By Megan Hein on July 6, 2012

I got into riot grrrl music nearly ten years after it happened (I was a toddler in the early ’90s ) but I remember listening to the music and feeling validated and empowered by hearing angry young women. So much of what I heard on the radio was misogynistic hip hop or Top 40 pop songs that all sounded the same and portrayed women as hypersexual sex kittens. I didn’t limit myself to one scene: I loved (and still do) a lot of ’90s rock music made by women, and not just riot grrrl: Courtney Love and Hole, Sleater-Kinney, PJ Harvey, Babes in Toyland, Bratmobile, Garbage, Liz Phair. Of course, when most people think of ’90s women in rock they think of the Lilith Fair. The angriest woman they imagine is Alanis Morissette. But these above-mentioned women, such Kathleen Hanna, were far more interesting, more controversial. I can’t tell you what listening to this music did for me as an angst-ridden teenage girl.

I remember getting teased for listening to Bikini Kill, whom one of my guy friends disparaged as “man-hating lesbian music.” Courtney Love and Hole were another laughing matter, but more for her notorious public image than her music. “Does she sing like Joan Jett?” a friend’s brother snickered (apparently singing like Joan Jett was a bad thing). Each of these women represented differing images of what women in rock could be, and yet each one was dismissed, written off as a joke. Even Alanis Morissette (whose voice I incidentally can’t stand) has been called a “man-hating hag” which is kind of funny, when Jagged Little Pill was pretty much the ramblings of a heart-broken and confused 20-something. Is it remotely political? Nope, no more than Adele’s music. But for some people, listening to a pissed off woman might as well be. A woman interviewed in Gillian G. Gaar’s She’s a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll believes it’s harder for women in rock to come through because anger and sexual aggression, two characteristics prominent in rock music, are thought of as predominantly male.

I think I gravitated towards riot grrrl and other angry female alt rockers, because adolescence is frightening: the transition from girl to woman (or boy to man) has a lot of complexities and implications that we don’t fully understand at the time. The world now views us in a different light and we need to learn how to adjust to that. Add your healthy dose of adolescent angst, immature high school kids, constricting small-town life, and you get a good stomping ground for needing a release. This music provided that.

After my binge of ‘90s female alt rock in my teens, it’s kind of ironic that nowadays two of my favorite bands are entirely male: The Jesus & Mary Chain and The Smiths. Obviously, great music transcends all boundaries: sex, class, race, and time. Pain and emotion always remain universal.

By Megan Hein on June 23, 2012

In the past 70 years, the ideal female body type has undergone a major shift. Gone are the curvy pin-ups of the post WWII years, with long legs and wide hips. Today, with advances in cosmetic surgery, obtaining the ideal type has become more obtainable… while simultaneously becoming more unrealistic. Outside factors such as the economy, political wars, fashion, and fads in pop culture all have left their mark on shaping what the ideal body type is. And while we may look to the ’40s and ’50s as a time where “women looked like real women” certainly, we cannot pretend that women lived in an ideal state where their bodies were not constantly nitpicked or regulated. Below, a glance at our idealized body types throughout the decades.

Wide hips, long legs, and perky breasts were the ‘40s and ‘50s ideal. Long legs were especially fetishized (witness the amount of “cheesecake” pictures where models are showing off their legs). There was also a tremendous amount of pressure to have a tiny waist. The average measurements of many stars back then was a 23-24 inch waist. That seems ridiculously small for their overall frame. Nowadays, the average star’s waist is 25-26 but they are much thinner. Every generation of women seems to get bigger waists and bigger feet, perhaps due to over processed food or the added hormones in meat and dairy. Nevertheless, these women have a look that is still the easiest to obtain. They were in shape but not emaciated, nor did they have huge (fake) breasts. Their breasts were real and in proportion to the rest of their body.

20 some years after WWII ends, the idealized body type becomes more svelte. The popularity of fashion models such as Twiggy bring the super skinny look into the mainstream. For the first time, women with thin hips and small breasts are considered sexy, perhaps more freed by the ’60s love-child counter culture and the emerging women’s rights movement. For sex symbols, the hour-glass figure still remains ideal, although these women are more svelte compared to women of the previous decade.

Curves begone! The high fashion runway look carries over onto sex symbols. Can you think of a busty ’70s star? Probably not. In this decade, small breasts, tiny butts, and narrow hips were actually idealized. Running, not weight lifting or resistance machines, was the favored exercise. Pants are so tight, many women have to lay down in order to zip them up. Women diet more than ever.

A new craze in pop culture hits: aerobics! No longer emaciated, bodies are now toned, fit, and muscular. Although still svelete, the size of many supermodels such as Cindy Crawford was actually a size 4, which would be considered much too large for a size 0 runway model now.

The super skinny look returns, perhaps even more drastic than before. Models like Kate Moss look so emaciated it causes people to dub the look “Heroin chic,” coinciding with the rise of grunge music hitting the airwaves. Interestingly enough, the ’90s economy booms during the Clinton years. Do we forsee a pattern: hard times=curvy bodies, prosperous times=thin? Perhaps not. The following decade seems to prove that wrong…

While thinness is still prized, there is a new idealized look: huge breasts. This look becomes more prevalent with the accessibility and mainstream acceptance of internet porn. The number of breast augmentations surgeries performed in the United States increases by nearly 100,000 between 2000 and 2007. Jennifer Lopez’s curvy buttocks become popular in the early 2000’s, but not the rest of her curves. Thus, a large bubble butt becomes a new fetish in mainstream white America. The ideal woman must now look like this: huge breasts, flat stomach, narrow hips, and a round bubble-butt. Something like this doesn’t happen in nature, so more women than ever before can now find fault with themselves.