Written for MODA Magazine May 2019 issue
The year is 1970. The Beatles have just disbanded, Richard Nixon is president, and gas costs just 36 cents a gallon. It is the start of a decade that will be defined by both its culture and politics — two aspects that came together in February 1970, when David Mancuso opened The Loft in New York City. The Loft is widely known as the birthplace of disco, a musical style that would quickly take over the national music scene. Disco had a strong and immediate appeal to marginalized groups who often lacked representation in popular culture, such as minorities, women and members of the LGBTQ community. It gave voice especially to minority women, who throughout the 1970s were consistently the main trailblazers in the genre. But more generally, Disco clubs were a place where women in the 70s could exercise their agency and freedom — a place that was hard to find elsewhere. Emphasizing self empowerment and personal expression, the dance floor was a place where women were not seen as inherently inferior to men.
Second wave feminism, which started in the early 1960s, emphasized women’s freedom and agency over their own body and life. Disco, often deemed as the beginning of club culture, offered women a new space where they could freely express their sexuality in virtually any way they saw fit. Style icons of the era, such as Bianca Jagger and Diana Ross, pushed the boundaries of acceptable fashion, making glitzy statement outfits a commonplace occurrence at clubs. The typical disco outfit was sophisticated and glamorous, with women experimenting with unconventional materials, such as sequins, metallics and fringe. The experimental and expressive nature of fashion at Disco clubs also manifested itself on the dance floor, where women were, for the first time, encouraged to dance alone or to lead in a dance with a man. Dancing manuals at the time stipulated that the leader in a dance should be whoever is the most experienced, which was just as often the woman as it was the man. As disco became mainstream during the mid-1970s, the ideals that it propagated about gender dynamics and norms became much more socially acceptable than they had been in the past. By providing a space that began to equalize the relationship between men and women, Disco clubs became the grounds from which feminist ideas were able to flourish in society.
Aside from dismantling traditional patriarchal standards, disco music also gave female performers an outlet to influence society through their music. Disco music, pioneered by African American female singers, focused on sexual agency and freedom in part because disco as a culture did the same. When Billboard began their disco music chart in 1974, the first number-one song was “Never Can Say Goodbye” by African American singer Gloria Gaynor. Because the voice of disco was overwhelmingly female, many of the songs were about overcoming the experiences that women, specifically minority women, experienced at the time.
Female disco singers were a voice of survival and empowerment in the music industry, and they spread feminism from inside the political sphere to the outside world, into popular culture. The popularity and influence of disco during the 1970s showcased the growing acceptance for unconventional gender relations in American society — a phenomenon that will continue to unfold for decades to come.