{"id":2893,"date":"2019-05-02T20:40:06","date_gmt":"2019-05-02T20:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/?p=2893"},"modified":"2019-05-09T14:11:17","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T14:11:17","slug":"rise-of-pop-music-girl-groups-1980-1990s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/rise-of-pop-music-girl-groups-1980-1990s\/","title":{"rendered":"Rise of Pop Music\/Girl Groups (1980-1990\u2019s)"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>&#8220;The Sassy, Sexy Young Women of Pop.&#8221;<em>Cosmopolitan<\/em>, vol. 211, no. 5, 11, 1991, pp. 182-185<em>.<\/em><\/h2>\n<p>The 1991 article of <em>Cosmopolitan Magazine<\/em> titled \u201cThe Sassy, Sexy Young Women of Pop\u201d displays multiple images of female pop singers of the late 1980\u2019s and early 1990\u2019s and their successes through short quotes and descriptions of each woman. The first page shows Mariah Carey kneeling, staring at the camera with a sentence in the middle of the page stating, \u201cOf course they can <u>sing<\/u>, but in these days of MTV, looks, dazzle, <u>sensuality<\/u>, also help with stardom!\u201d The article uses sexist language to depict each woman along with sexualized images of each singer. Referring to Sheena Easton as \u201cBombshell Sheena\u201d and using an image of Easton in a tight red dress bending over, the short description of her does not mention her musical success or anything related to music, but shares a quote where she talks about wanting to have a baby with a popular news anchor at the time, Peter Jennings. The article was published during the boom of the pop music era, a time when female musicians and girl groups were releasing music centered on womanhood, independence and sexual agency. The <em>Cosmopolitan <\/em>article demonstrates that despite these developments, the sexualization of female singers, the focus put on their bodies and their utility as women, rather than their musical accomplishments, persists. Despite the milestones that women in music have made and the obstacles endured over the centuries, female singers and groups are continually being represented by their bodies, not their music.<\/p>\n<h2>TLC&#8217;s performance of &#8220;No Scrubs&#8221; at the 1999&#8217;s VMA&#8217;s<\/h2>\n<div class=\"su-dailymotion su-u-responsive-media-yes\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" src=\"\/\/www.dailymotion.com\/embed\/video\/x18j2h?autoplay=0&amp;background=FFC300&amp;foreground=F7FFFD&amp;highlight=171D1B&amp;logo=1&amp;quality=380&amp;info=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" title=\"\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>TLC\u2019s 1999 performance of \u201cNo Scrubs\u201d at the Video Music Awards illustrates the agency and self-awareness that women held over themselves and each other to not be with a guy that doesn\u2019t deserve them, aka a \u201cscrub\u201d. The video opens with a conversation between an unknown male voice and a member of TLC, where the man yells \u201cHey, hey excuse me miss, can I talk to you for a minute, baby?\u201d and she responds by yelling back \u201cWho you callin\u2019 baby?\u201d The man answers with \u201cYou, baby!\u201d to which she replies, \u201cNo, no, no, no I\u2019m not hearing talk of me because I don\u2019t want no scrubs!\u201d [1]. With their performance, TLC highlights a common instance of street harassment that many women face, responding to the event with a strong pop anthem empowering women to be cognizant of what they deserve in a partner and self-ruling with their sexual agency. The performance ends with a fight scene between TLC and the female dancers on stage \u201cfighting\u201d against the male dancers on stage, with the women \u201cdefeating\u201d the men in the end. The performance, which was broadcasted to an audience of almost twelve million viewers, emphasizes the influence that girl groups had on societal notions of womanhood and feminism [2]. In a time period where girl groups were becoming well-known and acknowledged in the music industry, TLC shares a message of independence and sisterhood between women, calling for women to claim what they want, and demanding men to listen.<\/p>\n<h2>Britney Spears on the cover of\u00a0<em>Teen magazine<\/em>, 1999<\/h2>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-4087 \" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/files\/2019\/05\/f7f0a862a2e4c87ddf7cbaa642b32e56-227x300.jpg\" alt=\"Britney spears on Teen magazine cover\" width=\"205\" height=\"271\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/files\/2019\/05\/f7f0a862a2e4c87ddf7cbaa642b32e56-227x300.jpg 227w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/files\/2019\/05\/f7f0a862a2e4c87ddf7cbaa642b32e56.jpg 564w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 205px) 100vw, 205px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Teen-pop music became popular in the late 1990&#8217;s with the rise of young stars like Britney Spears, who emulated many of the recurrent features of the idealized woman, but who&#8217;s music centered on notions of independence, power, and self-worth. On the cover of a 1999 issue of <em>Teen magazine<\/em>,\u00a0Spears is seen wearing blue jeans and an orange blouse, with her hair down and a small amount of makeup on. Spears represents the young, up-and-coming stars of pop that are both naturally beautiful and talented. Spears,who grew to fame in the late 1990&#8217;s and into the 2000&#8217;s, encapsulated the rise in the autonomy of young, teenage women, who were starting to build careers in all fields and start becoming successful from an early age, a trend that continued onto the 2000&#8217;s into today.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n[1] (0:16-0:28)<\/p>\n[2] TV By the Numbers, \u201cHistorical Nielsen Ratings for MTV\u2019s \u2018Video Music Awards\u2019 1994-2009,\u201d https:\/\/tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com\/reference\/historical-nielsen-ratings-for-mtvs-video-music-awards-1994-2009\/, (September 12, 2010).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The Sassy, Sexy Young Women of Pop.&#8221;Cosmopolitan, vol. 211, no. 5, 11, 1991, pp. 182-185. The 1991 article of Cosmopolitan Magazine titled \u201cThe Sassy, Sexy Young Women of Pop\u201d displays&#8230; <a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/rise-of-pop-music-girl-groups-1980-1990s\/\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4039,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224085],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wallis-grant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4039"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/modern-us-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}