Comments on: In the Teen Queen Zone

By: Roxie

Roxie — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 23:56:16 +0000

Latoya, I was a lot like you (in your choices of music) and I just couldn’t stand, hated (and probably will continue to intensely dislike) the pop girl boy band scene of the late 90′s early 00′s

But your post helped me see a different side to it and I it was quite touching! Thanks for writing this :D

By: ab5tract

ab5tract — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:54:01 +0000

@ literarycritic: Thank you for summing that up so well. The image and the packaged superficiality of the “teenybop invasion”, and the fact that everyone seemed to be either “buying in” or expected to do so, were its most depressing aspects. Good analysis and background on this phenomenon is the first section of Naomi Klein’s No Logo, which is all about the fact that the early 90s “grunge movement” was the first youth countercultural movement to have been successfully co-opted by advertising and media _before_ it had actually caught on. Meaning they successfully packaged and sold the concept of “youth subversion” as a normative, consummable state. Once they realized they could basically create and control youth culture I guess they figured they’d just take genuine rebellion out of the picture and replace it with its bizzaro facsimile.

By: ab5tract

ab5tract — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:32:50 +0000

@Antigone – I was referring to the shift of youth culture away from rebellious anti-culture music to generic bubble gum pop that occurred between ’96 and ’99, of which Britney Spears, N*Sync, et al, are perhaps the best signifiers.

By: literarycritic

literarycritic — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:14:50 +0000

I should add that it was more the power of these images, which were suddenly everywhere and all-encompassing of teenage girlhood, that we were resisting. Not necessarily the music, or even the artists themselves, but how they were being packaged and sold.

And @Miss Werewolf: I totally second you on loving Pink! Case in point:

L.A. told me
You’ll be a pop star
All you have to change
Is everything you are
Tired of being compared
To damn Britney Spears
“She’s so pretty”
Well, that just ain’t me

By: literarycritic

literarycritic — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:07:45 +0000

I was a very young teenager when Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, N*SYNC, and the Backstreet Boys first crashed onto the music scene. At the time, I remember just being absurdly threatened by what seemed like a loss of options for teenage girls. If you were of the right demographic, all of a sudden you were expected to lust after the boy band members and, simulatenously, to want to be Britney/Christina. I resisted. Not because of any reasoned critique (too young for that really), but because I didn't want to be a "tease" (Britney) or a "slut" (Christina). I wanted to be me; I wanted to have more substance than either of those options had; and most of all, I couldn't look like Britney or Christina, and at 13 I was old enough to know that. Down the road of trying to be like them lay nothing more than a heaping helping of self-hatred. A lot of my friends felt the same. We used to talk openly about it, how superficial and vapid both Britney and Christina were (both musically and image-wise), and how liking Britney was tantamount to an admission of superficiality and vapidity. Of course, we were defensive teenage girls. But I still think we had a point. This, I think, is the source of the intense hatred seen among a certain age group of girls for Britney and her ilk. Christina eventually went in a different direction with it (joining up with rappers, hardening up her image, etc.), and I respected her for it (still do). Plus, it eventually became clear that she could sing her fool head off. But Britney just continued to give us more of the same. And a part of me still winces in protest when girls/women around my age profess to like (let alone LOVE) Britney Spears.

By: Sex, Immaturity, Britney, Bristol, and Good Old Americana « Natalia Antonova

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:12:21 +0000

[...] remember Britney Spears’ naughty virgin phase? This is the same damn thing. Americans, on some level, are both fascinated with and repulsed by [...]

By: Antigone

Antigone — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:45:24 +0000

NIN and Rage Against the Machine are still touring and making cds. They didn’t “go” anywhere.

By: sina

sina — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:10:15 +0000

Latoya, this was amazing.

By: ab5tract

ab5tract — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:47:14 +0000

@Miss Werewolf –

You might also like Plasmatics, especially “Coup D’Etat”. The lead singer, Wendy O. Williams, was super intense and always controversial. Does anyone have any feelings / opinions about Wendy O. Williams? I’m still not sure what to make of her public persona, though I am a huge fan of her music and her animal rights activism.

By: Miss Werewolf

Miss Werewolf — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:43:37 +0000

Hmmm, this really hits a note with me (no pun intended). I was from that time period when Britney and NSYNC reigned. I was obsessed with both of them, and I wanted to be the next pop star. But after a while, when I was about 9 or 10, I got bored of their lyrics… I noticed that most songs were about love and relationships, and I wanted to hear something different, something I could relate to. Then came Pink. My parents had divorced and I found Pink’s songs “Family Portrait” “Don’t Let Me Get Me” and “Like a Pill” to be something I related to more than the other artists I used to like. That was when I decided as well that I wanted to be a drummer rather than a singer. Once I got into Pink, it was recommended that I listen to Linkin Park, who I also became obsessed with. Again, there were few songs about anything romantic, so I could relate to them more, and there was no pressure from them for me to be pretty or stereotypically feminine. Once I got into Linkin Park, my godfather gave me copies of all his Metallica CD’s, and I was hooked on metal for life. Metal became the music that made me feel strong, since I was not expected to be a fragile feminine flower, I needed to get strong, and take no shit from anyone.

Some of my favorite female-led metal bands are Otep (who I recently saw in concert) and Arch Enemy. These are women who helped me realize that there are many versions of beauty, and that a woman can be both beautiful and aggressive. Otep is also the only openly lesbian woman in metal music that I know of. Some recommended songs by Otep for anyone interested are “Filthee” “Confrontation” “Perfectly Flawed” and “Sacrilege”. As for Arch Enemy, their greatest song is “We Will Rise”.

Thanks for hearing my story. Hopefully that wasn’t too off topic, but I hold to my position that pop destroyed my confidence as a little girl, and metal restored it.