Vixen's Janet Gardner on being objectified by '80s metal magazine: 'That was the last time I dressed like that.'

"There was definitely a double-standard. ... We couldn't be doing the same things the guys did and get away with it," says the singer of one of the few female bands to infiltrate '80s hair-metal scene.

In Penelope Spheeris’s notorious 1988 rockumentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, KISS’s Paul Stanley is interviewed while lounging in bed with a bevy of lingerie-clad groupies; W.A.S.P.’s Chris Holmes chugs a bottle of vodka in a swimming pool; Odin’s Randy O canoodles in a hot tub with bikini girls; Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry brag about spending millions of dollars on drugs; and Taime Downe, Faster Pussycat’s lead singer and the proprietor of popular Hollywood hangout the Cathouse, admits that women can gain entry to his nightclub faster if they wear “sleazy” outfits.

But when all-female metal band Vixen is interviewed in Decline II, they come across as much more sensible, with drummer Roxy Petrucci even joking that her motto is “sex, drums, and rock ‘n’ roll.” Three decades later, former Vixen frontwoman Janet Gardner — whose story is featured in a new three-part documentary, Paramount+’s I Wanna Rock: The ‘80s Metal Dream — tells Yahoo Entertainment that she and her bandmates never felt they had the freedom to wildly party and let it all hang out in the ‘80s like their male Sunset Strip peers.

“I think that people would've been like, ‘Oh, sloppy, drunk sluts — that’s not appealing!’ But with men, it's cool because they're ‘bad boys,’” gripes Gardner. “There was definitely a double-standard that we had to contend with, but that we were well-aware of. We knew we couldn't be doing the same things the guys did and get away with it.”

With all due respect, that is an easily debunked claim.

For the moment, though, consider the following:

In a 2017 essay for InStyle, Debbie Harry revealed that her natural color pulls red. “My own hair was strawberry blonde with a lot of red in it,” she wrote. “In the summer my highlights would really come out. I hung out with older girls at the municipal pool in Hawthorne, New Jersey, where I grew up. There was one girl in particular whose blonde hair I really liked. Her mother was a beautician, so I asked her about accelerating the highlight process.” The girl told her to mix two-thirds peroxide with one-third ammonia and comb it through her hair—basically, a homemade Sun-In.

“It worked,” Harry said. As an adult, she’d go increasingly platinum, favoring at-home box dyes and becoming ever more adept at achieving ultra-pale shades.

Even to this day, Harry mostly continues to bleach her hair at home. “I’ve always liked doing my color at home myself because I can walk around and do things,” she said. “I used to take a bath while I had the bleach on my head, and at the end I’d just submerge. It may not have been the best method, but it was expedient. I get very antsy in a salon chair.”

As a child, Debbie Harry used to daydream that her real mother was Marilyn Monroe.

Deborah Ann Harry was adopted at 3 months old by New Jersey gift shop owners Richard and Catherine Harry. She learned that she was adopted at age 4, and said it gave her a sense of freedom. “They explained it to me in a really nice way,” Harry told the Independent in 2014. “It made me feel quite special somehow. I sometimes attribute my, uh, adventurous nature to that ... I have an open mind about things. It didn’t present me with any borders.”

“Blondie” was the nickname truck drivers gave Debbie Harry when they saw her sashaying along the sidewalk.

“It was just from what people yelled at Debbie,” Blondie guitarist Chris Stein told Boston radio station WBUR of the band name’s origins in 2017. “Debbie came home one day with her hair dyed blonde and then told me within a week or so truck drivers were yelling, ‘Hey, Blondie!’ at her all the time.”

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