How dare she move out of 'Guyville'?

There's a concept that applies to this situation called "double-consciousness." African American thinker W.E.B. DuBois came up with it to describe the plight of black people within a white-dominated society. When one group defines all the terms, DuBois argued, anyone outside the group will experience a split between his own inner life and "reality."

Double-consciousness is what Phair expresses on "Guyville" -- the impossible position of a woman trying to be true to herself in a man's world. These songs don't vacillate between desire and contempt for the men they address; they tangle these feelings together until they can't be undone. In a song like "Flower," with its unprintable lyrics, Phair showed how girliness is obscene and profanity is sweet. "Mesmerizing" presents seduction as an act of violence and a longed-for goal. In "Glory," Phair's crush comes on like a lizard and a king.

Better yet, Phair and Wood figured out how to capture the sound of her brain cracking under the weight of so many discrepancies. Light does a nice job describing the musical side of "Guyville" in his liner notes, noting the tension between the "punk" rawness of the arrangements and the "pop" allure of the hooks and choruses.

Women responded viscerally when they heard these contradictions expressed. But Phair found a way to live with her own psychic disparities, which is what women do when they want to get on with life.

Meanwhile, that transition Light mentioned in his liner notes hasn't been resolved. Women might have more "choices" now, but the signals thrown at them via popular culture are ever more confusing -- the ideal seems to be some combination of ingenue mom, Indy 500 racer and Girl Gone Wild. Every news cycle brings stories of progress toward equality and defeat; the campaign of Hillary Clinton, whom Phair vocally supported, seemed to embody both.

So let's stop blaming Phair for moving on from "Guyville," and instead consider why this album, in all its feisty misery, still seems so current. She's making a new record that surely will be worth a listen in the fall. And with this reissue, she's given her fans something to pass on to their young daughters. We can only hope that it will be outdated when they're old enough to enjoy it.

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ann.powers@latimes.com