Arts & Culture

GOLDFINE | The Thriving Redefined Girl Power of Mitski

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“Girl power” is a tainted term in our cultural vocabulary. It is infected probably first and foremost by the image of Gwen Stefani, bindi-clad, prostrating herself onstage in her “Just A Girl” music video whimpering “fuck you, I’m a girl,” or of Taylor Swift parading around with her #girlsquad of models/singers/very famous people, explaining to Twitter, (mainly when other women criticize her) how very important it is for “women to support each other.” The term, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “a self-reliant attitude among girls and young women manifested in ambition, assertiveness and individualism” has been largely debunked as a commercialized white feminist ideology, based on vague assertions of rights and equality, which ultimately boils down to imitating masculinity while still looking hot. So, while explicit performances of girl power like those of Stefani, Courtney Love, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna and the Spice Girls — whose have-it-all, you-go-girl cultural feminist legacy was inherited by Swift and her peers — were subversive in the 90s and aughts, and will always be fun as hell to dance to, it has since become evident that these women’s girl power brands (remember kinderwhore?) were ultimately complicit with the relentless trivialization and eroticization of women within rock culture. In 2016, “girl power” in music is either obsolete, or begging for redefinition. The latter, I argue, is happening, and in an unlikely genre.

News

Cornell Students Amend Wikipedia to Address Inequality

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“While the reasons for the gender gap are up for debate, the practical effect of this disparity is not,” the website said. “Content is skewed by the lack of female participation.”

Columns

POOR | Title IX and the Digital Age

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More than four decades have elapsed since the enactment of Title IX — the landmark legislation that banned sex discrimination in federally funded activities and toppled robust barriers for female athletes. Plenty of women have leapt over gender-based hurdles in the subsequent years — the number of girls playing high school sports has increased every consecutive year for the last quarter century, a record number of viewers tuned in for the U.S. women’s finals at the 2015 World Cup and celebrity-status professionals such as Serena Williams and Ronda Rousey have shattered popular expectations of the female body’s limits. Vestiges of 20th century challenges for female athletes — lowered opportunities and expectations, funding deficiencies, racism and homophobia — endure, though purportedly to a lessened degree than in the past. While the topography of restrictions for women entering athletics has certainly evolved since 1972, four decades of “progress” have not obliterated the materiality of discrimination against female athletes. Rather, obstacles tend to take a different character than they did forty years ago.

Arts & Culture

O’BRIEN | Loving Rock N’ Roll As a Woman

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By KATIE O’BRIEN

At some point in my early teens, I started listening to rock music. Classic, punk, alt, grunge — I would stay up late into the night listening to and reading about my favorite ‘70s-90s era band at the time. In high school, I eventually came to the realization that pretty much all of the artists on my silver iPod nano were male. At first, this did not necessarily strike me as strange, or as a problem — I just accepted that the good rock music was made by men; that the deep scruffiness of a man’s voice was a necessary part of the rock equation. But I eventually became much more interested in introducing gender equality to my playlists.

men

Women Defeat Skidmore; Men Fall to Roger Williams

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Cornell polo was off to the races last weekend as the men’s and women’s team each led by six points after their first chukker. The women (5-1) would go on to beat Skidmore Polo Club 16-3 at home on Friday, while the men (4-2) could not hold their lead and lost to Roger Williams 17-16 in a shootout at home on Saturday. Head coach of both teams David Eldredge said the women’s team had worked on improving their start after having spotted their opponent an early lead in previous weeks. “When they came out on the field they were pretty well geared up,” Eldredge said. Senior captain Anna Winslow agreed that Cornell had a strong start.

basketball

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL | Red Opens at Hartford, Bryant to Begin Season

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Focusing on high energy play and team defense, the Red looks to get the 2015-16 season started in the right direction. The Cornell women’s basketball team hits the road this weekend to open up its season with a pair of games against Hartford (0-0, 0-0 America East) and Bryant (0-0, 0-0 NEC). On Friday evening, Cornell will face a similar situation to the first contest of the 2014-2015 season. Last year, the Red fell to the Hartford Hawks on opening night by only a margin of two points. “This team remembers the game last year,” said head coach Dayna Smith.

fencing

Fencing to Compete in Temple Open Meet

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This upcoming Saturday, the Red fencing team won’t be dressing up in spooky costumes or putting on crazy makeup. No, the Red will be making a trip down to Philadelphia where they will compete in the the Temple Open meet. The Open features many of the top fencerss in the nation, and will be a great test to open the year for Cornell. The Temple Open meet, hosted by Temple University in Philadelphia, is an individual meet, but Cornell’s team makes the trip every year to compete together against hundreds of collegiate fencers from across the East coast. Last year at the meet, Cornell had their best showing yet, with three women earning medals at the event.

headofthecharles

WOMEN’S ROWING | Cornell Ready to Row in Head of the Charles

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This weekend, the women’s rowing team will head to Cambridge to compete in the Head of the Charles, the world’s largest two-day rowing event. While the NCAA season does not begin for the Red until the spring, the squad still has a group of races this fall, with the Head of the Charles being the first and arguably most important. However, there are some key differences between races in the fall and spring. The biggest difference is that the fall races are much longer — a 5,000 meter course compared to just a 2,000 meter course later this year. Therefore, the Head of the Charles is really a place for the Red to show off its stamina and endurance, rather than focusing on its sprint abilities.

Uncategorized

Infinite Intricacies: Digging Deeper

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At first glace, Merrill Shatzman’s work seems to convey some sort of message, carrying traces of symbols and patterns that appear to be jumping off the page, just waiting to be decoded. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that any message she attempts to convey is infinitely multi-faceted, as increasingly more layers of etchings and connections reveal themselves. In a statement, she says her work “… questions and examines the ‘universal language’ created by signs, symbols and pre-imagined images … us[ing] surroundings as both an idea and an artifact.” She describes her muse as graphic communication, markings and forms that have the ability to convey meanings through simple rearrangements and displacements of lines and curves.