From Debbie Harry to Beyoncé, history’s most influential frontwomen have paved a way for all ladies to pursue their passions with grace (when necessary), power, and fierce resolution. We salute these women for all they have done in the music industry and beyond, and have created this series to celebrate just a few of our favorites.
Everyone loves an antiheroine, don’t they? It’s Modern Movie Night and we’re celebrating our favorite cinematic bad girls with a list of films that – despite all their moral ambiguity – will make you say “damn, She Did That” every time.
Consistent glorification of black women’s triumphs made in defiance – but without any acknowledgement of the forces we are, in fact, defying – is nothing more than a useless and hollow performance of wokeness that translates into nothing. Idolization is just another form of dehumanization.
To close out 2017, Modern Girls have decided to share a few of their favorite albums from the year. Chaia’s pick? ‘Harry Styles’ by Harry Styles.
Need some fall film recs? Of course you do. If you’re a fall enthusiast, or just simply craving a good movie, turn down the lights, light some autumn-scented candles, grab a blanket, and press play on these picks by Chaia.
Part of why One Direction were able to last so long is because of this decision to support their fans as much as their fans supported them. One Direction gave an entire generation of girls a boy band—a concept traditionally and insidiously used to take advantage of teenage girls—and gave it back to them.
Be twice as good to get half of what they have. Growing up black in white America, this phrase is your constant companion. Passed down by your parents, it’s part-gift, part-curse, and supposed to be the ultimate motivator—do your homework, go to class, get good grades, work hard, rise above, go high. Always aim to be better than yourself.
The Get Down paints the story of black kids in shades of extravagance and opulence, rebuilding the crumbling Bronx into a dreamscape burning with color and sizzling with energy—as bright and angry and political and explosive as it would’ve felt to live in it.
Meet Penny—one of the coolest 17-year-olds on the east coast. She began her work in fashion and culture journalism editing and writing for Things Mag, a Boston-based indie mag “dedicated to giving underrepresented East Coast artists a space to thrive.” Now, she’s a junior in high school and a co editor-in-chief of her own publication, Nether Magazine, a fashion magazine run by teens, for teens that “aims to take back fashion from top-tier corporate magazines” and embodies “the rebellious spirit of those underage, underground, and underestimated.”
Unless you have been trapped in the Upside Down for the past month, you have heard about The Duffer Brothers’ new series Stranger Things. Set in the early 1980s, the Netflix original follows the story of a mother trying to find her missing son, everything his spit-sworn best friends turned brothers will do to save him, a Sinéad O’Connor-channeling, waffle loving, telepathic runaway, and a government conspiracy with a little classic John Hughes teenage love triangle thrown in for good measure.
MODERN GIRLS 