#radfemleaning

"Many women remember the first time they were called a bitch in pristine detail, like a first kiss or childbirth. For me, it was at a party for my high school soccer team where I got drunk for the first time. An argument with a friend about a boy escalated into yelling and she called me a bitch. I was so startled that I slapped her in the face. It was the talk of the lunchroom the next week, in part because we had just learned about irony in English class and my friend’s last name happened to be Slappey. Being the perpetrator was humiliating. Girls didn’t hit and I had violated the code. But I had to retaliate because innately I knew that being called a bitch was the worst possible slight.

By the mid-to-late 90s, the Riot Grrrl revolution had all but fizzled, while the troubles of girlhood, identified by researchers, persisted, if not intensified. Young women still struggled with body image, depression, and the specter of the perfect girl. Many still wanted to fulminate against the societal construction of girlhood, but they saw how women perceived as angry, manly, and difficult were summarily bitchified, so they opted to rebel by embracing girlhood but rejecting feminism. Exercising the right to be girly seemed like a logical path of self-actualization. Choice, after all, was a feminist plank. Moreover, plenty of girls weren’t ready to be the “women” their mothers’ generation told them they had to be once they turned eighteen. This was the backdrop against which Girl Power, a 90s mantra and marketing tool, rose to prominence. Riot Grrrl was never afraid to show its claws, but Girl Power, its successor movement, lacked teeth; it embraced the “girl” part but did away with everything else. In other words, by the late 90s, the Riot Grrrl rebellion had been diluted and commercialized. Ultimately, it ceased to be a rebellion at all, and instead became a full-on shopping spree. Where Riot Grrrl had used anger and disobedience to fight for social justice, Girl Power revered signifiers of girliness, especially those that could be purchased. Girl Power was such an effective marketing tool that girls growing up in the 90s, myself included, had no inkling of its origin as a protest movement. We thought the Spice Girls had invented it. To us, at the time, Girl Power appeared as an opportunity to delay womanhood and gain imagined parity with boys. It was “becoming a woman on a girl’s own terms,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Geri Halliwell, a.k.a. Ginger Spice, crystallized this strategy when she told a reporter that feminism needed weakening to become more palatable. “It’s about labeling. For me feminism is bra-burning lesbianism. It’s very unglamorous. I’d like to see it rebranded. We need to see a celebration of our femininity and softness,” she said. Fashion trends like lace, bows, knee socks, pigtails, baby tees, baby-doll dresses, and Hello Kitty accessories emerged to celebrate the sexy little girl. Celebrities like Baby Spice, Gwen Stefani, and Drew Barrymore expertly surfed the Girl Power crest in these fashions and bleached-blonde hair, while reports cheered their helplessness and sweet personas. By presenting not as women but as girls, their success and social capital soared, as George Washington University English professor Gayle Wald wrote in her 1998 paper “Just a Girl? Rock Music, Feminism, and the Cultural Construction of Female Youth.” The “girlishly feminine persona” worn by Stefani and others “potentially furthers the notion that within patriarchal society women acquire attention, approval and authority to the degree that they are willing to act like children,” Wald observed. Instead of forcing change, Girl Power infantilized and sexually objectified its crusaders. But, as Wald foretold, the rewards for choosing the Girl Power path were great. And so, like a brigade of female Benjamin Buttons, grown women pursued the reversal of womanhood to girlhood through behavior and consumer choices.