Just a Girl by Tammie Adele

  Oh, look at my face My name is might have been My name is never was My name's forgotten   Why did our mothers bother burning their bras if they were then going to tell their daughters that ‘It’s different for boys’? (see Post 4 ) I guess social change is a slow ship to turn around, but my mum was a teenager in the 1960’s and still carries on about the huge social changes that occurred during this decade. Social change for the better. But about ten years later, she whose generation burnt bras told her daughters that ‘It’s different for boys’. The ‘beauty’ of the bra-burning demonstration of 1969 was that it was very deliberately staged outside the Miss America pageant. The demonstrators stated that the pageant promoted women who are young, juicy, and malleable, then discarded them a year later as a new winner is announced. Other reasoning’s for the demonstration likened the Miss America pageant to a metaphor for livestock shows where the animals are judged fo...

  You can bend but never break me 'Cause it only serves to make me More determined to achieve my final goal And I come back even stronger Not a novice any longer 'Cause you've deepened the conviction in my soul   The world lost Helen Reddy last week.             Her iconic song I am Woman came about as a result of Reddy’s search for a song that would express her growing passion for female empowerment. In a 2003 interview in the Sunday Magazine  (published with the  Sunday Herald Sun  and  Sunday Telegraph ), Reddy explained:   “I couldn't find any songs that said what I thought being a woman was about. I thought about all these strong women in my family who had gotten through the Depression and world wars and drunken, abusive husbands. But there was nothing in music that reflected that. The only songs were 'I Feel Pretty' or that dreadful song 'Born A Woman'. (The 1966 hit...