In her 2021 book A Women’s History of the Beatles, senior lecturer in sociology and “youth culture expert” at Griffith University in Southeast Queensland, Australia, Dr. Christine Feldman-Barrett delves into Beatles history from a new angle: the experiences of women. Rather than focusing on the Fab Four themselves, Barrett looks primarily at fan experiences, starting with the women who knew the Beatles when they got their start playing in dive bars and music clubs in the Merseyside music scene in Liverpool, and wrapping it up today with women like herself who have made Beatle-fandom into an academic career.
Throughout this book, Barrett confronts the sexism faced by fans of the Beatles, from “Beatlemania”—the hip, new female hysteria of the mid ‘60s?—to the later period when the Beatles started to be viewed as a “serious” band and male fans started to edge the “fangirls” out of the fandom spaces they created and make them feel unwelcome in the new male-dominated ones. She also talks at length about the sexism faced by the Beatles’ partners, like Maureen Starkey, who was physically attacked and stalked, and eventually forced to become a recluse in order to survive being “Ringo’s girl,” and Yoko Ono, who has for decades been demonized for breaking up the Beatles, something she neither did nor had any reason to do as she didn't know anything about the Beatles prior to meeting John Lennon because she was too old to have been a participant in Beatlemania. (Yoko was and is, in fact, a victim of a rather disturbing and unique cocktail of sexism and racism at the hands of both male and female Beatles fans which seems to have come about as a result of both the timing of her arrival in Lennon's life and the fact that Lennon was one of the two more prominent members of the band. Notably, George Harrison's second wife, Olivia Arias-Harrison, who is Mexican-American and arrived on the scene in the late '70s, has never faced the wrath of Beatles fans as Yoko has.)
At the same time, Barrett celebrates the empowerment female fans of the Beatles felt compared to fans of other popular British Invasion bands of the ‘60s. While the Rolling Stones were writing about “stupid girls” and girls who Mick Jagger could hold “under [his] thumb,” and The Who seemed to ignore the very existence of girls when it wasn’t funny (Pete Townshend has said before that The Who have always been more of a “blokes’ band” ...I wonder why, Pete?), the Beatles sang songs that fans viewed as being “pro-girl.” This, in combination with the fact that the Beatles themselves often responded personally to fan queries and praise sent in to the Beatles Monthly Book, a fan magazine published from 1962 to 1970, made young women who listened to the Beatles feel that they were appreciated, welcome, and safer with the Beatles than their rougher counterparts. In turn, this also led female fans to form large and often inclusive fan clubs across the globe, in which a great many women found friends they’re still in touch with today.
Feldman’s book has been an invaluable source for me in my ongoing research into the life and times of Maureen Starkey, Ringo Starr’s first wife, who bridged the gap between fan and partner, and whose relationship with Starr spanned from the Beatles’ early days in Liverpool to several years after the band’s dissolution in 1975. Her life provides a fascinating case study into both working class Northern English women in the mid-20th century and, even more so, the impact of fame on the friends and family of celebrities.
This book is available to read online as an EBSCO eBook through SJR State's Library (linked here).
Happy Women's History Month!