Beyoncé’s voice of discontent resonates strongly, as does her once-considered “too country” accent, on Cowboy Carter. This, her eighth studio solo album, is a brilliant and genre-bending album rooted in country music that transcends the genre through its audacious, boundary-pushing and aggressive remixes and interpolations that have honored the hybrid space that is Southern culture.
Tag: Miley Cyrus
From ‘Fast Cars’ to Self-Gifted ‘Flowers’: What Pop Music Reveals about the Status of Women
The narrator of “Fast Car,” who finally finds the strength at song’s end to tell her no-count trifling lover to “take your fast car and keep on driving,” is an earlier version of Sza’s narrator on the heartbreak and revenge-fantasy songs that comprise her Grammy-nominated album SOS—a worthy project that many had hoped would break the 25-year-drought of a Black woman winning the Album of the Year Grammy, since Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
Still, we have come a long way from passively waiting for someone else’s “fast car” to move us out of poverty—and failing to doing so—while the latest songs imagine us killing our exes or shimmering like diamonds once we move on. We have arrived at that moment in which we are more than eager to celebrate the women who can drive in their own fast cars—accrued debts and generational poverty be damned.
2023’s Top Feminist Moments in Pop Culture
In a year when women seemed to dominate both culturally and economically, it was not hard to find many feminist moments in pop culture that defined 2023.
Here are our top 10 favorites—including Rihanna’s historic Super Bowl performance; breakthroughs for women in TV, film and music; iconic moments in women’s leadership, and more.
The Future for the Angsty Teenage Girl Looks Bright
Our support for Olivia Rodrigo and others feels like an ode to our younger selves; a wish that we could’ve unapologetically embraced our own teen angst. After all, we ultimately had the power to be that brave all along.
It’s refreshing we can now accept our own agonies without fear of being negatively perceived by men who look down on teen girl culture, other women, or even ourselves when we too often internalize misogyny.
10 Holiday Songs—for and by Feminists
These songs span a variety of decades, genres, and tempos, so no matter what your music preferences are, one of these feminist musicians has a holiday song for you.
Tools of the Patriarchy: The Weaponization of Hair
From abortion to weight loss, the patriarchal tradition of policing women’s bodies is a strong and long lasting one. Telling women what they must or must not do with their hair—whether that be the color, texture, quantity or location of it—is just another way women’s agency over their own bodies is controlled.
Pussypedia Is Changing the Way We Talk About Vaginas
Pussypedia is a bilingual, gender and ability inclusive, illustrated encyclopedia of the vagina—and it recently won a Webby for People’s Voice Award for Education.
From Y2K to Today: a Timeline of Celebrity Feminism Over The Last Two Decades
Given recent activism on the part of celebrity women—from the #MeToo movement to the Time’s Up Campaign—it’s easy to forget there was a time not that long ago when the link between fame and feminism was viewed with suspicion and even incredulity. Here, we chart the evolution—and increasing impact—of celebrity feminism over this millennium.
When It Comes to Body Hair, the Personal is (Still) Political
Failing to wear a bra is widely considered a stunt “designed” to attract men’s sexual attentions—while failing to shave may be considered purposefully off-putting and rebelliously, aggressively feminist. But unless one considers rebellious feminism a hallmark of the effort to attract male attention (hint: it’s not), these juxtaposed interpretations don’t make any sense at all.
Cultural Appropriation Suits Up for Halloween
Tis’ the month that culminates with witches, mystical creatures, fictional characters, and, well, a little bit of cultural appropriation. Turn on your television, and you’ll hear Michael Jackson’s Thriller courtesy […]