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Fifth Harmony may not seem like the most obvious candidate for feminist pop heroes. But the five-piece girl group, which was born on "The X Factor" in 2012, presents a more genuine and compelling face of millennial girl power than anything else currently on the radio.

Women reclaimed the pop charts in 2014, sparking a renewed interest in "girl power" as a concept, a marketing strategy, and as clickbait fodder. Last October, solo female artists held down the top five slots of the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks straight for the first time in the chart’s 56-year history, setting into high gear an overarching media narrative along the lines of "girls rule, boys drool." It was a compelling angle, with more than enough evidence to support it: Taylor Swift’s 1989 almost singlehandedly kept the record industry afloat; "Bang Bang" presented itself as a millennial "Lady Marmalade"; Beyoncé reset the standard for album rollouts; Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande, Meghan Trainor, and Iggy Azalea sat comfortably atop the charts. And yet something felt off about the media’s flippant insistence that the ladiez had so neatly seized the zeitgeist, powered by the spirit of #girlpower and sips from their mugs of male tears. For one, it was a narrative spun by a predominantly white male media, and as such, often felt try-hard and devoid of nuance, a one-size-fits-all empowerment comprised of little more than a perfunctory "you go girl."

Upon closer consideration, the "girl power 2.0" narrative began to deflate. For one, its breed of feminism was uncomfortably second-wave: it’s not hard to notice that the women reaping the benefits of pop’s reinvigorated interest in the female perspective were overwhelmingly white, and often selectively mining from black culture while shirking its accompanying baggage. Desperate for a snappy, condensable headline under which to lump pop’s female success stories, its complexities were glossed over. Why does mainstream media champion this kind of body positivity and hand-wring over this kind? Where had big butts allegedly gone from which they "returned" in 2014? And why does clickbait-era "empowerment" seem to rely on either pitting women against each other, or painting them in reductively broad strokes, as though artistic agency is dictated by some gender-ascribed hive-mind? To complicate things further, 2014’s bumper crop of ham-handed "Feminism on fleek!" trend pieces were offset by an incessant barrage of think pieces detailing the death of culture via selfies, Instagram filters, and other habits of young women thinly cloaked in terms of "millennials." It’s a baffling, and revealing, juxtaposition: bulk-value Kirkland Signature "empowerment" alongside constant reminders that, to adult male media gatekeepers, teen girl culture has no redeeming artistic value.

Enter Fifth Harmony, the five-piece girl group comprised of Lauren Jauregui, Camila Cabello, Dinah Jane Hansen, Normani Kordei, and Ally Brooke Hernandez. On paper, they may not seem like the most obvious candidate for feminist pop heroes: the group was born on "The X Factor" in 2012, ostensibly as a female answer to One Direction’s breakaway success (both groups were masterminded by Simon Cowell and placed third in the televised competition), a creation story that comes with an implied soullessness to a cynical eye. But in fact, the group presents a more genuine and compelling face of millennial girl power than anything else currently on the radio, filling the last decade’s depressing void of viable girl groups. Fifth Harmony’s first official release, 2013’s Better Together EP, centered around lighters-in-the-air breakup banger "Miss Movin’ On", hinted at the group’s potential to inject democratic, world-conquering bubblegum pop with unmistakable soul and friendly charisma, giving each individual member’s specific vocal talents room to shine while working as a unified composite. But with their debut full-length, Reflection, the group proves they’re much deeper than reality-R&B doubters pegged them for. It’s an album of fun, feminist pop that is simultaneously wise beyond its years (four of its five members are still in their teens) and refreshingly age-appropriate—and it effortlessly embodies the ideals grasped at by the girl power think piece wave, with a sharp, nuanced perspective that can only come from lived experience.

Reflection’s title track is a celebration of self-love without the somberness and pedantry that often comes with the topic, purring flirty coos to their own mirror images and breezily refuting the idea that women dress up for male approval. "We Know", a slick interpolation of DeBarge’s "A Dream" that serves as the album’s most impressive showcase of each member’s solo talents (Jauregui’s weightless pre-chorus is particularly stunning), resonates because of its dead-on portrayal of restrained revenge: the most effective comeuppance against a dude that dicked you over is to tell your girls how big of a douche he is. "Suga Mama", with co-writing credits from Meghan Trainor, subtly updates "No Scrubs" for the 2010s, depicting a frustrated girl supporting her deadbeat boyfriend with quick wit and casual realism. Lead single "BO$$" redefines "bad bitch" as a PG concept, aspiring to be like "Michelle Obama, purse so heavy, getting Oprah dollars" and renouncing men who take without giving ("I want a Kanye-ye, not a Ray J"); like "Independent Women, Pt. I" 15 years prior, it’s a song girls will be lucky to grow up with, with the added benefit of being catchy enough for adults to enjoy too.

Loaded with transient cultural references—from the nae nae to Mean Girls to #nofilter—much of Reflection is likely to erode with time, and for the moment, Fifth Harmony seem more comfortable cobbling together a selection of existent trends (along with a healthy dose of mid-'90s/early-'00s R&B homage) than setting the trends themselves. The album’s most recent single, "Worth It", is an exhaustive exquisite corpse of practically every radio hit of the last year and a half (Jason Derulo’s horns, DJ Mustard’s trance-y synth stabs, trap-inspired 808s, a '90s throwback sample, and a wholly unremarkable rap verse, this one from Kid Ink); "Like Mariah" does what is says on the tin, with a cute if expected "Always Be My Baby" sample, though thanks to the group’s unwavering self-assurance, the end result is charming. But where the abundance of buzzy slang terms and sung hashtags might come off as irredeemably corny in less capable (or less age-appropriate) hands, Fifth Harmony make these moments feel natural. This isn’t some jaded 20-something trying to get @DennysDiner more retweets, these are proud, honest snapshots of what makes girlhood fun in 2015. Album highlight "Them Girls Be Like" (co-written by Tinashe) is the perfect encapsulation of Fifth Harmony’s subtle subversion tactics. Belting out lyrics like "Do you ever post your pics with no filter?," the girls reclaim the habits often used to paint young women as vapid and narcissistic and celebrate them for what they are: harmless, fun, and often empowering. Reflection is what girl power really sounds like in 2015: a group of young women of color raised under the guiding principles of Destiny’s Child, TLC, the Spice Girls, and their moms, imparting that wisdom upon a new generation.

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