“Our philosophy is girls
controlling our destiny, taking control of our lives.” “Girl power” tells us that girls can do anything --
but can this sugary sweet message actually prevent us from fixing
a world that doesn’t let young women realize
their full power? In the 90s,
the “Girl power” movement embodied by pop icons,
The Spice Girls brought feminist thinking
into the mainstream. It was positioned as
a more accessible and fun evolution of old-school feminist ideals.
“It’s like feminism from the 60s
revitalised for the 90s.” But girl power also
was a shallower, commercial version of feminist ideas that were, previously,
a lot more edgy and disruptive. It took what was a political movement,
and depoliticised it. “Do you think Margaret Thatcher
had girl power?” “Yes, of course!”
“Do you think she effectively utilized
girl power by funneling money to illegal paramilitary
death squads in Northern Ireland?” The philosophy of girl power implied
women should empower themselves as individuals,
instead of dismantling the systems that stood in the way
of gender equality. Perhaps the most revealing issue
was that many girl power icons were effectively designed by men.
90s “girl power” heroines created by men like
Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The Powerpuff Girls, and Xena:
Warrior Princess all looked great while kicking ass.
Meanwhile, popular men’s magazines like Maxim, Loaded, and FHM
were redefining the feminine ideal as a woman who was loud,
brash, and unapologetic like one of the guys --
but still (of course) centerfold-ready. Today we can see
the dark sides of capitalism-friendly girl power in its descendent
“girlboss feminism” which is increasingly condemned.
And it’s this commodification of feminism --
turning it into a sanitized, child-friendly brand --
that is girl power’s most enduring legacy.
Here’s our take on Girl Power, and what happens when
a revolutionary movement is embraced and absorbed by the
structures it tries to fight against. I’m Susannah McCullough,
I’m Debra Minoff, And we’re really excited
to announce that we have a new episode
of The Takeaway on our Amazon Prime Video
YouTube Channel. It’s on a show we’re really
enjoying watching: The Wild -- so wild.
If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out on
Amazon Prime Video. It’s about a group of girls
whose plane crashes in the middle of nowhere,
and they find themselves on a deserted island,
and also find themselves in a fairly sinister,
complicated, social experiment. There are so many
interesting mysteries going on in this plot
that’s what I love about this show.
You’re wondering what’s really the reason
that they’re on this island.
Lord of the Flies meets Sisterhood
of the Traveling Pants, it definitely brings in
all of those cool themes. There’s a lot to unpack
in the season 1 finale, we find some answers
but have even more questions. This is a really important
Takeaway episode to watch if you’re a fan
of the show to try and figure out
what we know so far, what is behind
this whole mystery and where it could be going.
Go to the Amazon Prime Video YouTube channel,
watch our latest episode of The Takeaway,
it really supports us. Thank you so much
for subscribing and please keep watching. The first thing to understand
about girl power is that its origins were far more radical.
Punk band Bikini Kill, pioneers of the Riot Grrl
subculture of the early 90s, used the term as the title
for their second zine in 1991. Our fanzines were all about
feminism and political issues. “I actually wrote
a radical manifesto in the Bikini Kill fanzine
called Girl Power.” That zine contained
the Riot Grrl Manifesto, which reads as an outwardly political,
angry, anti-capitalist statement, with lines such as:
“we hate capitalism in all its forms
and see our main goal as sharing information
and staying alive, instead of making profits
off being cool according to traditional standards.”
“We weren’t making money, we knew we were never
gonna make money, and it was really important
we made our music, we were on a mission,
and we were gonna do what we did whether we got attention
or not.” Within that manifesto,
though, we can see kernels of messaging that would be taken up
by the more commercial advocates of girl power.
Take the lines: “We are angry at a society
that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak,”
or “us girls crave records and books and fanzines
that speak to US that WE feel included in and can
understand in our own ways.” This mainstreaming and
commercialization of the Riot Grrl ethos
was most clearly seen in the Spice Girls,
the British pop group phenomenon formed in 1994.
The Spice Girls were explicitly girl power
all the time, bluntly preaching empowerment
and strength in sisterhood in very mainstream spaces.
“We went away and wrote our own stuff,
managed ourselves, created the spicy
girl power movement because we had our own ideas
of what we wanted to do.” The availability of these messages
on the radio, TV and at the record store
served as a kind of entry-level feminism for young girls
who might not have otherwise been exposed.
And they basically boiled girl power down
to three values: confidence, independence,
and female friendship. “Spice Girls is fundamentally
about friendship. That’s what this group runs on” Female empowerment done
within a commercial space isn’t inherently bad
“It was like a diluted feminism, but there’s nothing wrong with that,
that might lead you to the stronger stuff.”
And girl power impressively did usher feminist ideas
into the mainstream to a powerful degree.
This manifested in network television shows
featuring badass, assertive, and audaciously “unladylike”
female characters like Xena: Warrior Princess,
who captured a big following through a take-no-prisoners mentality
that felt indebted to the Riot Grrl ethos,
“Open the gates.” “No.” “I’m in command here,
I said open the gates!” Perhaps the greatest legacy
of girl power à la the Spice Girls is that it made feminism
feel fun and open to everyone. As activist Nimco Ali told Stylist,
feminism is often heavy with academia, or too technical.
What the Spice Girls did wasn’t life-saving,
but it was dynamic.” And by modeling that
girls could be sporty or outspoken as well as girly and fashionable,
it pushed against gender polarization,
or the idea that men and women are polar opposites
who must live and behave in different ways
appropriate to their gender “You can wear your wonderbra,
as much makeup as you like, but still have some intelligence.
Have some balls!” At the same time,
because of the Spice Girls’ and girl power’s rapid rise
to immense popularity, The market transformed
the idea of girl power into extremely profitable merchandise
and barbie dolls, playing into the kind of
“clothes and dolls” female stereotypes both Riot Grrl and girl power
claimed to fight against. “Girl power is moving merchandise
by the tonne-load. 7-14 year olds are clamouring
to buy the stuff stacked up on the shelves
around me here.” Even the one-word monikers
each Spice Girl was known by (Sporty, Ginger, Baby,
Posh and Scary) encouraged young fans
to compare themselves to a narrow archetype of womanhood
that’s mostly about appearance (and in Mel B’s case,
many now question if labeling the one black woman in the group
as “Scary” had racist undertones) Whenever a political movement
that seeks to empower the disempowered
gets co-opted by mainstream capitalist forces,
it’s likely that those original ideas will get twisted to instead reinforce
the existing structures of power. And the girl power of the 1990s
did get used to essentially put forward pretty young females
as symbols of masculine ideas of strength
and intense individualism. Buffy The Vampire Slayer
turned a regular teen girl into an action heroine
and subverted tropes of valley girl blondes;
yet as professor and avid Buffy-studier
Lorna Jowett wrote, “Buffy may be a Barbie
with a kung-fu grip, but she’s still a barbie.”
“I germinated this idea how much I’d like
to see a blonde girl go into a dark alley,
get attacked by a big monster, and then kill it.”
“That was sort of the genesis for the idea of the movie
Buffy The Vampire Slayer.” (Moreover, the show’s feminist themes
have been somewhat tainted by reports that its creator,
Joss Whedon, allegedly abused his power,
and has been verbally abusive and cruel to female actors.
Meanwhile, girl power actively disavowed an old-fashioned,
political idea of feminism. As Geri Halliwell put it in 2017:
“Twenty years ago, if you said the word feminism,
you thought of those bra-burning, marching protestors.
It was quite tough and harsh. For me, Girl Power was
a much more punchy way of saying it.” The Powerpuff Girls villainized
a more explicit invocation of feminism “That’s right,
you sad excuse of a man. You’ve been rendered
completely helpless by a woman”]. Girl Power’s message
also coincided with the rise of a specific type of woman
in pop culture. Enter: the ladette.
This “guy’s girl” could binge-drink,
be sexually promiscuous, get into brawls,
and show a blatant disregard “I’m a party woman.
I only deal with one aspect of the whole gift department,
the essential Christmas present: the corkscrew.”
Carolyn Jackson and Penny Tinkler write that ladettes
“presented as occupying space outside the traditional
feminine domestic sphere, and crucially,
as taking space once regarded as the principal
or sole preserve of men.” In the UK this manifested
in the hard-partying, ultra cool aesthetic
of supermodel Kate Moss, and in television hosts like Zoe Ball,
Denise Van Outen, and Sara Cox. “Hopefully after the show
I’ll be making love.” “if he’s up for it.”
In British sitcom Game On, “one of the lads” Mandy
swigs beer, dresses casually, and has sex instead of relationships.
In the US, the face of MTV’s
reality dating show Singled Out and later the star
of her own sketch show, Jenny McCarthy subverted people’s idea
of a submissive former playboy bunny with a loud, unapologetic,
and confident brand of “bro-y” femininity.
“Ooo is the engine hot or is it just me?”
“Listen buddy, why don’t you save your breath
for your inflatable girlfriend, k? Pamela Anderson rose to prominence
in the same era with a persona that was,
while sweeter and soft-spoken, always cool, laid-back
and ready to go along with whatever the guys
wanted to talk about “I bet you don’t
go to the bathroom for weeks at a time”
“that’s not true” “farts are never not funny”
No doubt many women liked watching or identifying
with plenty of free-wheeling ladettes, who weren’t repressed or “proper,”
and got to enjoy being sexy while having a lot of fun.
But in the ladette, we also see the genesis
of what would become known as the “cool girl” trope
expertly dissected in Gone Girl “Cool girl is hot.
Cool girl is game. Cool girl is fun.
Cool girl never gets angry at her man.” Raha Murtuza writes
“The main problem with the cool girl is that she’s meant
to put down other women… The idea is that other girls
are obsessed with makeup and clothes,
while the cool girl likes football
and buffalo wings instead.” And you can see
how this partly emerged from these proto-cool-girls
of the 90s and 00s who combined feminine beauty
with boorish male fraternity culture, yielding an easily sellable product
for male-oriented entertainment. Meanwhile,
even though they were supposedly empowered women carving out
space in male arenas, these pre-cool girls
could end up receiving a fair amount of toxic backlash
and moral panic “They’re truly frightening.
Violent, selfish, with no sense of shame.
But not only are they hurting those around them,
far more worrying is the damage they’re doing to themselves.”
Simran Hans explicitly links the shaming, misogynist
tabloid culture of the 00s to the supposed gains
made in the 90s, saying: “We’d had the rise of ladettes
and this reclaiming of being a ‘boy’s girl’.
The 2000s felt like a punishment for women trying
to get in on the act.”
The phrase girl power
may not be used with the impunity it was in the 90s,
but we can still see its legacy in the blueprint of popular,
commercial feminism today -- especially in the modern archetype
of the “girlboss.” “I’m the one who created
this company from nothing. I’m the vision.
I’m Nasty Gal” In the mid-2010s,
peaking with the “Me too” and “Times up” moments of 2017,
girlboss characters and real-life female CEOs
were framed as empowering disruptors. But after a number of Girlbosses
(including the creator of the name, NastyGal founder Sophia Amoruso)
fell from grace, many questioned whether
“becoming financially successful while being a woman”
was really enough to be championed as a feminist icon.
The girlboss became known for fostering toxic work environments,
leaning into her privilege, or just not being any better
than the guy CEO -- but it’s her hypocrisy
of claiming that her success leads to all women’s success
that makes her so hated. “Tickets to these events
start at $300.” “Part of WAHAM’s mission
is to uplift every women, but can you really do that
if the price point is so inaccessible?” The “girl boss”
can be seen as the worst incarnation of girl power --
a woman of privilege who performatively espouses
feminist ideals while leaving other women
out of the capitalist, patriarchy ruling class
she’s infiltrated for her own personal profit.
But this gets at the underlying problem:
any capitalist-driven version of feminism --
or of any movement that’s supposed to be about
disrupting the status quo -- will inevitably become about
making more money for people already in power.
And it’s not hard to see that big commercial narratives today --
from superheroines to heist films to Disney princesses --
often espouse a popular feminism that’s really a descendent
of feel-good, reductive girl power. As feminism has become
more indisputably mainstream, it’s been increasingly commodified
and watered down, to the point where
one can brand themselves as a feminist without really thinking
about what that means, or meaning anything by it.
There’s a Girl Power-esque marketing-driven idea that,
if we teach young people not to buy into gender inequality,
it won’t exist. “What does it mean to you
when I say run like a girl?” “It means run
as fast as you can.” Contemporary children’s books
transform the stories of empowered women
into bedtime stories “Extraordinary women,
past and present, from Cleopatra to Serena Williams,
so the idea was to create this collection of bedtime stories.”
And in spirit of 90s girl power, this surface-level feminism
seems to assume that any woman who obtains
power or prominence is automatically a feminist icon.
Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls includes Margaret Thatcher,
who (though historically notable for being the first
UK woman prime minister) has been described
as an anti-feminist and even called feminism
“poison” policies. Revealingly,
Thatcher was also heralded by Geri Halliwell
as the “first lady of Girl Power,” “She was a woman that
moved mountains and was so powerful.” Today, another largely superficial
incarnation of girl power feminism is the Disney princess girl boss.
Emerging in the late 2000s, these bolder,
independent female characters have mind-blowing powers,
embrace self defense and sometimes openly mock
the idea of fairy tale love. “You can’t marry a man
you just met.” They were a response
to public backlash against the traditional Disney princesses,
who came to be perceived as too submissive,
passive or defined by their relationship to a prince.
But Enchanted’s Giselle, Tangled’s Rapunzel, and
Frozen’s Anna still fit within a proven, commercially viable
Disney movie formula -- girl power is again leveraged
as a marketing tool. Promisingly, though,
even today’s commercial, popular feminist tales
are getting more political and starting to acknowledge
that systemic problems need systemic
(and not just symbolic, individualist) solutions. The adaptation of
and revitalized interest in Margaret Atwood’s
The Handmaid's Tale -- whose red robes attained
cultural icon status while representing real threats
to women’s reproductive freedom in our time.
“We are seeing the outfits a lot as a protest symbol” --
embodies how “girl power” messaging in today’s film and TV can,
and should, be confrontationally political.
Girl power and the Spice Girls deserve credit for changing
the global conversation at a time when huge all-girl bands
weren’t really a thing (let alone bands made up of young,
working class women). Riot Grrl may have
called for a revolution, but what we got
was more of an evolution -- a change by degrees,
that has been meaningful over the years,
even though we still get steps backward. “More than 12 million women
lost their jobs during the pandemic,
and over 4.5 million have not returned
to the workforce.” But feminism today
is taking on a more collective, intersectional mantra that’s more
in line with the true, countercultural origins of Girl Power.
The ideals of 90s fun-loving girl power have become
fused with political feminist action by a generation of women
who grew up with figures like the Spice Girls as role models.
“Many of our social justice problems like racism and sexism
are often overlapping, creating multiple levels
of social injustice.” And mainstream voices
across industries are getting the message through
that “women-power” can’t be achieved through empowerment of the individual,
but through concrete shockwaves to the system.
“For equality in offices, in kitchens, in factories,
in prisons all over the world.” Check out The Takeaway,
our latest episode on The Wild’s
season finale. There’s a mystery,
it is a wild show and it really has
so much to talk about. And we think you guys
are going to be really interested
in this video because it really digs into,
what does it look like if you throw
a bunch of young girls together and you put them on an island
and you said “figure it out.”
If you just had a society that was all women,
what would happen? We see them going wild,
they’re accessing their primal selves,
they’re being really powerful. It’s definitely not
conflict-free, but there’s sisterhood too
and there’s an unlocking of their true selves.
So I think there’s a really interesting
carrying out of that thought experiment.
What has girl power been represented as?
What have we been told it is? Is it the Spice Girls
version of it? Is it the Legally Blonde version?
Or is it the badass Black Widow? It’s one of those contradictions
that girls are powerful and we are powerful
when we come together. And it’s true,
you want to make sure that you’re living that
rather than just letting somebody get rich off of
turning it into a shallow message. And that’s actually
the whole conflict that’s at the heart
of The Wild. It’s not just about
the relationships with others but it’s about
the relationship with yourself and it really digs into that.
Which characters do you think you most relate to
or think you’d be from The Wild.
I have some Leah in me but I also have some Nora,
which is funny because they’re always positioned
as these opposites -- Leah is very obsessed
and emotional and Nora is very detached
and analytical -- but I somehow think
I’m a blend of those too, very emotionally analytical.
Interestingly, I have a bit of Fatin in me,
who I think is a bit more of the Id
in the emotional. She’s not scared of pleasure
and she’s not scared of enjoying. And I think that’s a
really important piece of me. I think there’s
a little bit of Dot in me I think I would try
to pull whatever tools I could in terms of surviving
and helping out those around me. I certainly see, you know,
some of Leah’s non-conformity and sometimes how the desire
to get to the truth or figure something out
to the point of obsession. At what point
do you trust yourself? How does someone say
“let it go” to you, and you say,
“No, I don’t want to let it go.”
Go to the Amazon Prime Video YouTube channel,
watch our latest episode of The Takeaway,
it really supports us.
