How Chrissy Amphlett put women in control - Women's Agenda

How Chrissy Amphlett put women in control

I was just a child when The Divinyls’ I touch Myself topped the ARIA charts.

I would sing it around the family home with absolutely no idea what was behind the lyrics of the song. Needless to say, a few years later I figured it out.

That’s what Chrissy Amphlett did. She challenged, she pushed boundaries, she caused young women to have “ah ha!” moments – all while entertaining us.

Amphlett also inspired women to pursue their own dreams in a man’s world. She gave a voice to a generation of female artists – including Kate Miller Heidki, Sarah McLeod and Magic Dirt’s Adalita – and taught the rest of us to see that a woman could gracefully and artistically front an all-male band in an industry that then preferred all-male hits, and was (and still largely is) powered by all-male radio hosts, record producers and journalists. And yes, she could sing about touching herself at the same time.

Music journalist Bernard Zuel describes the industry at the time that Amphlett was breaking through as “quite deliberately hostile and patronising” to women. The women who made it were either “compliant”, distant, or “playfully sexy” – except for Amphlett. He believes young women were more immediately drawn to her because she never followed the rules. It took a little while longer for the men to catch up.

Success wasn’t easy for Amphlett and came with plenty of the usual trappings for rockstars. Forming the band with guitarist Mark McEntee in 1980, Amphlett collaborated on a number of hits including Science Fiction and the brilliant Pleasure and Pain before hitting the global stage with I touch Myself in 1991. Later, with all that fame, Amphlett was still a little “insecure”, according to former bandmate Rick Grossman. Just like we all are.

Reading about Amphlett’s fight against cancer and MS, it seems that some of her most heroic and dignified fights may have come later in life.

A Facebook post she published in March showed the true extent of this battle, and how determined she was to continue her work regardless.

She wrote that despite becoming a “patient in a world of waiting rooms … hospital beds, on your knees praying for miracles” that she didn’t stop singing and dreaming of once again performing and being on stage. Although physically and mentally exhausted, she kept writing music. She didn’t feel the need to reach out to others to explain what she was going through because “we are all going through something”. She was grateful, still inspired and still enjoying life, signing off with the line “we must never be afraid”. Surviving and cracking that all-male music industry certainly taught her a few things.

Amphlett challenged the music industry to grow up, and to see and accept women as being in command of their own stage presence and able to achieve success by being original. Sadly, though, we still do not have enough Australian women leading the charts with their own music and self-determined stage personality (there’s not much space with so many carbon copy reality TV stars singing karaoke). But charts and fame only tell part of the story, there are plenty of girls and women creating music their own way in bedrooms around Australia – if not inspired by Amphlett, then inspired by the artists she later inspired.

I sang I Touch Myself again while cooking dinner last night. My partner joined in, for a while, before telling me to shut up because he was trying to watch the news. Farewell Chrissy Amphlett.

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