Art and music have immensely progressed over the years, with many talented individuals contributing their own creativity and uniqueness to the fields. Like many other amazing things in life, women have contributed, influenced, and created so much amazing art and music throughout the years. Women are deeply rooted in the structure of art. It would not be the same without them. Sadly, wherever talented and successful women go, sexism follows. These issues create the Yoko Effect.
The Yoko Effect refers to the phenomenon in which a talented, successful woman is in a relationship with a more successful man, and people believe the woman’s success is attributed to the man. It completely strips the woman of all her hard work and credits the man instead. The origin of the term stems from a female artist named Yoko Ono. Yoko Ono was having an exhibit for her Fluxus art when she met John Lennon, who was a vocalist and guitarist for The Beatles, an extremely successful band at the time. As soon as they became a couple, the public didn’t hesitate to tear Yoko down. People credited John for all of Yokos’ success despite Yokos’ talent. When anything bad happened to John Lennon– from The Beatles breaking up to his death– Yoko was blamed. Sadly, the Yoko Effect is only a small part of the deep rooted sexism in the music and art industries.
Actor, Medical Assistant, Marriage and Family Therapist, Art Psychotherapist, and bass player, Jennifer Chiba had a similar experience as a musically successful woman dating a musically successful man, Elliott Smith. The people blamed and demonetized Chiba. Chiba says, “I was the scapegoat, the easy target. Nobody wants to blame a beautiful, intelligent, talented guy like Elliott for his own problems. So let’s blame this girl that he likes.” When talking about people pointing fingers at her for the death of her own boyfriend. Multiple of the women mentioned are still despised to this day and it’s dystopian how much sexism is in our society. All women in this article have gone on to create unique and outstanding music of their own, but still have been sadly affected by the Yoko effect and sexism to this day.
