Breaking stereotypes
Women of Bleached don’t want to be seen as just ‘girls in a band’
Don’t ask the ladies of Bleached what it is like being a girl in a rock band. The band has laid out its frustration over the repeated inquiry with songs and in a zine of poetry, essays and art.
Bleached is made up of sisters Jennifer Clavin on vocals and Jessica Clavin on guitar, along with bassist Micayla Grace and drummer Nick Pillot. Jennifer Clavin was interested in being recognized as a musician who plays punk music but felt as if her band were being boxed into a stereotype along the lines of fictional bands Josie and the Pussycats or Jem and the Holograms. The Clavin sisters — as well as contributors Mish Way of White Lung, Hayley Williams of Paramore, Tegan Quin of Tegan and Sara, Kate Nash, Bethany Cosentino and Ali Koehler from Upset and others — submitted their poetry, essays and art reflecting the same frustrations into the zine .Proceeds from the zine, which Bleach created, benefit Planned Parenthood.
“I feel like I have a chance and a space to say something about it, so it was like, OK, let’s just take advantage of this and use this opportunity to say something that needs to be said, and so many other women agreed,” Jennifer Clavin said. “That’s what I like so much about this zine — it’s like a place where people just discuss the issue and not point fingers and tell people that they are wrong, just like how I feel about it, this is what I’ve dealt with and I’m sharing this, and I think that’s a really great way to go about it. A lot of people can soak it in that way.”
Jennifer Clavin’s songs are sometimes inspired straight from her journal and based on what she is feeling at the time, which is apparent on the band’s second album, “Welcome to Worms,” and its recently released EP, “Can You Deal?”
“I’m not really embarrassed to write what I think or how I feel, so I think that’s why I end up sharing more so we’ll just see what’s on my mind and what I’m going through,” Clavin said of songwriting. “‘Welcome to Worms’ was just like super-personal. I feel like a lot of the songs were coming out of my journal, and I feel ‘Can You Deal?’ was more like what was happening around me. … So when people read it, they’re relating it to their own lives, so they are going to take it how they want to take it, and a lot of times people will say, ‘Oh, this album helped me so much during this time’ and that’s what’s most important.”