Destiny's Child

Sports pundits are still be trying to make yesterday’s Super Bowl all about the actual game (and yes, that 108-yard touchdown was pretty impressive), but let’s be honest with ourselves—the real winner of the game was Beyoncé’s halftime performance. And not just because she didn’t lip sync or because of the holograms, but because of the fact that for the first time in recent memory, women of color were the main focus of the show. Women who could dance. Women who could sing. Women who could play instruments with sparks shooting out of them. 

And yet, still, predictably and sadly, there are people (many of them women) who want to make the show about the fact that Queen Bey wasn’t wearing saggy denims and an ill-fitting University of Somewhere sweatshirt. Instead, she wore a dominatrix-esque boydsuit that got rapidly smaller as the performance progressed. In a thread on the Binders Full Of Women Facebook community, the slut-shaming began with a speed that could make Oreo’s head spin.

It was a strip-tease! Why do women always have to be taking off their clothes! This does nothing to advance the position of women because there was too much skin visible!

Really? Didn’t we just have this conversation like a week ago when she was on the cover of GQ?

As we've seen in past editions of BitchTapes, many Bitch Media staffers spent the 90s listening to super cool, street-cred building riot grrrl jams. Well, I've got a confession to make: Even though I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, I had no idea that riot grrrl was even happening until it was already over. No, I spent my formative feminist years listening mainly to top 40 radio. Lucky for me, that included a whole lot of all-female R&B music. Behold:



Track list after the jump!

My internship at Bitch ended this week and just recently I got a grown-up job. In a perfect world, those two things would not be mutually exclusive, however I am super happy with the full-time gig, feel fortunate that during a recession I was able to land something with benefits and good pay and I'm still contributing to Bitch (like, right not for example) so it works out pretty well. In honor of work and time clocks and general employment, I am bringing you this week's edition of BitchTapes: The Lady Business Edition. I tried really hard to keep it to just songs by the ladies, for the ladies, but the two I included that aren't, I think, are fitting nonetheless.