What happened to "Girl Power?"

I've been thinking about this since my Metro ride this morning. I averted my eyes from the girl standing across from me after one glance, because I didn't want her to think I was judging her. She was probably 16 or 17, was wearing more makeup than I used to wear on stage, had intentional bedhead hair - perfectly curled and carefully tousled - and wore a push-up bra that was beyond extreme and showcased by her shirt, which was unbuttoned to the top of her ribcage.

As I stared out the window, wondering why so many young women feel the need to call attention to themselves in such negative ways, I started to feel sorry for her, and then to feel sad. Teenage girls like her have a sense of self-worth that's obviously wrapped up in their looks, and I feel like they're in the majority these days.

I went to middle school and high school with some girls who dressed similarly to the young woman I saw on the Metro, but the majority of the girls I grew up with valued their minds and personalities above their perceived attractiveness or sexuality - at least most of the time. We came of age with The Babysitters' Club, the first wave of American Girl dolls and books, Jewel's first three albums and Martina McBride's powerhouse voice and feminist message.

Yes, we felt immense pressure to be thin, to be pretty, to fit in, but we were encouraged at least as often to be ourselves, whatever that looked like. We embraced female artists with individualist tendencies, like Natalie Imbruglia and Dido, and snickered at cookie-cutter pop divas like Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson (even if we did sometimes sing their songs). We were still figuring out who we were, but we celebrated the parts of ourselves we knew and did our best to accept the aspects we knew were still changing.

One of my strongest memories that evokes the positive message I remember growing up with is from my 14th birthday party. My girlfriends and I were at my house and, having pushed the dining room table and chairs out of the way, were taking turns lip-synching/singing and dancing to our favorite songs, blasted on my parents' boom box. Five of us got up to do a Spice Girls favorite (I don't remember which one, but best bets are "Wannabe," "Spice Up Your Life," or "Stop"), arms around each other, singing at the top of our lungs into plastic spoon "microphones," grinning and laughing the whole time. Someone snapped a picture and every time I look at it, I remember how strong and happy and loved I felt at that moment.

The Spice Girls' motto was "Girl Power!" It's a pretty good expression of society's attitude toward young women in the 90s, and the women I know who grew up during that time took it to heart and remember it fondly. I haven't been a teenager in a while, nor do I know many anymore, but that positive, affirming outlook doesn't seem to be as evident in today's society. Gender equality was never in question for me, and I think that holds true across most of my generation; the idea that being women meant we had to look or dress or act a certain way never occurred to us. Our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers had fought to be fully-functioning, completely equal members of society and had won (back then, I didn't hear much about women earning less than men). We were lucky enough to live in a time when all we had to do was enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Now I wonder if we're forgetting, as a society, what those women fought for and why. Women's suffrage and women's lib aren't subjects that are often covered in history classes. In fact, I only learned about the history of the women's rights movement in a classroom twice: when I selected women's suffrage in the U.S. as my topic for a history project in eighth grade, and when I studied Roe v. Wade in American Government in high school. Combine that lack of attention with the number of Americans who identify as anti-choice actually increasing and girls being inundated with air-brushed images of chemically and surgically altered models and performers, and I'm not sure how we can expect being a woman to continue to carry a positive message of independence and strength.

What happened to girl power, and why does it feel like we're slipping back to a time when a woman's face was more important than what went on behind it?