with a guitar. When she sits at her piano and plays Speechless live — that’s when she’s a Lilith Girl.

McLachlan says Lilith is socially conscious like no other act out there, and that is true. But I don’t think it’s charitable contributions set it apart. Lilith is a place where you and your best friend can sit for the day and chill out to the tunes that you listened to as a teenager — that’s what Lilith means to me. Eye makes it seem like it’s only soccer moms that would go to Lilith — but they’re forgetting that when McLachlan made it huge back in 1997/98 a lot of us were teenagers experiencing that record for the first time. Making memories to that record.

The same goes for Chantal Kreviazuk. She is a socially conscious artist, always has been. She is a voice of War Child. It hit me as Kreviazuk played away Saturday that she was just on the cusp of making it huge during the last Lilith bout. Colour, Moving and Still came out in 1999 — and that blew her wide open.

Mary J. Blige brought down the house with her set.

Most of all, we still need Lilith because it’s still looked at as a “lesbian festival” — which is rude and disrespectful not just to women, but to lesbians, too. The stereotypes that Lilith Fair was trying to kill in 1999 still exist today. I was amazed at the amount of tweets I saw on Saturday talking about how all the lesbians were getting rained on at Lilith Fair. A male-orientated festival would never be consider homosexual at all — they’re actually looked at as the most masculine events a guy could go to.

But the biggest reason we need Lilith in 2010 is not to change what other think of us as women, but what we think of each other as women. More often than not, it’s not the men in our lives that cut us down — we cut one another down. Whether it be at work or between friends, women cut one another so short it makes me sad. I do it too, but that doesn’t make it right.

And for a brief moment at Lilith Fair on Saturday night as the crowd swayed on its feet singing along to Angel with Sarah McLachlan on stage, I felt like I was a part of something bigger than myself. I felt, for one brief moment, that other women were not my competitors, not out to get my job or my man — they were my allies.

And there is no where else I would have wanted to be at that moment.

That is why we need Lilith Fair in 2010.

Photos courtesy of jennyrotten on Flickr. You can see more of her work here.

The Month That Was is a regular feature on Through the Looking Glass. On the last day of each month, it will take a look back at the month that was and the highlights (and lowlights) from it.

• We compared Toronto’s three free daily papers to see how similar — and how different — they are.
• We took a look at the Fan 590′s Mike Wilner’s suspension and deemed it wasn’t censorship — contrary to what his fans said.
• I picked up running (and drew my first Google map with the route on it — thanks Keith).
• We took a look at the rescue of Abby Sunderland and whether she should have to pay for it.
• Months away from Miley Cyrus turning 18, we examined why it has been so hard for her to shed her little girl image compared to the teen queens that came before her.
• We watched in horror as the G20 carnage unfolded in downtown Toronto, and then tried to make sense of the aftermath after the weekend was over.

(Apologies this is a little late)

The Month That Was is a regular feature on Through the Looking Glass. On the last first day of each month, it will take a look back at the month that was and the highlights (and lowlights) from it.

• — We wondered if Michelle Bombshell McGee really is, as CTV says, the most hated woman in the world.
• A Toronto woman is suing Rogers Communications for exposing her affair.
• Remembering a fallen Canadian soldier on his way home from Afghanistan by seeing the motorcade bringing his body to the coroner’s office.
• The Toronto sports media went crazy trying to figure out if Bosh was trying to tell us he wasn’t returning to the Raptors in 140 characters or less.
• We thought a Phillies fan who ran on the field did not deserve to be Tasered (even though he lived out Homer Simpson’s life-long dream).
• Conan O’Brien breaks his silence.

As a lover of Sex and the City (the television show), I went to one of the first showings of the newest Sex and the City movie (despite not fully enjoying the first one), aptly titled Sex and the City 2. A few of my thoughts after the jump (spoiler warnings ahead): (more…)

The Month That Was is a regular feature on Through the Looking Glass. On the last day of each month, it will take a look back at the month that was and the highlights (and lowlights) from it.

• We took a look at the train wreck that is Kate Gosselin as she continue to attempt to dance on Dancing with the Stars. Thankfully, she was voted out before the month was out.
• We stood up for unpaid internships at a time when U.S. officials are wondering if the process is really just slave labour.
• A prequel to the Baby-Sitters Club series was released. Despite being nearly 20 years too old, I bought the book and stayed up reading it like my 8-year-old former self did with the originals.
• Bristol Palin’s PSA says only rich kids can have kids. Oh, and don’t have sex.
• 30 years later, we remembered Terry Fox.
• Adam Giambrone announces he will not run for re-election. By doing so, a void will exist on the new Toronto council. (It also makes us wonder how we will manage to write monthly about Giambrone if he is no longer a politician.)
• The National Enquirer does not win a Pulitzer, but it had a right to want to be considered.
• Charges are laid in the death of Nadia Kajouji.
• We defend the sex ed plan Dalton McGuinty decided to abandon.
• We had a feature interview with reporter Jon Wells, who is up for an Arthur Ellis award for nonfiction crime writing.