June Favorites

June was a particularly music influenced month. Nylon is my favorite magazine and every year I look forward to their music issue. They always do a good job about finding new artists not just in America, but all over the world. I especially loved that Haim was on the cover because they're a favorite of mine at the moment. Speaking of favorites, Lana Del Rey, my absolute favorite singer, released her third studio album Ultraviolence. I was so excited for it that I actually went to Target the day it was released and bought the physical deluxe copy of the CD. It's the first time I've bought an actual CD in six years and it's exceeded all my expectations.

I picked up a copy Lavinia Greenlaw's The Importance of Music to Girls on a whim and it was a very good read. It was interesting to see how music from coming from America influenced the author's life in her small rural England town and actually made me feel a bit more grateful to live in a country that so many other countries are attracted to.

I've wanted a pair of high waisted shorts for long time and I seriously lucked out when I found the perfect pair on Forever 21's website. Black and incredibly comfortable, I could probably live in these shorts for the rest of my life. Another great Forever 21 find was this plaid dress. I immediately fell in love with it because it was in my three staple colors: black, white, and red. It is a bit on the short side with the front hem falling a few inches above the knee; but the back hem comes down to the top of the back of the knee so you don't have to wear shorts under it if you don't want to.

The Importance of Music to Girls by Lavinia Greenlaw: Review

From dancing in long floral skirts in a folk dancing class as a young girl, to wallowing in the complete and teenage angst of her punk years (accompanied by the occasional run in with the police), Lavinia Greenlaw's  memoir The Importance of Music to Girls illustrates her life from childhood to late adolescence.

Just from the title, I assumed that the book would be about how girls in general find identity through different music genres; which it did, just not in the way I thought. (So why doesn't she just call it The Importance of Music to Lavinia Greenlaw?) Well that's just it: Greenlaw is retelling events from her younger years in a universal way that makes them relatable.

For example, during her love affair with disco music, she describes all too well the lengths that most, if not all girls go through to fit in with a specific group of friends: dressing alike, acting alike, synchronized laughter. In this section of the book, she talks about the group's leader, Tina:

"I was becoming a girl as instructed by girls but I knew I wasn't a real girl, at least not of this kind. I wanted to be a disco girl like Tina, whose every aspect conformed to some golden section of girldom: her height relative to her shape, her prettiness relative to her smartness, her niceness relative to her toughness...To me she was wise and ruthless, a goddess of war."

Reading between the lines of her memories, we're able to see that even though she seemingly had it all together with her newfound group of friends, she still felt alone and disconnected from them. The only real thing they all had in common was their love for the music that they would spend numerous Saturday nights dancing to.

As the book and different music phases go on, Greenlaw develops as sense of self through her relationship with music rather than through her friends and what they think is cool. The first example of her independence was when she bought a pair of straight legged jeans and wore them to her local youth club one Saturday night where she was then laughed at. Even though the people laughing were the same people that she had wanted so badly to fit in with, she didn't care. In her words, "After three years of trying to fit in, I liked the idea of being different."

The Importance of Music to Girls is available at all major booksellers for $15.