{"id":20893,"date":"2020-01-09T09:51:23","date_gmt":"2020-01-09T16:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cmt.com\/news\/?p=1816431"},"modified":"2020-01-09T09:51:23","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T16:51:23","slug":"jennifer-nettles-pens-essay-about-her-cma-statement-cape-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/music-news\/jennifer-nettles-pens-essay-about-her-cma-statement-cape-train\/","title":{"rendered":"Jennifer Nettles Pens Essay About Her CMA Statement Cape Train"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

by Alison Bonaguro<\/a><\/span>
\n9m ago<\/span>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

This is not just another story about a country star\u2019s red-carpet style. It\u2019s more What Message Are You Sending than Who Are You Wearing. <\/p>\n

In a new essay<\/a> penned for Glamour<\/em>, country singer-songwriter Jennifer Nettles is continuing the conversation about all of the gender disparities in country music. <\/p>\n

And she used the CMA Awards red carpet as a way to shine a spotlight on the issue. <\/p>\n

The fitted white suit she wore that night back in November had a Christian Siriano-designed cape train that flowed behind the suit, and that train was embellished with the work of street artist Alice Mizrachi. It said, \u201cPlay our (expletive)* records. Please & thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWhen I stepped out on the red carpet and made the reveal, there was this collective gasp and giggle at the same time. I thought, Yeah, this is going to work; this is going to do exactly what I wanted it to do. It was an opening up of a conversation for the whole rest of the red carpet. And now it\u2019s blossomed even further in such a beautiful way,\u201d Nettles wrote. <\/p>\n

She goes on in the essay to lament the fact that of the top 500 charted country songs from 2014 to 2018, only 16 percent were by female artists. <\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cI want to continue the conversation, on both a corporate level and a programming level, because it needs to change. It is beautiful how one spark can set aflame \u2014 hopefully \u2014 a movement. I\u2019m calling it #EqualPlay to underscore equal pay, because it\u2019s the same gender pay gap that\u2019s happening across so many industries and in our culture at large,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n

And the numbers, she explains, just keep getting worse. \u201cFor women in country music, what happens is that even out of that 16 percent who are being played, the average female is 29 years old. For men, the average mean age in that group is 42. That says a lot about what we value socially \u2014 the pressures that are put on women in terms of ageism and beauty. It also tells me that women aren\u2019t offered the same support to be able to continue their careers. If you\u2019re working in the music business, your life is very much dependent on travel. Touring is really the only way to make a living anymore. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo if you\u2019re a working mother who doesn\u2019t have the resources to support your family and take your child with you, you\u2019re suddenly presented with a high-stakes proposition: Am I going to be gone for months at a time without seeing my child? If that\u2019s a no, you\u2019re forced to choose. This is just a microcosm of the same challenges women feel all over this country in terms of the lack of support where working moms and childcare are concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the new year rolled around, Nettles reflected on her #TopNine of 2019. \u201cHere\u2019s to more dreaming, in all the ways, in 2020!!\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

* Nettles didn\u2019t exactly use the actual expletive on her cape. \u201cI knew that if I actually used the expletive, media outlets might veer away from picking up the pictures,\u201d she wrote. \u201cSo I thought, if I make it more cartoonish, if I use symbols for the letters, everybody will know what it means and it will be more effectively digested.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
Alison makes her living loving country music. She’s based in Chicago, but she’s always leaving her heart in Nashville. <\/div>\n

@alisonbonaguro<\/a> <\/div>\n

via:: CMT News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Alison Bonaguro 9m ago This is not just another story about a country star\u2019s red-carpet style. It\u2019s more What Message Are You Sending than Who Are You Wearing. In a new essay penned for Glamour, country singer-songwriter Jennifer Nettles is continuing the conversation about all of the gender disparities in country music. And she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-15 08:29:55","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KRKY Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}