Adele

 

Last night was the Academy Awards, which means my Facebook feed was awash in comments from high school acquaintances along the lines of, “WTF was up with Kristen Stewart!?!? She was totally frowning and had some kind of bruise on her arm!!! What a slut!!! #TeamEdward.”

In my opinion, there were lots of moments last night more notable that Kristen Stewart’s facial expression. Here’s my list for best and worst moments from the interminable broadcast:

Loved It: Quvenzhané Wallis. The 9-year-old star of Beasts of the Southern Wild was the youngest Best Actress nominee to date. Not only did she rock a stuffed puppy dog handbag on the red carpet, she was unabashed in the fact that she was damn proud of herself. When they announced her name along with the likes of Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence, Emmanuelle Riva and Naomi Watts, Wallis spared viewing audiences the false modesty of batting eyelashes, shrugged shoulders and downcast eyes. Instead, she flexed her arms like a champion and grinned.

Hated It: So many of host Seth MacFarlane’s jokes! 

FOX News' coverage of Adele and Kelly Clarkson's performances at the Grammy's took a bizarre turn when the channel brought on a nutritionist to discuss the "critics who are taking to Twitter saying they need to slim down." Why random people calling famous women fat on Twitter is valued as a "criticism" that requires discussion remains a mystery. But the results were appalling. In their conversation, the anchor and nutritionist Keren Gilbert articulated that stringent body image standards can be harmful for young women—and then turned around and critiqued Adele and Clarkson's bodies for not being "normal." The anchor even took a pot shot at the nutritionist's body for being too thin. 

Apparently, Fox News has gone meta. They're now wrapping a conversation of unrealistic female body standards within a conversation exemplifying exactly that problem. 

Check out the whole hot mess, or there's a transcript below the video. 

 

In the spirit of collaboration, as this entire concept for this post was dreamed up by commenter Green, I asked the friend I’m currently visiting if I could pick her brain on the topic. I launched the Adele question. There was a long pause. “What about…. Frankenstein?” she asked. And then, as though I was the Joey character from Blossom, I was all like, “Whoah! Whoaaaah.” She'd come up with such an interesting take on this revenge business.

The world’s biggest flirt has triumphed over a social revolutionary on the pop charts: Carly Rae Jepsen and her flouncy seven-week chart topper “Call Me Maybe” finally unseated Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” as the longest-running number one single for a female singer with the Interscope label.

Flirty summer fun winning out over social comment, according to the dollars we are paying for the music they are making, means something. And yet, since this ideological overthrow was executed in the arena of pop music, the philosophical shift our iTunes purchases are fueling is not being discussed in the same way it might be if we were talking instead about domestic themes culled from the latest Jennifer Egan book or other pieces of more “worthy” art.

So what if we worthified the Top 40 by considering it alongside thoughts and arguments from great women writers of the past? What if we made explicit connections between the music of Kelly Clarkson and the oeuvre of Charlotte Bronte? What if we could talk about the contrasts between Adele and Emily Dickinson?

Welcome to my new guest blog, RetroPop, where the messages from today's biggest female-created pop tunes are played right next to those of rockin' and respected female artists from the past—and where dancing while blogging is highly encouraged.

Some of the sexiest, most soulful singers also happen to be fat women. These are the kind of women who can empower you with their voice to embrace sensuality. From a plus size fashion icon to a musical legend, these singers prove that sexiness has nothing to do with size and everything to do with how you work it.

It's a good day to be a feminist music fan, but to quote the immortal words of Levar Burton, "You don't have to take my word for it!" You can see/hear for yourself, because today's B-Sides is bringing you not one, not two, but three awesome ladymusic-related videos to brighten up your workday Tuesday. Lykke Li! Adele! Bikini Kill! Let's get to it!

Happy Monday! I wanted to offer something a little light-hearted to start off the week, so I decided to dedicate this post to a few fierce fat female recording artists that have rocked my world and provided a counterpoint to how fat women are viewed in society. These women are all in control of their own image, their own unique styles, and have managed to find success in an industry that isn't all that friendly to non-Katy Perry looking women.