The Cover Uncovered: Hole’s ‘Live Through This’ and the patriarchal pressure to perform
“I want to be the girl with the most cake, I love him so much, it just turns to hate,” Courtney Love sings on ‘Doll Parts’, encapsulating a raw sense of emotion and despair that has captivated listeners for three decades. “One day you will ache like I ache,” she powerfully adds. Perfectly embodying the feeling of wanting to be chosen, of putting on a brave face, and facing the pressures of gendered performance, the song has become an anthem for many girls who have found solace in Love’s personal lyricism and uninhibited vocal delivery, often straining or snarling her words of discontent and revolt.
The song is taken from Live Through This, Hole’s defining project, released in 1994. Acting as the band’s second album, it proved them to be one of grunge’s most vital names, bringing a well-needed feminine perspective to an otherwise overwhelmingly masculine genre.
Live Through This saw Love and her bandmates explore womanhood through references to motherhood, societal expectations, and male-on-female violence. They were not afraid to unleash a blinding sense of rage through their instruments and unapologetic lyrics, with Love’s unmistakable voice acting as the perfect conduit for these themes to be delivered. She moves between sounding exposed, messy, vulnerable, delicate, demanding, and strong, representing the breadth of the feminine experience. Rarely had such a popular group so openly discussed the trials and tribulations of womanhood with such vivid, real, and often brutal and painful language.
Love refers to suicide, sexual assault and media scrutiny, reflecting on her highly publicised life as one of alternative rock’s most controversial icons. Her struggles with drug abuse, the legal battle to assume the custody of her daughter, her relationship with Kurt Cobain and her outspoken nature had all been routinely torn apart and analysed by others. This bubbling rage and despair exploded across Live Through Live.
To convey the album’s themes of feminine rage and the patriarchal pressure to appear and act a certain way, Hole sought the help of the photographer Ellen von Unwerth. The result is a Carrie-inspired image of a pageant girl clasping a bouquet of flowers and wearing a tiara while mascara runs down her face. The model, Leilani Bishop, is smiling wide, hiding the pain and extensive effort that went into winning the competition.
Talking to Another Magazine, von Unwerth stated that she “had done several shoots” with Bishop leading up to Live Through This, and she “really loved her cool rock and roll attitude.” The ecstatic look on her face works perfectly to convey a sense of mania, reflecting these unrealistic and demanding expectations of beauty and femininity placed on women that Love alludes to throughout Live Through This.
The image fits with the tracklisting well, containing songs such as ‘Miss World’ and ‘Doll Parts’, which invoke images of feminine performance. Moreover, the ‘Hole’ logo bears a resemblance to the Barbie logo, another allusion to the album’s subversion of the stereotypes placed on women. You only have to listen to the first track, ‘Violet’, to know that Live Through This is angry, tender, raw, violent, and every other synonym that women aren’t typically supposed to be.
There are some albums that boast artwork that couldn’t be more suited to the music inside, and Live Through This is a perfect example.
