As Maureen Dowd would have it, 21st-century gender relations and roles have regressed to pre-second wave levels. Feminism itself seems to be the new "F-word." My female students often say, "I'm not a feminist but..." and routinely use the word "Feminazi" to differentiate themselves from what they perceive feminists to be. At the same time, Mary Celeste Kearney points out that more girls than ever are producing their own media (music, films, blogs, websites, zines). This contradictory state of affairs suggests that if dominant culture rewards girls and women for their competence in areas other than physical appearance it does so only if they remain "feminine." In (perhaps oblique) answer to Elizabeth Franko's questions, it's possible that the evolution of girl power is a case of hegemony at work: dominant culture's incorporation of parts of radical discourses and disavowal of others. Auto mechanics may be a perfectly acceptable career goal for 21st-century young women, but only if they can change spark plugs in their Jimmy Choos (or Manolo Blahniks). This is actually nothing new, of course. In the 1970s, empowered-but-feminine was the liberal feminist compromise with patriarchy. As a post-script, I'd add that the version of girl power we get from Shampoo, the Spice Girls, or even Our Blessed Lady Buffy is much less unruly and messy than that put forth by Riot Grrrl, which preceded but continued to co-exist alongside other girl powers in the 1990s. Shampoo, the Spice Girls, and Buffy present girl power in glossy packages that only weakly challenge conventional beauty standards, consumption, and bourgeois mores. This is not to say that at the level of reception, corporate commercial versions of girl power cannot be put to more radical uses by the audiences for Shampoo, SG, or Buffy. In fact, without diminishing Riot Grrrl's importance, its revolutionary message traveled through more rareified channels than did its corporate counterparts, meaning that the Shampoo/SG/Buffy version of girl power reached more people.