By Claire FitzSimmonds **SPOILERS ahead When you think ‘strong female character’ Cordelia Chase probably doesn’t pop to mind first thing. Buffy Summers, I bet. Willow Rosenberg, most likely. Maybe even Anya Jenkins because, yes, she is pretty obsessed with marriage, but she also doesn’t take any crap from anyone and she speaks her mind. Well, come to think of it, that describes Cordelia pretty well. We meet her in the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and she’s a shallow twerp (I don’t think she’d take too much offense to that description). She speaks her mind, sure, but it’s to say stuff like, “Buffy, love the hair. It just screams street urchin,” so how commendable is that? Popularity and money are the two most important things to her, and any moment of kindness is short-lived. But the best hero used to be a villain, if the transition is done believably. With Cordelia the transition is painstakingly slow and therefore believable. She starts to date Buffy’s friend Xander, whom she describes as ‘planning a life as a loser’, but she insists on keeping the relationship a secret because of what it would do to her social life. From time to time she helps out Buffy’s gang, but usually only when she needs saving herself, and she insults them at every turn, with the excuse that “Tact is not saying true stuff. I’ll pass.” Still, she gets a little experience with life and death situations, and by the time she graduates from Sunnydale High and moves to LA, she’s in a good position to team up with Angel, vampire vigilante.
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By Claire FitzSimmonds I’ll be belting these songs at the top of my lungs this year. All year long! Bang Bang – Jessie J with Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj
She mighta let you hold her hand in school, but I’mma show you how to graduate. That last little bit of resentment toward people from college I haven’t seen in three years? OVER. DONE. The fine line between storytelling and social responsibility By Claire FitzSimmonds Meghan Trainor says she has ‘all the right junk in all the right places’ and declares that her ‘mama told her not to worry about her size’ because ‘boys like a little more booty to hold at night.’ And people are annoyed. Because women shouldn’t base their body image off of what men want, and we should be teaching young girls to embrace their bodies because they like how they look, not because a man might. An article on Bustle re-wrote All About that Bass to be more ‘body-positive and inclusive.’ I get it. But I’m annoyed. Young girls and boys (and older girls and boys) are inundated with images of how they need to look, and a truly empowering pop song would actually affirm all body types rather than calling size twos ‘skinny bitches.’ But is that Meghan Trainor’s responsibility? To write an empowering pop song? Or a catchy one that she likes to sing? |
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