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So, we got a press release on Friday, as sometimes happens. We have no idea why it was sent to us, but the headline is precious: "Aly & AJ Unveil Two Guitars For Female Gamers; Guitars will feature bright colors and bold designs." Guitars for females! Why the very idea. The rest of the release is a bunch of blah blah blah about innovators and star power and teaching girls to rock. Yawwwn. We searched around but couldn't find a picture of the product anywhere, so there's no way to verify that this is for real. But let's assume that it's the awful truth, and that "bright colors" really just means "pink." Because, duh, it's for females.
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Naaah, this is a girl guitar.
Not to mention the entire line of Daisy Rock.
I'm sure the well-informed sfist reader already knows this, but back in the day, guitars were ONLY for girls to play - they were seen as effeminate.
The equivalent masculine instrument was the fiddle.
Put that in your corncob pipe and smoke it.
The instrument that we know as the Western European guitar doesn't have a singular lineage, so it's a stretch to say that it was "originally a girl's instrument." There are historical artifacts from early civilizations showing males playing guitar-like instruments, so likely, it was commonly played by both sexes, depending on the time and location.
The concept of multiple string instrument over a resonating hollow body was probably discovered by many individuals (just like a sport that involved kicking a round sphere and not using your hands).
However, by 17th century Western Europe, this type of instrument was commonly associated with female musicians. There's a portrait of a woman playing a lute, formerly attributed to Johannes Vermeer from about this time.
I'm quite pleased by how scholarly the comments for this post have become.
Does this explain the Indigo Girls AND Sleater Kinney in one neat little sound bite? I'm teaching my 12 yr old niece acoustic and all she wants to do is rock out with an electric. Screw learning scales or bar chords, she wants to make loud noise.
I'm going to buy her a cheap ass electric and a crappy gorilla amp just to piss off my brother.
Yeah!
Can someone hazard a guess as to where lutes place on the x-y graph of the gender spectrum?
I'm thinking lower than a ukulele, but higher than a mandolin, yes?