Girl Culture, Revenge and Global Capitalism: Cybergirls, Riot Grrls, Spice Girls

Australian Feminist Studies

Volumn 14, Issue 29, 1999, Pages 173-193

  Driscoll, Catherine ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0347803809     PISSN: 08164649     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/08164649993425     Document Type: Article

References (65)

1. This paper is part of a larger project on girls and feminine adolescence in popular culture and cultural theory. Respondents to papers based on this work at the 'Objects of Belonging' conference in Sydney, October 1997, at the Department of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne, October 1997, and in the Research Centre for Women's Studies seminar, University of Adelaide, March 1998, have contributed diverse lines of research to this project. Over a longer period, defending the possibility of talking about the Spice Girls on the 'Bad Subjects' mailing list has been an invaluable experience. Finally, this essay was and is for Deborah Staines.
2. Morag Shiach's 'Feminism and Popular Culture' provides an overview of the genealogy of cultural studies and its ramifications for feminism, arguing that 'the intersection of feminism and popular culture has never been anything but troubled'. Shiach, 'Feminism and Popular Culture' in J. Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (Harvester Wheatsheaf) London, 1994, p. 331. Like most commentators on this issue, Shiach notes a movement from feminist critique of patriarchal ideologies to studies of resistance. As influential examples, both Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique pointed to popular culture as pivotal media for the communication of oppressive patriarchal ideologies which women consumers of popular culture inevitably identified with in the course of their consumption. Pivotal texts in the redirection of feminist studies of popular culture towards accounting for the pleasures and resistances of women in consuming popular culture include Tania Modleski's Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-produced Fantasies for Women (Methuen) New York, 1982, and Ien Ang's Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination (Routledge) London, 1989. For overviews of changes in relations between feminism and popular culture see Shiach or Dominic Strinati, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (Routledge) London, 1995.
3. Morag Shiach's 'Feminism and Popular Culture' provides an overview of the genealogy of cultural studies and its ramifications for feminism, arguing that 'the intersection of feminism and popular culture has never been anything but troubled'. Shiach, 'Feminism and Popular Culture' in J. Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (Harvester Wheatsheaf) London, 1994, p. 331. Like most commentators on this issue, Shiach notes a movement from feminist critique of patriarchal ideologies to studies of resistance. As influential examples, both Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique pointed to popular culture as pivotal media for the communication of oppressive patriarchal ideologies which women consumers of popular culture inevitably identified with in the course of their consumption. Pivotal texts in the redirection of feminist studies of popular culture towards accounting for the pleasures and resistances of women in consuming popular culture include Tania Modleski's Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-produced Fantasies for Women (Methuen) New York, 1982, and Ien Ang's Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination (Routledge) London, 1989. For overviews of changes in relations between feminism and popular culture see Shiach or Dominic Strinati, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (Routledge) London, 1995.
4. Morag Shiach's 'Feminism and Popular Culture' provides an overview of the genealogy of cultural studies and its ramifications for feminism, arguing that 'the intersection of feminism and popular culture has never been anything but troubled'. Shiach, 'Feminism and Popular Culture' in J. Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (Harvester Wheatsheaf) London, 1994, p. 331. Like most commentators on this issue, Shiach notes a movement from feminist critique of patriarchal ideologies to studies of resistance. As influential examples, both Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique pointed to popular culture as pivotal media for the communication of oppressive patriarchal ideologies which women consumers of popular culture inevitably identified with in the course of their consumption. Pivotal texts in the redirection of feminist studies of popular culture towards accounting for the pleasures and resistances of women in consuming popular culture include Tania Modleski's Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-produced Fantasies for Women (Methuen) New York, 1982, and Ien Ang's Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination (Routledge) London, 1989. For overviews of changes in relations between feminism and popular culture see Shiach or Dominic Strinati, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (Routledge) London, 1995.
5. Morag Shiach's 'Feminism and Popular Culture' provides an overview of the genealogy of cultural studies and its ramifications for feminism, arguing that 'the intersection of feminism and popular culture has never been anything but troubled'. Shiach, 'Feminism and Popular Culture' in J. Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (Harvester Wheatsheaf) London, 1994, p. 331. Like most commentators on this issue, Shiach notes a movement from feminist critique of patriarchal ideologies to studies of resistance. As influential examples, both Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique pointed to popular culture as pivotal media for the communication of oppressive patriarchal ideologies which women consumers of popular culture inevitably identified with in the course of their consumption. Pivotal texts in the redirection of feminist studies of popular culture towards accounting for the pleasures and resistances of women in consuming popular culture include Tania Modleski's Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-produced Fantasies for Women (Methuen) New York, 1982, and Ien Ang's Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination (Routledge) London, 1989. For overviews of changes in relations between feminism and popular culture see Shiach or Dominic Strinati, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (Routledge) London, 1995.
6. While the image and composition of the Spice Girls have changed somewhat since the departure of 'Ginger Spice' or 'Sexy Spice', a.k.a. Geri Halliwell, from the group (subsequently to be incorporated as a specifically youth culture directed 'Ambassador' for the United Nations) - I am not yet prepared to make a distinction between pre- and post-Geri Spice Girls, and they have, at this point, in October 1998, not yet released much audiovisual or promotional material without her.
7. The Official Spice Girls' website is at .
8. During the frenetic period for Spice Girls' fans during which Geri left the group and two different Spice Girls announced engagements and one a pregnancy I was subscribing to a number of Spice Girls' (and related) mailing lists and newsgroups. On these lists, including, for example, , most fans were young girls, despite the perceived dominance of boys and men on Internet sites. It was also true that on Spice Girls' lists the most frequent posters were men.
9. Anna Golden, The Spice Girls: an Uncensored Account (NewBooks Press) London, 1997, p. xiv.
10. Along with anorexia and other body image pathologies, pop music fandom (or alternative music fandom) is one of the few issues which regularly include girls in cultural studies, with the exception of Angela McRobbie's continued work on a range of forms of girl culture (see 'Shut Up and Dance' and 'More! New Sexualities in Girls' and Women's Magazines', for example), and a profusion of recent work on riot grrls and cybergirls which are more amenable to the general interest of cultural studies practitioners in popular forms of 'resistance'.
11. Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel, 'The Young Audience' in J. Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (Harvester Wheatsheaf) London, 1994, p. 35.
12. Sheryl Garratt, 'Teenage Dreams' in S. Frith and A. Goodwin (eds), On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word (Pantheon) London, 1990, p. 401. See also Iain Chambers, Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular Culture (Macmillan) Houndmills, 1990. For more closely relevant accounts of the relations between conformity, resistance girls as fans of popular music see Angela McRobbie's 'Shut Up and Dance: Youth Culture and Changing Modes of Femininity', Cultural Studies, vol. 7, no. 3, October 1993; and the work of Ehrenreich, Hess and Jacobs on 'Beatlemania: a Sexually Defiant Consumer Subculture?' in K. Gelder and S. Thornton (eds), The Subculture Reader (Routledge) London, 1997.
13. Sheryl Garratt, 'Teenage Dreams' in S. Frith and A. Goodwin (eds), On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word (Pantheon) London, 1990, p. 401. See also Iain Chambers, Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular Culture (Macmillan) Houndmills, 1990. For more closely relevant accounts of the relations between conformity, resistance girls as fans of popular music see Angela McRobbie's 'Shut Up and Dance: Youth Culture and Changing Modes of Femininity', Cultural Studies, vol. 7, no. 3, October 1993; and the work of Ehrenreich, Hess and Jacobs on 'Beatlemania: a Sexually Defiant Consumer Subculture?' in K. Gelder and S. Thornton (eds), The Subculture Reader (Routledge) London, 1997.
14. Sheryl Garratt, 'Teenage Dreams' in S. Frith and A. Goodwin (eds), On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word (Pantheon) London, 1990, p. 401. See also Iain Chambers, Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular Culture (Macmillan) Houndmills, 1990. For more closely relevant accounts of the relations between conformity, resistance girls as fans of popular music see Angela McRobbie's 'Shut Up and Dance: Youth Culture and Changing Modes of Femininity', Cultural Studies, vol. 7, no. 3, October 1993; and the work of Ehrenreich, Hess and Jacobs on 'Beatlemania: a Sexually Defiant Consumer Subculture?' in K. Gelder and S. Thornton (eds), The Subculture Reader (Routledge) London, 1997.
15. Sheryl Garratt, 'Teenage Dreams' in S. Frith and A. Goodwin (eds), On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word (Pantheon) London, 1990, p. 401. See also Iain Chambers, Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular Culture (Macmillan) Houndmills, 1990. For more closely relevant accounts of the relations between conformity, resistance girls as fans of popular music see Angela McRobbie's 'Shut Up and Dance: Youth Culture and Changing Modes of Femininity', Cultural Studies, vol. 7, no. 3, October 1993; and the work of Ehrenreich, Hess and Jacobs on 'Beatlemania: a Sexually Defiant Consumer Subculture?' in K. Gelder and S. Thornton (eds), The Subculture Reader (Routledge) London, 1997.
16. Garratt, 'Teenage Dreams', p. 402.
17. See, for a range of examples, Charles Eckert's 'The Carol Lombard in Macy's Window' in C. Gledhill (ed.), Stardom (Routledge) London, 1991; and F.R. Leavis and D. Thompson, Culture and Environment (Chatto & Windus) London, 1933.
18. See, for a range of examples, Charles Eckert's 'The Carol Lombard in Macy's Window' in C. Gledhill (ed.), Stardom (Routledge) London, 1991; and F.R. Leavis and D. Thompson, Culture and Environment (Chatto & Windus) London, 1933.
19. Though more consideration of the globalisation of youth is warranted, for suggestions along these lines see Lawrence Grossberg, 'The Deconstruction of Youth' in J. Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (Harvester Wheatsheaf) London, 1994; and Tracey-Skelton and Gill Valentine's collection, Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Culture (Routledge) London, 1998.
20. Though more consideration of the globalisation of youth is warranted, for suggestions along these lines see Lawrence Grossberg, 'The Deconstruction of Youth' in J. Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (Harvester Wheatsheaf) London, 1994; and Tracey-Skelton and Gill Valentine's collection, Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Culture (Routledge) London, 1998.
21. Golden, The Spice Girls, p. xii.
22. I am referring here in particular to Simon Frith's Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (Harvard University Press) Cambridge, MA, 1996, in which he sets out to reclaim the concept of 'value' for the study of popular music.
23. Quoted in Golden, The Spice Girls, p. xvi.
24. An excellent resource for both riot grrl and cybergirl references is Crystal Kile's 'Poptart' Home Page at .
25. See also Annalee Newtiz's Riot Grrl page, which begins with dictionary meanings for 'riot' and then the following set of elaborations: 'A shrine to all girls who wish their gender started with a grrrrowl! And a tribute to all women who are too pissed off, unhappy, tough, geeky, or brainy to do and think what they're told. As Bikini Kill says, "We want a REVOLUTION!" Here you can find everything for the person who says FUCK YOU when the world says BE QUIET AND OBEY. And remember, you don't have to be FEMALE to be a riot grrl! Let's hear it for tough, genderfucked, radical males, too!!!' .
26. From the Poptart home page in 1997. One interesting aspect of the Internet as a political (or academic) forum or resource is that the ease of publication is supplemented by the ease of changing your text. By 1998 Kile has revised her link to Riot Grrl as follows: 'What, you ask is the diff b/w the two- and three-r varieties of grrrls? Why on earth should wcee tell you? It's actuallly [sic] pretty cool that grrrl/grrl/grl has entered the language as such, but it's becoming increasingly meaningless. If these are riot grrrls, then I'm Arianna Huffington. RiotGrrl is in the process of launching something called "Teen Grrl."'
27. .
28. - now called a 'hyperzinc'. geekgirl is a far more activist-oriented version of cybergirl feminism than others, like Riotgrrl. There is, I would argue, already a division between explicitly politicised and populist versions of cybergirl sites, for example via the referral page . Neither Riotgrrl nor geekgirl currently have the home page references to one another which they had in 1997. There also appears to be an increasing segmentation by age in cyberfeminism websites: some which cater specifically to teenagers, such as ; and some which specifically cater to older women but take up much of the 'cybergirl' aesthetic, such as ('for older chicks').
29. Rather than hanging with and getting together with their fans, riot grrls cohere loosely by opposing aspects of their social context, including the idea of the girl audience - the riot grrl group Bratmobile have a song with the double-edged title 'Fuck Yr Fans'.
30. Holly Kruse, 'In Praise of Kate Bush' in Frith and Goodwin (eds), On Record (Pantheon) London, 1990, p. 54.
31. This section of my argument is drawn from previous work on girls' magazines. See Catherine Driscoll, 'Who Needs a Boyfriend?: the Homoerotic Virgin in Adolescent Women's Magazines' in D. English and P. van Toorn (eds), Speaking Positions: Gender and Ethnicity in Australian Cultural Studies (Victoria University of Technology) Melbourne, 1995.
32. Diana Fuss, 'Fashion and the Homospectatorial Look', Critical Inquiry, vol. 18, no. 4, Summer, 1992, p. 714.
33. Fuss, 'Fashion and the Homospectatorial Look', p. 716.
34. Eve Kofosky Scdgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (University of California Press) Berkeley, 1990, p. 159.
35. Crystal Kile and Laurel Gilbert, SurferGrrrls: Look Ethel, an Internet Guide for Us! (Seal Press, Seattle) 1996.
36. 'Cyberfeminism' is a term usually attributed to Sadie Plant, as many cybergirl and cyberfcminism sites note. I will confine my discussion of cyberfeminism here to cybergirl sites, but for more information see Donna Haraway's famous 'A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s', Australian Feminist Studies, no. 4, Autumn, 1987; Carla Sinclair's Net Chick (Allen & Unwin) Sydney, 1996; and geekgirl's Seven Issue Itch! CD-ROM.
37. 'Cyberfeminism' is a term usually attributed to Sadie Plant, as many cybergirl and cyberfcminism sites note. I will confine my discussion of cyberfeminism here to cybergirl sites, but for more information see Donna Haraway's famous 'A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s', Australian Feminist Studies, no. 4, Autumn, 1987; Carla Sinclair's Net Chick (Allen & Unwin) Sydney, 1996; and geekgirl's Seven Issue Itch! CD-ROM.
38. Andrew Goodwin, 'Popular Music and Postmodern Theory' in J. Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: a Reader (Harvester Wheatsheaf) Hemel Hempstead, 1994, p. 417. In the liner notes to the CD version of the first two records Tobi Vail writes: 'We have been written about a lot by big magazines who have never talked to us or seen our shows. They write about us authoritatively, as if they understand us better than we understand our own ideas, tactics, and significance.' This is, of course, a presumption no one challenges with reference to the Spice Girls. Bikini Kill feel they are being misunderstood as popular: 'We want to be an underground band ... We don't want to be featured in Newsweek magazine.'
39. Kathy Bail, 'DIY Feminism' in K. Bail (ed.), DIY Feminism (Allen & Unwin) Sydney, 1996, p. 3.
40. On globalisation see Grossberg, 'Cultural Studies, Modern Logics, and Theories of Globalisation' in A. McRobbie (eds), Back to Reality?: Social Experience and Cultural Studies (Manchester University Press) Manchester, 1997; and Simon During, 'Popular Culture on a Global Scale: a Challenge for Cultural Studies?', Critical Inquiry, no. 27, Summer, 1997. Both Grossberg and During distinguish between trans-national economics and globalisation as a dominant idea of the global in relation to which markets, among other things, are established.
41. On globalisation see Grossberg, 'Cultural Studies, Modern Logics, and Theories of Globalisation' in A. McRobbie (eds), Back to Reality?: Social Experience and Cultural Studies (Manchester University Press) Manchester, 1997; and Simon During, 'Popular Culture on a Global Scale: a Challenge for Cultural Studies?', Critical Inquiry, no. 27, Summer, 1997. Both Grossberg and During distinguish between trans-national economics and globalisation as a dominant idea of the global in relation to which markets, among other things, are established.
42. Cross, 'Geekgirl: Why grrrls Need Modems' in K. Bail (ed.), DIY Feminism (Allen & Unwin) Sydney, 1996, p. 80. The Geekgirl merchandise page is very interesting in this light, as is their current home page which includes the slogan/caption 'Happy to endorse kewl products' .
43. Cross, 'Why Grrrls Need Modems', p. 84.
44. A Guerilla Girls home page is at .
45. Bernadette Flynn, 'VNS Matrix and Virginia Barratt', Continuum: the Australian Journal of Media and Culture, vol. 8, no. 1, 1994, p. 421. Under the aegis of VNS Matrix you can locate various cybergirl identities, artifacts and realms, like Genderfilth world: 'Tired of bleaching the grime of social conditioning? Then join our tribe of anarchogendaterrorists in Gender Filth World. Explode the binary with deviant software bombs! Feel your gender markings dissolve! (Children admitted free.)' The VNS matrix home page is at . Genderfilth world is at .
46. 'A Cyber Feminist Manifesto for the 21st Century',
47. Leslie Harpold, 'Courtney Love = RiotGrrl .
48. This interview with the Spectator is discussed by Golden, among others. The editorial comment accompanying this interview asked whether the politics of the Spice Girls would influence the upcoming British election. Over following weeks a range of politicians from all sides tried to be endorsed by, and to endorse, the Spice Girls. It was subsequently revealed that the Spice Girls' individual political allegiances split neatly into two Tory, two Labour, and one floating anarchist; and Tony Blair won the negotiated Spice Girl Vote, and the election.
49. The Spice Girls gave their first live concert in Turkey - a choice which might be seen to embrace the globalism that supports them, or as finding an exotic scene for a dress rehearsal. In Turkey, perhaps, the quality of the Girls' performance is more carefully muted by rarity and/or exoticism. Yet the international press agencies were watching and the major industry publications sent representatives to see if the Spice Girls could sing and dance.
50. This part of my argument is specifically indebted to conversations and arguments on the Bad Subjects mailing list and, in particular to the contributions of Laura Wedner, David Hawkes, /dave/McGregor, Doug Henwood, Kelley Crouse and Sara Murphy.
51. Kathy Acker, 'It's a Spicey Life Vibey Thing', Age (reprinted from the Guardian), 7 June 1997, p. C1.
52. Susan J. Douglas, 'Girl Power Puts a New Spice into Feminist Debate', Nation, 25 August-1 September 1997, p. 29.
53. Golden, The Spice Girls, p. 91.
54. Yet no other recent pop phenomenon has also inspired such hatred, like the Yahoo search engine specialising in Anti-Spice Girls, or the popular 'Slap A Spice Girl' home page and computer game. You hit the bouncing Spice Girls with a big hand to bites of their music and smack and ouch sounds (complete with distorted faces and the opportunity to hit Thatcher as well). The site includes the following disclaimer: 'Note for those ultra-sensitive losers who complained to us: This game does not in any way condone hitting women. It makes a joke out of delivering a cartoon slap to the manufactured, Tory loving, plastic, cartoon phenomonen [sic] that is the Spice Girls. The game delivers a pretend slap to pretend people making pretend music in a pretend showbiz world. We do not advocate violence against women in any shape or form. So fucking lighten up!' .
55. Meaghan Morris, 'A Question of Cultural Studies' in A. McRobbie (ed.), Back to Reality?: Social Experience and Cultural Studies (Manchester University Press) Manchester, 1997, p. 43.
56. Morris, 'A Question of Cultural Studies', p. 50.
57. See Bail's introduction to DIY feminism, which describes it as a 'generational shift [which] stems from young women's inability to find models of personal identity within the broader and seemingly institutionalised feminism established by older women' (Bail, 'DIY Feminism', p. 3).
58. See, for example, Michel Foucault, 'Power and Strategies' in C. Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (Pantheon) London, 1980.
59. Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford University Press) Stanford, CA, 1997, p. 6. In this context I am utilising only the introductory chapter of this text. Although the progression of Butler's project to find a useful intersection between Foucault and Lacan in this text might be relevant here it will have to be done elsewhere.
60. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, p. 15.
61. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, p. 17.
62. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, p. 15.
63. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, p. 16.
64. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, p. 17.
65. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, pp. 29-30.