Though I was raised on rock and roll, I was never a fan of the glam
rockers of KISS. But in recent years I have come to admire the band’s
driving force, former tongue-wagging bass player Gene Simmons, now an
entrepreneur who has amassed a $300 million fortune through his music, a
merchandising empire, reality TV shows, and other ventures. I also appreciate
his blunt-spoken style (even when I don’t agree with him), though it gets him
in hot water from time to time – as it did again recently.
Simmons was on FOX the other day promoting his new book, Me,
Inc.: Build an Army of One, Unleash Your Inner Rock God, Win in Life and
Business, which is divided
into two sections: Me, about Simmons’ own background and path to success, and You,
advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. During the FOX segment he offered some
direct, no-nonsense business advice to young women. He urged them not to try to
juggle family and career at once, but to focus on career first, and then – if
they want children – to have them from a position of financial security. He
noted that women, unlike men, have the option of taking care of themselves or
being taken care of by a man, which he discouraged. The money quote: “Women,
stop depending on men. It’s as simple as that. Imagine there are no men in
life.”
This drew fire on the internet, where kneejerk outrage lies in
wait for any excuse to pounce. Salon
called Simmons’ comments “sexist.” Uproxx’s
headline was “Gene Simmons Opens His Mouth Again to Give Women Some Tone-Deaf
Career Advice.” Over at Jezebel, where profanity and bile substitute for
thought, they spewed
contempt at Simmons, deriding him as “the original Miley Cyrus” (for the
tongue thing) and as an “old fart” (because how could anyone over 25 have
anything worthwhile to say?). Sprinkled throughout the criticism was a lot of
gratuitous hair-shaming of the sort usually reserved for Donald Trump.
And yet his advice – women, give up
trying to have it all; put career first and become financially independent – is
no different from Sheryl Sandberg’s business bestseller Lean In, a favorite of proud
feminists. The only apparent reason some women found Simmons’ feminist advice offensive
is that a man said it, even though those same women are always campaigning for
men to call themselves feminists (hence slogans like #AllMenCan, “This is what
a feminist looks like,” “I need feminism because…”). Perhaps his comments would
have gone over better if he had said them while posing
backlit by a giant neon “FEMINIST” sign.
It may not help that Simmons has unabashedly expressed some conservative – and thus uncool – political
positions: he’s pro-America, pro-Israel, pro-capitalism, and pro-Romney in the
last election (although he had previously voted for Obama, a decision he
regrets). This does not earn him favorable press from outlets like Jezebel or
Salon.
If the haters had bothered to look
beyond his provocative soundbite and his ever-present dark shades to read his
new book, they would have discovered that that old fart is a fascinating
success story. He grew up dirt poor in Israel, the son of Hungarian Holocaust
survivors. His father, the sole wage-earner, walked out on the family while
Gene was still a boy, and his mother had to take up the slack; so Gene learned
the hard way that women should be aware that men cannot, or at least should
not, be depended upon.
When he came to America at the age
of eight, it was the first time he had seen toilet paper, or a TV set, or
supermarkets like “cities of food, their aisles like streets” of abundance. He
took advantage of the land of opportunity to pursue and achieve the American
dream in spades.
One chapter of the book is devoted
to the special challenges that female entrepreneurs face in the male-dominated
business arena. He doesn’t sugarcoat the obstacles, but he does encourage women
to push beyond the sexism and traditional stereotypes to find success. It is a
message that feminists would ordinarily embrace if it hadn’t come from a rock
star who is unapologetic about his thousands of sexual conquests (because men
who sleep around can be called pigs, but criticizing women who do the same is
slut-shaming).
Simmons is an outspoken dude who
knows that controversy sells, and he doesn’t care if anyone gets their knickers
in a twist over his old-fashioned, pragmatic views. His female critics would be
better off untwisting those knickers and picking up his book.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 11/3/14)
