Author and editor Florence Hull Winterburn, when writing about color-block dressing, said that the women who wear such abominations seem to declare, “Here I am; you are obliged to see me, for I am a blot on the landscape, an object that defies the canons of true art.”

Winterburn’s statement seems applicable in many instances, one of which is the recent furor over the outfits of female classical musicians. In a recent piece for the Guardian, Oxford University junior research fellow Leah Broad decries the supposed injustice done to female soloists when music critics disparage their wardrobe choices for a performance. After giving readers examples of various female performers and their concert attire styles, Broad explains that “discussing clothing is something of a taboo in classical music,” and focuses on one particularly controversial performer, Yuja Wang. Critics from Norman Lebrecht to Mark Swed have praised the brilliance of Wang’s playing while simultaneously bemoaning her nearly nonexistent apparel and its distracting nature, criticisms with which Broad takes serious issue. Broad spends her time railing against 19th-century standards of concert dress, telling readers to respect women’s performance dress choices as artistic decisions, and pushing the idea that social media makes these clothing choices even more important.

There are many disappointed and conflicting elements in this piece, but I’ll just address a few:

  1. Broad writes, “The problem isn’t that critics are talking about Wang’s clothes. It’s that by viewing everything she wears through a sexualised lens, they’re presenting her as a sexual object first and an artist second. There is no room in this worldview for women’s clothes to be both an artistic and personal choice.” Let’s be clear: Critics are not the ones presenting Wang “through a sexualised lens.” Wang, a 35-year-old Chinese piano phenom, has taken the classical scene by storm with her dramatic musical style and her highly revealing outfits. If someone can explain how wearing a red micro-dress allows her to better express a Tchaikovsky piece, I’ll listen. But Broad does little to explain why plunging necklines, backless dresses, and thigh-high skirts shouldn’t necessarily be viewed through a sexual lens. Performers dress to evoke a certain reaction in viewers, and there is substantial power in dressing provocatively, whether or not women realize or intend it. It seems critics are simply working with what Wang gives them.
  2. “Nineteenth-century ideas about what classical music is, who it is by, for and about have all been upended. So, too, must ideas about how it looks,” Broad says. Whatever happened to the transcendency of music? In the Hallmark movie Beyond the Blackboard, a student confronts her teacher about why the class is listening to Beethoven and Prokofiev. The teacher says that once they hear it, they’ll possess it forever. Her students? Homeless children. Broad’s assumption is demeaning to those she supposes “don’t feel welcome in a concert hall.” What does this mean? That the audience is interested only when female performers dress provocatively? Classical music is a powerful medium, full of beauty that has the ability to move listeners. Broad thinks that ideas of “how [music] looks” should be “upended,” but this is a very narrow view of topic and serves only to make us focus on the performer, not the performance. Those who make their livelihood bringing this music to others should appreciate its beauty and make the sharing of it the reason why everyone is welcome in a concert hall.
  3. “Musicians are more than the music they create,” Broad writes. It’s not clear that this is the case, and it’s probably fairer to say that music is part of who performers are. Broad also quotes a London Symphony Orchestra member as having said that social media has made classical music “so much more visual.” True, but it might also be fair to say that music quality across all genres has plunged because of this turn to visual media. The hours of care, craft, and rehearsal that musicians put into their repertoire might now be subservient to how it all “looks.” Musicians can rely on gimmicks and flashy sets to cover up mediocre playing, and this isn’t something to celebrate.
  4. Broad tells us how the London Symphony Orchestra recently dropped its dress code “to celebrate the individuality of the orchestra’s players and build an inclusive space for musicians whose ‘way of expressing themselves physically doesn’t fit with that classical music stereotype.’” There’s a reason why, for decades (and probably much longer than that), orchestras and choirs all over the world have required a dress code. This is because — surprise! — performances are about the music, and the performer’s personality should be, in a sense, lost in that moment to serve the higher purpose of the music being created.

Many in our age are so desperate to be individual, and in particular to stand out with regard to our choice of clothing, that we’ve lost our sense of social awareness. No longer are we expected to dress a certain way for different occasions. Jeans and a sports jersey for church? Totally normal. Short skirt and spaghetti-strap top for grandma’s funeral? Absolutely fine. Beautiful clothes can be a joy, and we can wear them with delight and pride, but more than that, what we wear speaks to how we think about ourselves and how we want others to treat us. If female soloists want to be treated as the serious musicians that they are, they should dress in a way that best presents the beauty of the music to their audience rather than keeping the focus on themselves.