Shakira's Groundbreaking Rock Hall Nomination

For many Latinas who came of age after 1995, Shakira taught us exactly how to wield a guitar. She taught us how to assume a power stance. And, when I first saw her in the video for “Inevitable” on television in 1999 — headbanging so blissfully that her long tresses sprawled across the screen like a blue-black supernova — Shakira taught me that, even if I wasn’t a man, I, too, had the freedom to rock.