Liz Phair – Rockers Too Sexy for Their Own Good

Sex has always been a part of Liz Phair's music ('F--- and Run,' anyone?), but in 2003, when she went all Britney Spears and partnered with pop songwriters the Matrix for her radio-friendly self-titled album, critics turned on the former indie princess. The problem, says writer Martin Turenne, wasn't that she gussied up for the Vh1 cameras, but rather that she dared to sing about sleeping with college dudes and other cougar-like behaviors. "[U]nlike her male counterparts, she can't have it both ways; as an indie icon, she could be as liberated as she pleased, but once she entered the commercial domain, the range of allowable female expression became severely narrowed," Turenne writes. "In the pop realm, women can be sexual only so long as they are subservient."