Last June, Newsweek spotted a species of American teenagers that it called Gamma Girls: high school females who are ambitious about their futures and smart about the dangers of sex and drugs. Rolling Stone more recently ran an article profiling college-age women who exert "control" over their bodies and do what they like, regardless of social convention.

You can't help but notice the tone of awe, as if high school girls intent on getting good grades and fulfilling careers had never existed; or college women had never before asserted their will and self-possession. Thirty years after the commodification of the women's movement, girls still bewilder the Establishment (yes, Rolling Stone is the Establishment).

But whether or not the Establishment understands them, they must be listened to, which explains the recent ascent of independent-minded girl singers on the album charts. Because these artists write their own songs, work in the conventional rock idiom and, supposedly, chart their own destinies, they have been labeled the "anti-Britneys."