The term ‘Girl Power’ is said to have originated from the Riot Grrrl movement, where “GirlPower” (1991) was used as a title for a zine created by Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail, members of one of the leading bands of the movement, Bikini Kill.
This third-wave feminist movement was brazen and wild; as Stevens says, the movement was, in part, a reactionary female backlash “against increasingly anti-women facets in the DC punk scene; in part as a way to drag to light the hidden horrors of sexual abuse; but also simply the frustration of being shut out, degraded, mocked and laughed at for being a girl trying to make music.”
The movement was as political as it was musical, if not more so, described as “a music subculture-turned-ideological revolution” (Zeisler 2016).
They talked openly in their chapter meetings and “culture of girl-produced, DIY media” (Zeisler 2016) about women’s issues that hadn’t been widely spoken about in the public sphere before, such as rape, domestic violence, mental illness and eating disorders. Whilst at college, Kathleen Hanna took on volunteering work at “Safeplace, a domestic violence shelter, doing crisis counseling and giving presentations at high schools on rape and sexual assault.” (Marcus 2010: 38-19) In an early band of hers, Viva Knievel, Hanna addressed these issues in her songs as well as off stage, with girls seeking out Kathleen after shows to talk to her about their own experiences with cruel and violent men in their lives (Marcus 2010:38- 39).
The late 80s and early 90s also saw the rise of postfeminism, with feminism denounced as dead; “the political landscape was pocked with a bitter conventional wisdom that feminism had, if not outlived its usefulness, then certainly aided the creation of a culture of victimhood that infantilized girls and women, demonized men, and made sexual dynamics a minefield.” (Zeisler 2016: 156) The anti-intersectional, privileged and surface-level approach to feminism that postfeminism makes, the assumption that “the work of feminism had been accomplished” (Meltzer 2010: 12) is damaging to society; as Susan Faludi writes in her 1992 novel, Backlash, “If women are now so equal, why are they much more likely to be poor, especially in retirement? […] why of 1,200 surgeons in the UK, are there only ten women?”
Kathleen Hanna was particularly bothered by this declaration that feminism was dead, “If feminism’s work was finished, what were all the women at Safeplace doing there?” (Marcus 2010: 40). Riot Grrrl was proof that feminism was still alive.
The Riot Grrrl manifesto, first published in the 1991 Bikini Kill zine “GirlPower”, and read aloud in a video of Kathleen Hanna (Bicephaly Pictures 2013), states the reasoning and motives of Riot Grrrl; why “Riot Grrrl is”. [FULL MANIFESTO IN APPENDIX]
One line of this manifesto stands out here, especially in relation to the semantics of the phrase Girl Power itself: “BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak.”. The idea that “Girl = Weak” is directly juxtaposed and fought against within the use “Power” in Girl Power. As Kathleen Hanna tells us in an interview with VICE magazine, "Tobi [Vail] and I discussing what word just felt totally wrong next to girl, and we came up with power." (Stevens 2016)
The term Girl Power itself provides important semantic discussions and using lexical semantic methodologies provide even more insight into the significance behind this phrase. For example, “[O]ur concept of boy and girl contrasts them to the world of adults and stresses their immaturity, weakness and innocence” (Lenker 1999: 13). Considering the word girl specifically, and its connotations of youth and “weakness” is important here. Although traditionally it is meant to refer to a female child, it is often used to refer also to adult women. These connotations persist in this use of the word, as illustrated in this excerpt from Language and Woman's Place:
“One seldom hears a man past the age of adolescence referred to as a boy, save in expressions like 'going out with the boys', which are meant to suggest an air of adolescent frivolity and irresponsibility. But women of all ages are 'girls': one can have a man, not a boy, […] girl is (presumably) flattering to women because of its stress on youth. But here again there are pitfalls: in recalling youth, frivolity and immaturity, girl brings to mind irresponsibility […] It seems that again, […] the users of English have assigned women to a very unflattering place in their minds: a woman is a person who is both too immature and too far from real life to be entrusted with responsibilities and with decisions of any serious nature.” (Lakoff 1973: 61)
Power here is a word that sits at odds with girl, given the connotations of powerlessness. –needs more detail-
Riot Grrrl, both semantically and as the movement itself, sought to “reinvent feminism for our generation” and “change what it means to be a girl” (Melzter 2010: 13)
The online Oxford Dictionary definition defines Grrrl as “A young woman regarded as independent and strong or aggressive. Origin [:] 1990s: blend of grrr, representing the sound of an animal growling (and thus human anger) and girl, originally a variant of girl in riot girl.”
“[Tobi] Vail transfigured the word “girl” to “grrrl”, giving it a ferocious growl” (Meltzer 2010: 13). Riot Grrrl’s use of Grrrl represents the female anger and aggressiveness that is portrayed throughout the movement, in songs like Terrorist by Heavens to Betsy (1994); “You follow me on the fucking street, you make me feel like a piece of meat, you think I don't know what war means, Now I'm the terrorist, see how it feels. I'm gonna kill you, I'll gut you and gouge out your eyes”.
The Spice Girls’ version of Girl Power is ultimately more problematic to define, as unlike Riot Grrrl, The Spice Girls didn’t start out with the intention of reinventing feminism, but the desire to be famous; meaning their Girl Power message was not at the forefront of their ideologies and ethos from the beginning. “It’s often been said that the Spice Girls were a “manufactured” group. In all material respects, that’s exactly what they were” (Sinclair 2004: 6) The Spice Girls formed after a call for auditions was put up in The Stage by Bob and Chris Herbert’s father-son management team, reading:
“WANTED: R.U. 18–23 with the ability to sing/dance? R.U. streetwise, outgoing, ambitious, and dedicated? Heart Management Ltd. are a widely successful music industry management consortium currently forming a choreographed, singing/dancing, all-female pop act for a recording deal.” (Sinclair 2004: 5)
Five girls were chosen, Melanie Brown, Melanie Chilsom, Geri Halliwell, Victoria Adams (now Beckham) and Michelle Stephenson, later replaced by Emma Bunton, and the Spice Girls were created. They all were moved into a house together and began training regime, including dancing and singing and writing. They initially had “several songs composed for them” (Sinclair 2004: 11).
Their aim was to create a female band to match the boy bands that dominated the charts of the time.
The Spice Girls’ own glib version of the Riot Grrrl manifesto appears in their official book, Girl Power (1991);
“Girl Power is when…
you help a guy with his bag
you and your mates reply to wolf whistles by shouting “get your arse out!”
You wear high heels and think on your feet
You know you can do it and nothing’s going to stop you
You don’t wait around for him to call
You stick with your mates and they stick with you
You’re loud and proud even when you’ve broken out in spots
You believe in yourself and control your own life”
The Spice Girls themselves often aren’t too clear with what this buzzword means to them. Often they contradict themselves in interviews, or by their lyrics and videos.
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Part of what made the Spice Girls so popular was their accessibility. They were seemingly normal women, “It didn’t matter that the five women weren’t particularly talented singers or dancers; it was their appearance of ordinariness – along with their message of total empowerment – that was their greatest asset.” (Meltzer 2010: 79)
“The Spice Girls derived legitimacy by seeming to be ordinary girls. We could expect them to behave as one of us might do if we became famous.” (Dawson 2005)
Part of this also was that they presented themselves as archetypal girls, ones that you would know, or could easily identify with, and people did. “[O]f course, any Spice Girl fan worth her salt knew exactly which member she ‘was’ – whether you made the choice yourself or had it forced upon you by group consensus because you had blonde hair/ glasses” (Bravo 2018: 15)
The Spice Girls, and their management didn’t conceive the girls’ monikers;
journalists, Peter Loraine and Jennifer Cawthron, dubbed the Girls in an interview for Top of the Pops, and they were then employed by the rest of the press as well as the girls themselves.
“Peter Loraine, the editor, suggested presenting them as a spice rack, and the girls were already like cartoon characters of themselves so it only took about 10 seconds to come up with nicknames. Victoria was ‘Posh Spice’, because she was wearing a Gucci-style mini dress and seemed pouty and reserved. Emma wore pigtails and sucked a lollipop, so obviously she was ‘Baby Spice’. Mel C spent the whole time leaping around in her tracksuit, so we called her ‘Sporty Spice’. I named Mel B ‘Scary Spice’ because she was so shouty. And Geri was ‘Ginger Spice’, simply because of her hair. Not much thought went into that one. Honestly, I thought that’s the last we’d hear of the Spice Girls. But the following week, the Daily Star picked up on the nicknames, then all the tabloids ran with it.” (Jennifer Cawthron in Stylist Magazine 2016)
The Spice Girls were meant to be proud of showing their complex and individual personalities yet embraced nicknames that pigeonhole each girl into a stereotype of a woman. “Whether the Spice personae were a nefarious attempt to box up multifaceted women or just easily relatable shorthand for their young audience, they were, at least very memorable” (Meltzer 2010: 79)
The Spice Girls were known to have a powerful press-handling team behind them, namely Gerrard Tyrrell, a solicitor hired by Simon Fuller in 1997 to oversee the Girls’ press relationship. Tyrrell created a close relationship with newspapers, in particular their senior management, making sure that any stories about the girls came to him before they were published. Numerous times, he worked on debunking any untrue news or rumours that came to light around these girls, including those around pregnancy of several of the girls (Sinclair 2004: 91-93). With this in mind, The Spice Girls could have very easily spurned these nicknames if they had wanted to.
In an interview with Stephen Colbert, Mel B talks about the way these nicknames were given to them, describing Peter Loraine as an “extremely lazy” journalist who “couldn’t be bothered to remember all of our names and gave us all nicknames” (2017). However, the girls embraced the nicknames that now seem fairly problematic.