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The Girl Problem

While Critics Slug It Out Over The Meaning Of 'Women In Rock,' New Albums From Mainstream Divas Shania Twain And Celine Dion Soar Above It All

NEWSWEEK
Nov 17, 1997 Issue

CELINE DION AND SHANIA TWAIN are two of the biggest female stars of the '90s, but you won't [find either of them in Rolling [Stone's 30th-anniversary "Women of Rock" issue or Spin's November "Girl Issue." Apparently they didn't qualify. What does it take to be a "Woman in Rock"? After spending some time with these two issues, we constructed a handy quiz to help readers understand the eligibility requirements.

(A) The women's movement of the '70s: thumbs up or thumbs down? If you answered "thumbs up," deduct 10 points. According to Spin, "Girl Culture" girls don't necessarily revere the brave women who cleared the path: "Feminism gave women critical tools, but it never offered enough fantasy."

(B) True or false: it's a Spice World; we just live in it. If you answered "false," deduct 10 points. Rolling Stone advises a pro-Spice stance for aspiring W.I.R.s: "The Spice Girls might look like pop's latest blowup dolls to some cynical eyes, but for a new, ready-to-bleed, prepubescent, unclean, unholy army of the night, those five women are wailing 'Under My Thumb'."

(C) Do you own the albums "Cut" by the Slits and "Pottymouth" by Bratmobile? If you answered "no," deduct 20 points. Spin calls them "essential discs" that "you'll find in most every self-respecting Girl Culture girl's bedroom, right next to the hair mascara." If you don't own hair mascara, deduct an additional 10 points.

Did you flunk? Chin up-so, probably, would Shania and Celine. Women in Rock is a concept that's almost as old as rock itself, but in the past two or three years it's become a dizzyingly complex issue. For a long time, W.I.R. was just a straightforward media handle, a way to categorize performers by gender. It was indiscriminately applied to such varied types as new wavers the Go-Go's, punk-metalheads L7 and folkie Tracy Chapman. Lately, though, the phrase has taken on new twists. Women in Rock is no longer a gender-specific term; it's a political one. Being female isn't enough; you have to be correctly female. Do you pledge allegiance to the Spice Girls? Do you accept Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, in all her multidimensional personae? Do you promise to wear torn slip dresses, smeared makeup and a constant expression of Fiona Apple-style fetishistic victimhood? Follow the rules, or you're not in the club. "Touchy-feely consciousness may not be Gift Culture, but the Girls' Aggressive Skate Team is," goes Spin's agenda. "Raising your voice with a thousand other earth mothers to a Holly Near ballad doesn't cut it, but spitting out the sexy-defiant words to an Ani DiFranco song sure does."

Under these guidelines, no one is likely to mistake Shania and Celine for Women in Rock. Their politics are all wrong. They do womanhood the old-fashioned, unironic, hyperfeminine way. They comb their hair and flaunt their bellybuttons, and it's not a statement. Their music is unabashedly domestic, without complicated subtexts; rock critics don't often write about them, because there isn't a lot to explain. But out there in the real teenage bedrooms of America, Twain and Dion have had real impact. Dion's last album, "Falling Into You," has sold more than 9 million copies and is still on the charts after a year and a half. Twain's "The Woman in Me" has also sold more than 9 million; it recently surpassed Patsy Cline's "Greatest Hits" to become the top-selling album ever by a female country artist. It's W.I.R. suicide to say so, but in 1997 there's something weirdly refreshing about Dion and Twain's implacable refusal to ride the Girl Power bandwagon, and their unexpected outsider status. It actually takes some guts to be so unapologetically uncool.

Dion's specialty is big, divaesque, flawlessly put-together, excessively romantic ballads. She's the female Michael Bolton, the aural equivalent of Linda Evans on "Dynasty." Her forthcoming album, due Nov. 18, isn't weighted with complexity: it's called "Let's Talk About Love," and, well, that's just what she does for 71 CD minutes. Dion loves love in all its stages, from the glorious moments of togetherness to the painful pangs of goodbye, but she spends most of her time assuring her audience that if they want romance badly enough, it will come. Like Bolton, she doesn't hold back emotionally: her voice tumbles and handsprings through ornate melodies, and she clobbers her high notes with a Napoleonic fervor. "Tell Him," the album's much heralded duet with Barbra Streisand, has a message slightly left of Dusty Springfield's not-exactly-progressive 1964 hit "Wishin' and Hopin'. .... Tell him/Tell him that the sun and moon rise in his eyes," they belt in 24-carat harmony. "Reach out to him/And whisper tender words so soft and sweet... Love will be the gift you give yourself."

If Dion's album is evening wear, Twain's new "Come On Over" is more like a casual, all-day pantsuit. Her audience isn't sitting home mooning; these ladies hold down jobs and bring home pay, and they have a few needs of their own. "Honey I'm home and I had a hard day/Pour me a cold one and oh, by the way/Rub my feet, give me something to eat," she sings in "Honey, I'm Home" over an irrepressibly bouncy beat, sort of Nashville twang meets "We Will Rock You." Twain's husband/co-writer is former Def Leppard producer Robert John (Mutt) Lange, and "Come On Over" is jammed with weirdly random rock references: "Rock This Country!" steals a guitar solo from the Beatles, while "I Won't Leave You Lonely" hits pretty dam close to the Police's "Every Breath You Take." But there's lots of fiddle and pedal steel, too, and of course Shania puts her cowboy-booted Cosmo-girl stomp on everything she does. In "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!," she presents coloring your hair as an act of empowerment. "That Don't Impress Me Much" drops a Brad Pitt reference so perfectly pegged you kind of wonder if she checked his movie-release schedule before putting the lyric on the album.

There's evidence on both "Let's Talk About Love" and "Come On Over" that Dion and Twain have, in fact, heard of '90s post-post-feminist politics. Dion's "Treat Her Like a Lady" (co-written by dance-hall singer Diana King) has a funky sisterhood vibe and a story line about a woman who winds up in jail for taking revenge on a mistreating man. Twain, too, knows her flashpoint issues: "Black Eyes, Blue Tears" is an unexpectedly tender message about domestic violence. But overall, these two singers seem to understand that their audience prefers its heroines apolitical. In this day and age, it's becoming a perversely revolutionary idea. Women singers singing without making an issue of their gender? It could give rise to a whole new genre: Just Plain People in Rock.

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