Women in Music

The Problem With Sabrina Carpenter’s Album Cover Is Not Sex—It’s Violence 

The real discomfort with Carpenter’s controversial cover isn’t about sexual provocation. It’s about normalizing images of violence against women.

Policing women’s sexual choices should never be the goal of this discourse. Our personal sex lives are rich with context, and I hope that most people who enthusiastically interact with violent sexual acts, such as choking or hair-pulling, have felt comfortable enough with their partner to talk them through and have a truly consensual experience.

But we can monitor the way we speak about sex—especially expressions that lack that personal context, like album covers—and our tendencies as feminists to defend them in any light, no matter how troubling, for fear of restricting women as opposed to liberating them. 

We do not need to be OK with violence. Each of us has the personal autonomy to consider it, be conscious of it, oppose it, or even play with it. But when we look at an image of a woman having her hair pulled like the leash of a dog, it is only human—and important—that we feel uncomfortable.

Keeping Score: Trump Administration Targets Immigrants and Emergency Abortion Care; Newsom Pushes Back

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—California Governor Gavin Newsom stands up to President Trump over ICE raids: “California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next.”
—Trump threatens EMTALA.
—Israeli forces detained Greta Thunberg and 11 other activists while trying to deliver aid to Gaza.
—New research found unintended pregnancies correlate with gender inequality.
—Taylor Swift finally owns her entire music catalog.

… and more.

Sean Combs’ Defense Leans on Familiar Tropes About Women. Will the Jury Believe His Accusers?

Casandra Elizabeth Ventura has described years of alleged physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Sean “Diddy” Combs. Combs has denied the charges, insisting that the sex acts were consensual.

The women’s credibility is therefore critical to the trial’s outcome.

As Combs’ lawyer already previewed, his team will endeavor to convince the jury that the accusers are lying. The courtroom becomes a stage for the oldest stories we tell about women and truth.

Keeping Score: Rep. Jasmine Crockett Questions Trump’s ‘Fitness to Serve’; Women Carry Two-Thirds of Student Debt; Congress Votes to Criminalize Revenge Porn

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week: HHS promotes conversion therapy-like policies and opposes gender-affirming care; new executive order could lead to discrimination from credit lenders; Trump guts the Women’s Health Initiative; Wyoming abortion clinic celebrates a TRAP law injunction; Olivia Rodrigo received Planned Parenthood award; and more.

‘We Need a Gentle Anger’: The Triangle’s Raging Grannies are Protesting Injustice through Music

Founded in Canada in the 1980s, the Raging Grannies have gaggles around North America—and plenty to sing about. 

Even in a crowd of thousands, they’re instantly recognizable by sight and sound: silver-haired women wearing colorful aprons and floppy hats, brandishing cardboard signs and sheafs of lyrics, singing acerbic protest songs set to cheerful nursery tunes.

Coretta Scott King’s Influence on the Civil Rights Movement: An Excerpt From ‘King of the North’

An excerpt from King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South:

“Women have been the backbone of the whole civil rights movement,” Coretta Scott King stressed in a 1966 interview with New Lady magazine. The national media, like most politicians and pundits of the time, had trained the spotlight on the male leaders like her husband, missing the many women that had envisioned, led and organized the movements burgeoning around the country. They could not conceive of Coretta Scott King as Martin Luther King’s political partner. She later lamented how she was “made to sound like an attachment to a vacuum cleaner, the wife of Martin, then the widow of Martin, all of which I was proud to be. But I was never just a wife, nor a widow. I was always more than a label.”  

Sabrina Carpenter Gets to the Point of Sexual Expression: Fun and Enjoyment

Sabrina Carpenter’s “sexual revolution” is not unprecedented; in fact, it has been paved for her. Yet, there is still something refreshing—and controversial—about her sexual expression that uniquely contributes to the constant effort of normalizing and embracing female sexuality through art. And perhaps it boils down to a simple truth: Carpenter is making it explicitly clear she enjoys sex, and she’s having fun with it.

Keeping Score: Devastating Attacks on USAID; Louisiana Indicts N.Y. Doctor; Autumn Lockwood Is First Black Woman Coach to Win Super Bowl

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week: Musk and Trump’s USAID attacks have devastating impacts; 80% of the clean energy investments from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act—which Trump wants to roll back—are in Republican congressional districts; Louisiana indicts a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills; new executive orders go after workers and LGBTQ people; the Laken Riley Act was signed into law; childcare costs affect the health of parents; and more.

An American Requiem: Beyoncé’s Country Statement at the Grammys

With all the upheaval, just two weeks in, that has accompanied the second term of the current presidential administration, the 67th annual Grammy Awards show came and went Sunday night like a welcome distraction. Even calling the event a “distraction” misses the serious work of art and its purpose in troubled times: to mobilize the masses, reaffirm our values and spread joy and light amid the darkness.

The big night, however, went to pop star Beyoncé, who not only made history as the first Black woman to win Best Country Album, but finally earned Album of the Year for her politically salient album Cowboy Carter, after previously losing in the category. The album, which opened with a “requiem” for America and closed on a prayer that “we’ll be the ones to purify our fathers’ sins,” calls on all of us to witness this nation’s history and its present, to reckon with its “sins” of exclusion and discrimination and demand that we purify it toward the democratic promise it has always held out for all of us and not just a select few determined to set us back on a backward course.