Traditionally it has been extremely difficult in mainstream culture for women to express their power, subjectivity, and desire. However, as psychoanalytic theory has been reworking notions of gender and sexuality, so has there been a concomitant cultural revolution in the world of women in rock n' roll. We will discuss the performances of two women in rock n' roll, Melissa Etheridge and Alanis Morissette. The images they present are of powerful women who express their gender and sexuality in every movement as they negotiate complex, multiple identifications. If according to Butler (1995), performance represents the acting out of unacknowledged loss, then we are witnessing an attempt at acceptance of those disavowed gender identifications and desires rather than the melancholic incorporation of their loss.