Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Girl Power

It's your friendly Events Director here with her first-ever Blogsmith post. Howdy doo?

I'm thrilled to pieces about tomorrow night's event with Marisa Meltzer. She's coming to talk about her new book, Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music.

For those too young or old to remember, the soundtrack to third wave feminism in the 90s looked and sounded something like this:




And by the end of the decade, it had somehow changed into this:



Meltzer -- a NYC-based journalist and coauthor of the phenomenal How Sassy Changed My Life -- explains what the heck happened, tracking how the phrase "girl power" went from a counterculture rallying cry to a way to sell stuff. Although the decade ended with Britney Spears imploring someone to hit her, baby (one more time), the 90s changed the world of girls for the better, influencing the current generation to rock in record numbers.

This book is great (and I'm not just saying that because I was a teenager in the 90s, though that helps). It's great because it's a thoughtful cultural analysis sprinkled with interviews of awesome ladies. Anyone with an interest in music and/or feminism should drop by and hear what Meltzer has to say.

No comments: