When I started researching the topic for this week, I was thinking about language from the very first Mid-Riff episode with Rachel Blumberg, who talked about going into music retail stores wearing an armor. I think about this process a lot: every time I go into a new music store (or, lets be real- any other cis-male dominated space).
For music retailers or folks who maybe don’t have to put on armor when entering music stores, here’s what the process looks like for me: I usually look up the store online and make decisions about how high my defensiveness might need to be and what types of tactics I might need to use when entering the space so as not to invoke discrimination, mansplaining, or in general, to encourage them to treat me like a human musician in the world who has an understanding of my own wants, needs, musical desires. Oh, and maybe even my own money.
Then, on my way to the store, I might think about the ways I would respond if an employee or customers engaged in one of the many tropes common to women in music stores.
Traditionally, the way I had approached this would be to try to sit down at an amp, plug in, and play something as quickly as possible when going into a store. Not that I’m Steve Vai or something (nor do I think Steve Vai should be the measure of a good guitarist), but at least I wouldn’t be addressed as someone’s girlfriend.
Another technique I’ve used is to, soon upon arrival, ask about something vintage or obscure on the wall or in the pedal display case as a way of signaling that I know what I’m talking about. Sometimes I am actually interested in the item… and sometimes I’m not.
Other times, when a salesperson asks me if I’m looking for anything, I’ll just say, “I’m looking around,” and try to avoid them and anyone else in the store for as long as possible.
As I’ve gotten older, a few things have changed:
1) I feel more confident in my knowledge, especially in larger chain stores;
2) I care less what people think and feel less of a need to prove myself;
3) I am more likely to be ignored and treated like someone’s mom and less likely to have someone actively try to flirt with me.
That’s my experience. I still go into most of those establishments with my hackles up, just waiting for someone to say something awful because it’s happened to me so many times before, even as someone who has worked in and loves music stores. I also realize that my experience and response is specific because I *have* been playing a long time and because I am a white cisgender woman.
WHY THE HACKLES?
I’ve also been thinking about this experience a lot because SO, SO many of my guests have mentioned that they, too have their hackles up going into these spaces, and many of them have stated that they simply don’t go into those spaces anymore. They buy things from their friends or they buy things online exclusively. Some of them just stick with the same gear forever because they don’t want to have to deal with the process of buying something new. This is an issue for them, but also for music retailers.
Discrimination and sexual harassment experienced by cis women, trans, and non-binary musicians in music retail stores, as outlined in my Gender and Music Gear Experiences Report, are clearly common, but those experiences extend to street harassment by other customers in a variety of retail environments, and the racial discrimination, such as “shopping while black.”
I began thinking about this process, or what I’m calling “Anticipatory Armor” and how it impacts someone’s connection to music, music gear, creativity, and community— in addition to physical and emotional well-being.
IMPACT OF ANTICIPATORY ARMOR
Take a moment to relax your shoulders. If you are like me, they might consistently be located somewhere near your ears, even if you don’t notice it— especially when you are getting ready to enter a store or other space where you have experienced discrimination in the past. Anticipatory armor can do that.
What does it mean for someone’s general well-being to be in a state of consistent state of hyper-vigilance? Even those who do not have diagnosable post-traumatic stress disorder might experience this, though at lower levels. Research shows that simply anticipating discrimination can lead to psychological and cardiovascular stress and experiencing this regularly is likely part of the cause of racial and ethnic, and other health disparities in the US. Some researchers have even identified what they term racial battle fatigue in reference to the exhaustion that Black people feel as a result of dealing with near-constant racism and discrimination.
Beyond that, music is powerful, and can provide a variety of benefits to overall health and well-being, can increase community-building, increase communication skills, and decrease anxiety, among many other advantages. If anticipatory armor creates stress to such a degree that someone can’t access the music gear they want or need to create, or even worse, disengages from music-making altogether, they lose out on all of those potential benefits.
In what ways might someone become disconnected from the tools of their trade and the potential new sound options (and fun, self-expression, and anxiety reduction!) they provide, if they feel such real anxiety about going into those spaces in the first place?
HOW DOES ANTICIPATORY ARMOR WORK?
Preparing for discrimination, or putting on one’s “armor” is protective in that it allows someone to prepare for any negative interactions that might occur.
There are two main research areas that look at behaviors and experiences related to anticipatory armor: 1) research on consumer behavior, and 2) research on discrimination and coping. If you are at all familiar with academic research, it won’t be too surprising that these two areas don’t always talk to each other or overlap, so I’m going to take a minute to cover both.
Anticipatory armor in consumer research.
I’m going to start by talking about research on consumer behavior. Kurt Lewin, seen as the father of social psychology, my field of research, identified the theory of approach-avoidance conflict way back in 1935. An approach-avoidance conflict is a scenario in which a decision or goal has both positive and negative consequences at the same time, which need to be weighted in the process of pursuing it. Makes sense, right? So, when someone really wants to try out and potentially purchase a new guitar, the benefits of the new guitar lead to “approach” in the situation, while the potentially negative interactions in the store lead to “avoidance.”
As you might imagine, this has been applied to approximately one million scenarios over the years, but since it’s our focus here, let’s stick to its application in retail.
Researchers have extended this approach-avoidance conflict and fleshed it out a bit in a number of ways. A common, and potentially useful, framing for this is the Mehrabian–Russell model developed by environmental psychologists Mehrabian and Russell (shocking, I know) in 1974. The model essentially says the emotions determine how we behave in response to our environment. The emotions here, usually referred to as the PAD model, stand for pleasure, arousal (which can show up as excitement, frenzy, or jittery), and dominance (or personal control in the environment).
So, you can tie each of those emotions to either approach or avoidance. If an environment is pleasant, I will choose to approach it. If it is unpleasant, I choose to avoid it.
This all tracks and approach behavior was broken down by Mehrabian and Russell into the following behaviors:
Desire to physically stay in the environment
Desire/willingness to look around and explore the environment
Desire/willingness to communicate with others in the environment
Enhancement of performance and satisfaction with task performances
The problem with much of this more consumer-based research is that it generally looks at the impact of the temperature or layout of the store or how busy it is. But it doesn’t specifically address the very real experiences of customers and potential customers based on their identities and related discrimination.
Also, much of this research looks at the experiences in a particular store without looking at the cumulative effects of discrimination in similar environments. How much might the impact of “leftover” discrimination have from a previous bad experience in a guitar shop transfer to the next store they want to visit?
Anticipatory armor in research on discrimination and coping.
Even much of the research on discrimination is related to coping with discrimination without necessarily focusing on preparatory actions for the future. But there is some research relevant to this conversation, so let’s get into it.
The closest similar phenomenon I could find in the research was that of armored coping. Researchers Robinson-Wood, et al. (2015), interviewed Black women about their experiences with microaggressions and one theme identified was that of armored coping, where individuals felt a need to be hyper-aware of interactions in order to be able to address microaggressions when they arose.
Coping research broadly breaks responses to harm into proactive coping and passive or reactive coping. Proactive coping generally involves greater agency, such as calling a store’s manager after experiencing negative treatment, whereas passive coping might look like trying not to think about a particularly threatening situation.
While there are a variety of reasons to engage in passive coping, research tends to find that passive coping leads to poorer emotional outcomes than proactive coping, likely due to the lack of agency one has in the situation.
Researchers DeLapp and Williams (2019) applied a common model for proactive coping specifically to the anticipation of racist interactions among Black participants.
The model outlines the following steps that folks undergo when they anticipate discrimination:
1) Resource Accumulation,
2) Attention Recognition,
3) Initial Appraisal,
4) Preliminary Coping Efforts, and
5) Elicit Feedback and Reappraise.
What does this mean and what does it look like in the case of music retail?
Resource accumulation is the process of gaining information or support needed to manage a particular encounter. So, in my experience, this meant researching the store in advance. It’s important to note that individuals must have the time and energy available to engage in resource accumulation in the first place. If someone is too busy or stressed or something happens very quickly, they might not be able to access the resources needed to prepare.
Attention recognition is the physical experience of hackles— when someone is vigilant or sensitive to their environment to pick up on potential threats. I get these hackles when I go to a store’s website or social media and see exclusively white men.
Initial appraisal is when an individual tries to identify the meaning of the threat. In my case, this is when I note that that the lack of representation in their marketing might mean that the particular store might be a place where I’ll have a negative experience as a result of my gender.
Preliminary coping is the preparation someone engages in to manage the potential threat. In my case, that might mean mentally preparing for my response to the tropes previously identified if I encounter them in the store or playing guitar to “prove myself” once I arrive. Other examples of preliminary coping could be altering one’s appearance or making oneself likable through language used, or trying to interact with employees as little as possible.
Once an individual has more interactions with the threat or stressor, eliciting feedback and reappraisal is used to adjust one’s coping given additional information. In my case, could mean that I might go into a store and play the guitar, but realize that it wasn’t enough to keep someone from mansplaining, so I start talking about germanium vs. silicone diodes to further display my knowledge, hoping he’ll finally believe I know what I’m talking about. Or I just walk away and ignore him realizing he’s not going to stop no matter what I say.
So, as you can see, this model of proactive coping pretty squarely maps onto my experience in music stores, and maybe yours as well.
As we’re closing out on this discussion of coping, I want to note that people need to do what they feel comfortable with in the moment. As mentioned already, if someone is stressed or overloaded, they might not feel capable of responding proactively. And if they don’t feel like their behavior will have an impact, they might not want to respond at all.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR ANTICIPATORY ARMOR?
If you take anything away from this article, it should be this: the fact that anticipatory armor exists is a major problem. It has a major impact on people’s lives, and if you are a retailer, it probably has an impact on your bottom line, as well.
I just spend probably 10 hours of my life researching and writing about this topic. All of the tactics I mentioned at the beginning of this article/podcast shouldn’t be necessary. They take time and energy away from my life. Of course, this isn’t just about me. What about the collective amount of stress and harm caused to all of the musicians who have to experience anticipatory armor on a regular basis and the amount of time and energy lost, simply because a store couldn’t be bothered to think about it?
What about the collective amount of stress and harm caused to all of the musicians who have to experience anticipatory armor on a regular basis and the amount of time and energy lost, simply because a store couldn’t be bothered to think about it?
You wouldn’t want to contribute to that, would you? (No, I know you wouldn’t!)
WHAT CAN STORES DO TO PREVENT ANTICIPATORY ARMOR?
I’ve written and spoken a ton about ways retailers can create better spaces. I recently ran an online course specifically about this topic, as well… but I’ll outline it again here because it’s so important.
Want to decrease folks’ need for anticipatory armor in your space? Start here:
1. Diversify representation on your website and social media.
This signals to potential customers that even if your current employee-base is predominantly cisgender, heterosexual, white men, you are at least aware that representation is an issue.
2. Diversify your hiring.
There are myriad ways to do this from your outreach and recruitment, job descriptions, hiring process, the benefits you provide, and more. I’ve written plenty about this as well, but if you have questions, please reach out.
3. Be clear about your values.
Are you actively trying to create a more welcoming and inclusive environment in your store? Say it— on your website, social media, in signage in your store, and everywhere you go.
4. Train your employees.
The last thing you want is for someone to have lowered their hackles (as a customer or potential employee), only to have all of their negative experiences reinforced by bad interactions with your employees (or in the case of new employees, other coworkers). Give them the information they need to succeed in creating an environment that is hackle-free!
5. Be a positive role model.
Negative experiences are so normal in retail spaces that the bad stores can create a reputation for the good stores. If you are positive and active in creating a better space, you can help challenge this normalization and create a better music industry.
Anticipatory armor is a daily part of life for musicians from marginalized groups, especially in music retail environments. As a retailer, the last thing you want is for someone to have a sense of dread at the idea of entering your store. Understanding this experience and doing what you can to prevent it is crucial in the competitive retail environment. Focusing on the positive environment and community that brick-and-mortar retail stores can provide will set your store above. It can help give people back their time and energy to create new things and have more joy in the world. I know that most retailers want a better world, so I hope that if that’s you, you’ll take the time and effort needed to make that change.