Run the world, (sullen) girls: vulnerability as girl power anthem

A SYTYCB entry

When people talk about “girl power” anthems, I’m gonna say it’s a safe bet that what jumps to most people’s minds is pretty similar to BET’s list of the top 10 girl power anthems: a lot of Beyoncé, whether with the more recent “Run the World (Girls)” or Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Women“. Throw in some TLC, a little Katy Perry, and you’ve got a lot of great pop songs to smack the “Girl Power” label to—and I’m all for it (with the exception of Katy Perry. I’m sorry, world, but I just can’t get down.).

But what about other forms of girl power? You know, when we’re not throwing our hands up with Bey and invoking our favorite Charlie’s Angel during our post-breakup cardio kickboxing class?

Sady Doyle has an answer for us. In her recent piece for In These Times,“Vulnerability: The New Girl Power,” she delves into the “female confessional” as a new form of feminism. She discusses more than just music—she nods to Sheila Heti’s book, How Should A Person Be? as well as the female confessional poets of the 60s, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, for setting the precedent for these emotional, first-person confessions. But when she does mention music, she calls out Fiona Apple, and she’s right on the money to do so.

While Doyle only discusses the vulnerability in Fiona Apple’s newest album, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do, Fiona’s been rocking her vulnerability ever since she was stripping down to her underwear on MTV and confessing, “I’ve been a bad, bad girl…” to the world.

These confessionals of Fiona’s—sometimes sullen, sometimes sad, sometimes flat-out pissed off—strike so much more of a chord with me than any of our so-called girl power anthems. Along with Fiona, I’ve always been drawn to what people would dismiss as “angry girl” music, whether it was Tori Amos or Ani Difranco. What people often didn’t mention was that these so-called angry girls were often quite sad, something that’s continued with newer singers like Sharon Van Etten, who does both angry and sad equally well. (Check out “Serpents” for the anger; “Give Out” for the sad.) But it was through all this anger and sadness—their honesty and their vulnerability through all the frank talk about heartbreak or anger—that I would feel the real girl power. These complex emotions take real guts to reveal, whether it’s Ani admitting, “I guess I never loved you quite as well as the way you loved me” or Sharon spitting out “You enjoy sucking on dreams, so I will go to sleep with someone other than you” or “I had a thought that you would take me seriously.”

It’s the honesty, the rawness: That’s some real fucking power.

And that’s not to diss Destiny’s Child, or any of our other lauded “girl power” anthems in any way. That’s not to say that any of their lyrics are any less honest or real. As I said, I like them all—but like Sady Doyle pointed out to all of us, “power” comes in different forms, and showing vulnerability is nothing short of an act of bravery. Like she ends her piece:

Vanishingly few women are capable of this sort of bravery. That’s why I’m disappointed when people I talk with about this typically want to discuss the ex-boyfriend. “He’s not the point,” I try to say. “That’s the whole point—that he’s not the point. The point of it is her.”

I recently got to see Fiona Apple perform in Chicago with a few close girlfriends. Beforehand, we were all excitedly discussing our favorite Fiona songs, down to the specific lyrics and things that were happening in our lives when we fell in love with those particular songs. Maybe we mentioned some ex-boyfriends or an ex-husband here and there, but that was never the point.

The point of it was Fiona. The point of it was us. That’s real woman power.