Caroline Miner Smith, or more commonly known as her stage name, Siiickbrain has an incredibly bold identity as a musician and individual. Her recent single “HELLSLIDE” is a brutal examination of her mental health story and struggles and reveals more about her gender identity than it appears to at the surface level.
First off, the lyrics of HELLSIDE walk a tightrope between delicacy and brutality.
“Angel lives on angel dust, take the love and turn to lust, I’ll fill your double cup with dreams and watch you cough them up. Every night I’m dying for it, kisses from the devil on my shoulder”
“Play both sides, don’t know why. Yeah, I got a good side, it just like to go run and hide”
“Snow so cold but warms me up, how can love make me go numb? I tried to feel your touch, the butterflies, I think gave up. Play with fire, singe their wings, I think they’re dying, slowly they start falling, can’t believe I’m burning for you, bleeding got a love bite.”
The lyrics of the song are a constant battle between Caroline’s “inner angel” and “inner demon”, and therefore bounce aggressively between delicate, and what the Bem Sex Role would therefore identify as “feminine” descriptions, and aggressive (“masculine”) descriptions. The associations of these two traits/descriptors- delicate and angelic versus aggressive and hellish- are very insightful as it relates to gender identity, especially a musician such as Siiickbrain. Caroline is essentially describing two sides of herself and her identity: she has a beautiful, angelic, and gentle part to herself as the lyrics referring to angels, dreams, love, and butterflies suggest. She also has a darker side that accompanies these feminine defined traits: lust, death, the devil, fire, blood, and in particular, “singe[ing the butterflies] wings”. These dark and striking contrasts are arguably unexpected from a female and therefore surprising. However, taking a look at Caroline’s physical appearance, one can see that these contrasting lyrics are parallel with her physical representation of herself.
To start off, one of Caroline’s most defining features is her hair- or lack of. She keeps her head shaved, to at most a buzzcut. This feature is certainly not usually associated with femininity, but Caroline is overall still a very feminine individual. In her Instagram bio, she reveals that she is signed to a modeling industry, and many of her photographs on her Instagram highlight her femininity in very sexual ways. She models in a lot of clothing that is very revealing of her feminine figure such as body suits, lingerie, bikinis, corsets, fishnets, and latex leather body suits. She also expresses an intense interest in makeup, as she can be seen in all of her photos wearing very bold looks ranging from long lashes and thick, sharp eyeliner, to heavy eyeshadow and contour.
Overall, Siiickbrain is a very feminine alternative-rock musician in some very distinct and untraditional ways. Caroline has taken some of the most heavily identifiable feminine traits and defied them while still accomplishing a feminine identity. She is clearly very confident in her identity based off of her bold and fierce look, as well as her lyrical expression, and I think it is because of these traits that she has done so well in her music career and found a name for herself within the world of alternative-rock.
Shared by: Em von der Ruhr
Image Credit: https://www.instagram.com/siiickbrain/