May 15, 2025, 12:50 pm | Read time: 5 minutes
It’s the world’s largest music competition: the Eurovision Song Contest. Many view the TV event as a colorful spectacle filled with quirky artists, a touch of folklore, and sexy performances. What often goes unnoticed is that the competition offers female-presenting artists the opportunity to showcase themselves independently to the public. Our STYLEBOOK author embarks on a journey in Basel, where the ESC final will take place in 2025, to explore this further.
One hundred eighty million–that’s how many viewers the Eurovision Song Contest captivates annually. It’s an enormous stage where, since its first edition in 1956, hundreds of artists have been able to convey their messages. Over time, the event has increasingly become a safe space for the queer community and other minorities. It also frequently showcases feminist themes. Pop culture generally plays a central role in constructing gender images, and the ESC in Basel 2025 is no exception, as Dr. Monika Schoop, a professor of Popular Music Studies at Leuphana University Lüneburg, explains. “As a widely watched media event, it literally offers a stage where gender and sexuality can not only be portrayed but also renegotiated.”
Overview
ESC 2025 in Basel—More ‘Girlpower’ Than Ever?
In recent years, artists have repeatedly contributed with their performances to questioning normative ideas and making alternative identities visible. This includes last year’s winner from Switzerland, Nemo, the Israeli winner Netta (2018), and Conchita Wurst from Austria (2014).
“Especially through their media visibility, such musicians can serve as important role models. This can be empowering and identity-forming,” says Schoop. The ESC thus holds the potential for positive identification and societal impulses toward diversity. Although the participant field has always been predominantly male: This year, for example, 24 female artists face 34 male participants. Nevertheless, when it counts, women lead the way. Since the song contest was first held, then known as the Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson, more than half of the winners have been female. Among them are big names like Céline Dion, Vicky Leandros, and Loreen.
Equality Equals ESC?
But that alone doesn’t make an event a platform for feminism, let alone for female empowerment. This year, with Hazel Brugger, Sandra Studer, and Michelle Hunziker, three women are hosting the ESC 2025 in Basel—without a male counterpart. But is that already female empowerment?
Perhaps indirectly—because the term generally refers to anything that contributes to strengthening the self-determination, participation, independence, and equality of women in our society. By having three women host the event, female interests become more visible in an otherwise male-dominated environment like the music and television industry. But in the end, it’s the performances of the female artists on stage that remain memorable. And in terms of female empowerment, this year’s ESC in Switzerland offers quite a bit!
In a Sexy Leather Outfit Toward Greater Sexual Self-Determination
Finnish artist Erika Vikman presents perhaps the most striking contribution to female self-determination with “Ich komme.” In a skimpy leather outfit, she confidently strides across the stage before hovering above the audience on an oversized microphone stand. She sings in Finnish lines that translate to: “My gates are opening,” and flirts with the German “Ich komme,” which many associate with the cry of pleasure during orgasm.
On one hand, this is, of course, provocative and plays with sexual fantasies and male stereotypes. On the other hand, it is also an act of female empowerment. That women sing about sexual pleasure in front of a million-strong audience is still not a given in 2025.
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When a Pun Calls the Moralists to Action
It was similar to the entry from Miriana Conte of Malta. She originally wanted to perform the song “Kant,” which simply means ‘sing’ in her native language. The phonetic similarity to the English profanity “cunt” was likely intentional and could be seen as an act of feminist empowerment over societal moralists.
Additionally, as a plus-size woman, she does not conform to conventional beauty ideals and yet performs in a form-fitting outfit. After a complaint from the British BBC to the EBU, which organizes the competition, the song is now called “Serving.” The word “kant” was banned from the lyrics–and this year’s contest is poorer for a feminist message.
Not as Feminist as Thought?
Musicologist Monika Schoop would be cautious about seeing the ESC as inherently empowering. “The event also conveys a whole range of conservative role models and problematic beauty ideals that do not contribute to empowerment. And rather have the opposite effect.”
However, the girl band Tautumeitas, representing Latvia at the ESC in Basel 2025, sees the competition as an opportunity to pass on female knowledge. The band consists of four singers who follow a very special approach: Their songs continue the tradition of Latvian Dainas. These are short, four-line poems that have been passed down orally for hundreds of years—often by women.
“Eurovision offers us the unique opportunity to make female traditions visible and keep them alive,” the band members explain in a STYLEBOOK interview. For them, it is not a contradiction to also present themselves in sexy stage outfits. “Sometimes it just feels good to present ourselves in a sexy and body-conscious way, it makes us stronger, we feel good.” At the ESC, they wear tight, skin-colored bodysuits with glittering stones. For them, the stage outfits are like a second skin that allows them to present their song even more powerfully. “The female body is full of strength. We don’t do this for men,” says the singer.