Just A Girl

Emily’s latest obsessions with Robyn and Paula Cole (was that not public knowledge?) got me thinking about the pop “girl music” of my childhood and the music available today for a 9-year-old girl. As someone too young to attend the Lilith Fair or to really know what Alanis meant when she sang “would she go down on you in the theater?” I can still remember very different women making music in the mid to late 1990s. Then, mainstream female artists were keeping up with the boys (Alanis and Gwen Stefani) and carving out new music venues that were distinctly female (Sarah McLauchan and the Lilith Fair) Now, female artists are fifteen (or made to look like 15-year-olds), represented as hypersexualized parodies in 30 second snippets on MTV and mp3s.

I was an 8-year-old in 1995 when Alanis Morissette debuted Jagged Little Pill. At the time, I was becoming interestingly more interested in music, television, and fashion; I adored loose trousers and clogs and my friend Kate and I would dress up in the likes of Gwen Stefani and listen to Tragic Kingdom repeatedly, which I owned on cassette. After ordering Jagged Little Pill from my brother’s BMG music order, I loved Alanis too. She had a powerful voice and real lyrics (she said fuck!). I didn’t know what my idols like Alanis and Jewel were talking about; all I knew is that these women were absolutely kick-ass and I wanted to be kick-ass too.

Fast forward to 2005: I graduated from high school and Gwen Stefani went from Just A Girl to a Hollaback Girl. Maybe it’s the same message Gwen was singing in ’95 as SoCal ska darling, but now as a solo artist and 20lbs lighter. And in yesteryear, when Jewel sang “You always tell me that is impossible to be respected and be a girl” might she have known that her predecessors would be singing, “What you gon' do with all that junk?All that junk inside your trunk? I'ma get, get, get, get, you drunk, Get you love drunk off my hump.”

In 1996, Paula Cole asked “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone.” Within a decade, I ask, where have all the legitimate female artists gone? These women did not disappear due to lack of interest; Jagged Little Pill went platinum sixteen times in the U.S. and sold over 30 million copies worldwide. The Lilith Fair filled huge venues with over 60 acts for three years straight and made Sarah McLachlan, Natalie Merchant, and Paula Cole into household names. No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom sold over 16 million copies worldwide. But while we ushered in the new millennium, we traded “Ironic” for “Hit Me Baby One More Time.”

Under the Bush Administration, the government harkened back to the Reagan Era’s “family values.” Apparently Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, and Jessica Simpson, mainstream’s new girl music, jived well with the conservative agenda. What’s more threatening, real women singing “So take me as I am, this may mean you'll have to be a stronger man” (thanks, Meredith Brooks) or plastic ingénues singing “I’m a genie in a bottle”? I do not envy 8-year-olds today; the pressure to be pretty! blonde! skinny! has gone up tenfold since I was 8, listening to Jewel. Just ask Jewel herself!

There are, of course, very talented female artists today like Cat Power, Regina Spektor, and Leslie Feist, who have all been moderately successful in the mainstream. Still, even Feist, who has made the biggest mainstream headway hasn’t reached Jagged Little Pill epic proportions. I would guess it has something to do with indie v. mainstream; showing tits v. not.

With the exception of Gwen Stefani, who traded ska for cheap pop and okay, freakin’ fierce fashion, only Sheryl Crow remains from the Lilith days, staying in the game by being skinny, dating Lance Armstrong, and selling “If It Makes You Happy” to a car commercial. Sarah McLachlan made a Christmas album and both a video and commercial that make me cry. The rest of the Lilith Fair crew, who not only performed but promoted non-profits like Planned Parenthood, Amnesty International, and The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence with the Fair, have all but disappeared, leaving people like me to idolize the 90’s.

The lack of real female musicians is, perhaps, just a part of a bigger problem in the music industry; a problem that qualifies Fall Out Boy as punk, Nelly as rap, and Fergie as every girl’s role model. “Girl music” was once on the cutting edge of pop music. Now, the most an aspiring singer-songwriter can hope for is for her hit to appear in an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.