“Little Miss S.” by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians

Posted on by Former Student
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Edie Sedgwick posing in Vogue.

Edie Brickell & New Bohemians is an alternative rock band that originated in the mid-1980s, broke up for a few years, and got back together in 1997. Since releasing their debut album, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, the band has released four other albums, all highlighting the band’s eclectic personality and style that was not made as present in their first album and more popular songs.

One song on the album, “Little Miss S.,” chronicles the life of Edie Sedgwick, an actress/model who rose quickly to fame, but died young at 28 after overdosing on a mixture of barbiturates and alcohol. “In a blink of the public eye,” Sedgwick was seen as a feminine icon, dubbed as an “It Girl” at the time. She became known for multiple reasons, one of which being her popularization of the miniskirt, noted by the lyrics: “Little Miss S. in a mini dress” (Songfacts.com). She also became a muse for the artist Andy Warhol, who included her in many of his films but mainly helped her create a media presence for herself, specifically focusing on her avant-garde style. This outside judgment reflected on her private lifestyle, creating a misunderstanding between her public and private image. Her private life of “shooting up junk in the bathroom” and “swinging on the branch of a broken family tree” was drastically different from the role model facade she outwardly displayed. 

In Luisa Capetillo’s A Nation of Women, she describes how women dedicate themselves entirely to their appearance, “squandering their intelligence in trying to become more beautiful” (Capetillo 8). She argues that in doing so, women are no longer themselves and are wasting time, money, and health by trying to live up to society’s expectations. She says that women should be “beautiful because of [their] strong constitution,” which is exactly what Sedgwick embraced (Capetillo 9). By living to create her own style in a way that was comfortable to her, she was admired by others, “living it up to die” rather than wasting away following the strict confines of daily life at the time. 

The representation of Sedgwick in “Little Miss S., however, is a limited portrayal of femininity. While she is portrayed as a role model, changing the name of femininity in the 1960s, her story is ultimately influenced by pressures from society; forming relationships with famous men like Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan and coping by using copious amounts of drugs and alcohol, leading to her early death. Her social status as a celebrity allowed for her to be free in expressing herself in more controversial forms since that was the way she gained popularity. While she stood as a role model, her story is not representative of an entire generation of women, simply due to diversity in social classes, races, and sexualities.

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