Guest post written by author Jessica S. Olson
Jessica S. Olson claims New Hampshire as her home, but has somehow found herself in Texas, where she spends most of her time singing praises to the inventor of the air conditioner. When she’s not hiding from the heat, she’s corralling her three wild—but adorable—children, dreaming up stories about kissing and murder and magic, and eating peanut butter by the spoonful straight from the jar. She earned a bachelor’s in English with minors in editing and French, which essentially means she spent all of her university time reading and eating French pastries. Sing Me Forgotten is her debut novel. Learn more at https://www.jessicasolson.com.
At nineteen years old, I was grabbed in a subway station by an unfamiliar man twice my age. Terrified, I wrenched myself out of his grasp and ran.
It didn’t surprise me when he chased me through the station in broad daylight. When no one stopped him. When he ignored my screaming pleas to leave me alone. When he kicked me and cursed at me for refusing his advances.
I was scared out of my wits, but not surprised.
And later, when I told my friends about it, in spite of the way I was still shaking with tears hours later, they weren’t surprised either.
Why are we not surprised?
Yes, at the end of the day, women can vote. We can own businesses. We can take out mortgages and purchase property and any number of things that men can do. But somehow, still, our culture continues to treat women as lesser, as objects. How is this still possible, in the year 2021? After all that the women’s rights movement has fought for over decades and decades and decades?
I argue that the answer lies with the media we consume. Many of our books, movies, music, and TV shows perpetuate sexist attitudes and misogynist values. And the most dangerous part about it? Most of the messaging is subliminal.
Daily, we are fed the lie that women are responsible for household chores with every cleaning product ad that comes on television. We are groomed to believe we are only valuable when we are pretty by every makeup, shampoo, spanx, waxing, hair dye, and weight loss commercial we see. We watch female superstars get criticized for the same things their male counterparts are praised for. And, since these things surround us practically from birth, we don’t even notice it.
Take one of my all-time favorite Broadway musicals as an example: The Phantom of the Opera. From a very young age, I was enamored with the idea of a masked man whisking me away to his candlelit lair so he could compose operas in my honor. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized just how problematic aspects of that story was. Instead of paying attention to the coming-of-age narrative about a young girl who takes voice lessons from the enigmatic “angel of music,” lands the lead role, and gets to choose between two men who adore her, I noticed the subliminal—and dangerous—messaging inherent to the storyline.
Throughout the play, Christine is objectified by both the Phantom and her childhood sweetheart, Raoul. The Phantom entrances her with his music in a way that feels uncomfortably similar to drugging, kidnaps her, and even goes so far as to threaten people she cares about if she does not do his will. And Raoul is not much better. He rarely listens to her, gas lighting her fears of the Opera Ghost, and ultimately ignores her express wishes when he uses her as bait to capture the Phantom.
As a long-standing Phantom fan, when I opened my eyes to the scary misogynistic themes of the play, I wasn’t sure how to proceed. Because, yes, on one hand, the play does perpetuate some of those sexist values that women have worked so hard for so long to deconstruct. But on the other hand, I connected deeply to the Phantom’s plight. As one who grew up with a medical condition that made me look different, that led to ridicule throughout my adolescent years, his story explored a message that not only affected me deeply, but which is also very important for young girls to hear: that the way society villainizes those who are not “beautiful,” the way it demonizes and mistreats those who don’t “fit the mold,” is dangerous and wrong.
So, I wondered, would it be possible to take the things I loved about Phantom–the masterful music, the mesmerizing story, and that soul-shattering message I found so imperative–and work them into a narrative that not only deconstructed the original’s sexism, but also empowered young girls?
The book that came out of that soul-searching was Sing Me Forgotten. A fantasy Phantom of the Opera that not only deepens the theme of finding our identities outside of the boxes society tries to shove us into, but also portrays a young woman as fierce, powerful, and active in her own right. I took the original concept and flipped it on its head, swapping the genders so that the Phantom character is a young woman and the Christine character is a young man. Doing so gave me the opportunity to explore a version where the girl is the teacher, the expert, the angel of music.
No longer does the story treat her as an object to be won. While her world abhors her appearance, she finds strength and beauty in herself. She is magical and angry, vengeful and glorious, and as far from an “object” as possible. I took my Phantom and Christine deeper than their inspirations, made them stronger, and developed between them a healthy, consensual—and yet still devastating—romance. Together, they expose the ugliness in our flawed society as they break past their molds, growing into truly memorable people that I hope readers will be able to not only see themselves in but find strength from.
And, alongside my Opera Ghost’s rise to power, I strove to explore the true villain of both my story and the original Phantom’s: the culture that tries to demonize us all in one way or another for being what we are.
Teenage me knew only of a world where she had to be afraid. Where she had to avoid going anywhere alone. Where she had to be careful of who she spoke to and how. But adult me? I have dreams of a future where our media perpetuates the idea that women are powerful exactly the way we are. Where our television and our Broadway shows and our novels teach everyone—men included—that we are not objects. We are fierce, powerful, and active in our own right.
And I hope, one day, that when our young women fight back, no one is surprised.
I went looking to see if anyone had done a gender flip Phantom.
And I’m disappointed, but not surprised.
If a MAN sings of his passion to a woman, it’s “uncomfortably like drugging her”.
But if a WOMAN sings to a man, then the resulting love affair is “consensual”.
Although still tragic.
9 out of 10 for at least TRYING.
If you’d kept everything the same, would that have been so hard?