Exene Cervenka

My time with you is winding down, Bitch readers. I will miss you! But I've still got a few posts in me.

I've written about a lot of the women (and men) who have, for lack of a better word, inspired me. Voices and images and guitar, bass, and drum licks that kept me going, made me work harder, blurred out the bad things and come along with me for the good.

I could write for a year and not do any of them the justice they deserve, and there are lots of them that won't make it here—some I meant to cover and didn't because things happened and drove me in other directions, and others I remembered just recently. There are thousands of stories in my life that are connected to music, and probably even more critical lenses with which to focus on a particular song, video, album, performer.

But I've got my last post planned for you already, and so that leaves me with the open space today. And really, only one option that I simply can't miss.

"Rave On" is the Page Turner series that asks feminist writers, artists, musicians, activists, leaders, and scholars to talk about a book that completely rocked their world. Today we feature musician and singer-songwriter Joan Wasser, of Joan as Police Woman, on Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations, by bell hooks.

Outlaw Culture taught me to change the way I thought about everything. I first read it when it was released in 1994 because it had a chapter about Madonna and how she turned her back on her original, daring woman image and ultimately gave into the little-girl, sex-kitten status quo.

I had written essays on Madonna when I was in high school, horrified because my ideas of empowered women were Siouxsie Sioux and Exene Cervenka. I was already a massive music fan and felt confused by Madonna’s brazenly sexual image (and unshaven underarms) in combination with her music, which I considered, at the time, totally useless fluff. I was thrilled to find someone else who shared my distaste for her, like hooks did, albeit in a completely different way.