Big Day Out Bernard Zuel If you lean this way some, stand on your toes and squint a bit, you can see a woman on the Big Day Out line-up. Over there, behind the caterer - which is nice. Oh come on, don't whine. There's a woman in Arcade Fire and The Lumineers and Snoop Dogg will almost certainly have a booty-shaking dancer or two with him. What else do you want? More women? Jeez Louise, we're not Lilith bloody Fair. Yeah, it's a bit of a giggle but, actually, not that funny. Not after successive Triple J Hottest 100s, standard commercial rock radio playlists, most music awards and pretty much every other festival line-up around. Main stage: Fans stormed the mosh pit when Metallica played the Big Day Out in 2004. It is fair to say that mainstream media and Canberra politics are not the only areas where women are tolerated rather than celebrated, allowed in but not allowed to lead, nominal rather than normal. Should we expect more from the Big Day Out? I'm not sure, really. Not because there isn't a good argument for more women everywhere in contemporary music (it's bizarre that we even have to think of good arguments for that) but because it's probably true that the BDO has a set of circumstances that make change hard, if not impossible. And it's not just when it comes to women, as this year's line-up shows. For a start there is, and has always been, an aggressively masculine aspect to the main stage audience, particularly during the day. Yes, plenty of women attend, and plenty of them are in and around the mosh pit, and plenty of them are as up for assertive music as any bloke. That's not the point. A very blokey world: The upcoming festival's headliners Pearl Jam. The sun is beating down, the bodies are pressing, subtlety is hard to convey and it's predominantly rock or hard-edged electronic rock, though hip hop, which once would have been derided, is now a fixture. Even with hip hop, though, it's the party fare, the shouty, beer-drinking, hands in the air crews that appear. It's a very blokey world. Still, it's not as if women don't play those styles, so even if that's what you want, where are the women? Is their absence down to the audience's demands or the promoter's assumption of those demands? Let's look a little wider and recognise that the BDO is now an institution with institutionalised thinking, within and without. Snoop Dogg. Photo: Joseph Feil We know it will be on every summer, and we know roughly the kind of experience we are going to have. For those who have been before and those new to the experience - who have watched siblings, older friends and parents tread that path - we commit to going because it's what we do in January, so the line-up is almost a secondary consideration. Like all institutions, the BDO does things in particular ways because that's the way they've always been done. It's why it is still one of the best-run and satisfying festivals. When you've been around for 20 years, you aren't as nimble, or as eager to be as nimble, as the newer festivals that might be plugged into the zeitgeist but have fewer traditions, overheads or deep-seated knowledge. Tradition, longevity, solidity - all good qualities in their own way. The corollary is that those very qualities are what leads you to a headliner quartet that includes one group which formed in the '80s (Blur); two artists who broke through in the early '90s (Pearl Jam and Snoop Dogg) and the "youngsters" who began a decade ago (Arcade Fire). Blur. It's old man's rock. But, hey, they're not alone are they? Not with the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen as recent Glastonbury headliners and Blondie closing out Homebake last year. Locked into living up to several decades of its own history and anxious to mark itself out from upstarts, the BDO aims for heavy hitters. But you can't deny it's a case of superstars not rising stars, the sound of all our yesterdays, not the sound of our todays. Of course, there are plenty of younger acts on the bill, several of them non-rock. You will probably find a woman or two somewhere in there eventually. And, heavens, maybe even a significant Australian act to add to Tame Impala and Flume and the exciting local artists appearing on the secondary stages. Nonetheless, the image of the Big Day Out in 2013 is in keeping with its headliners: steadfast, familiar, guaranteed to deliver and about as contemporary, and feminine, as a Kevin Rudd colloquialism. That's the world we live in. Those are the institutions we have.