Cecilia Farmer

Prospectus

Beginning as a group of inspired, young punk rock musicians intent on spreading awareness for the women’s rights, the Riot Grrrl movement of the 1990s began to spread slowly from its origins of Olympia, Washington and D.C. throughout the U.S. and eventually England and Canada. The movement’s Do-It-Yourself credo of female empowerment had a widespread appeal for young women who felt oppressed under mainstream culture and society’s restrictive expectations of girlhood. The movement called attention to a myriad of personal and intimate issues ranging from sexism, rape, eating disorders, homosexuality, and others. Women who had previously felt isolated now found their voice through the production of “zines” (slang for self-made, political magazines) and punk music. The musicians behind the movement combined the politics and aesthetics of punk and feminism together; music was a way to express their inner rage and frustration with white male corporate society. Punk is a genre known for its loud, fast, and angry sound, usually laced with anarchic, political messages to question authority. Punk also places more emphasis on authenticity rather than real musical skill, so many of the Riot Grrrl bands sounded like amateur players. However, the Riot Grrrls cared less about quality and more about the energy, passion, and ideas behind the music. Riot Grrrls all over the country worked towards creating a space for themselves in society, forming their own subculture as a part of Third Wave Feminism. This new generation of feminists, unlike the previous ones, did not seek to address public policy and economic issues but was more focused on the personal, everyday problems of life, as Sharon Cheslow, former Riot Grrrl, once said, “in order to really change things you had to look at what was going on right at your backdoor, and address it” (EMP Riot Grrrl Retrospective Interview). In the past, feminism had been geared towards the needs of older, educated women, while Riot Grrrl reclaimed feminism to fit the individual desires and issues of young girls and women in the 90s. They also valued a hands-on approach to activism through the creation of art, films, zines, and music, as opposed to marches, rallies, and petitions.

Despite its positive agenda, in 1992 the movement received a great deal of criticism from the media in such prominent magazines and newspapers as Newsweek, USA Today, and LA Times. The media caricatured the Riot Grrrls as girl gang bent on revenge against men. They were even accused of creating gender inequality in music. A few of the main misconceptions that arose were that they couldn’t play their instruments, were men-haters, were elitist, and not even qualified as a viable movement. They were even derided by other feminists who felt excluded because it mainly comprised of white, middle class, and well-educated girls. These attacks on Riot Grrrl eventually led to a media blackout from the members of the movement to keep their group from being further ostracized. Two years later, the movement disbanded and even the most influential punk bands, including Bikini Kill and Bratmobile, broke up. Others involved with the movement also eventually disassociated themselves from Riot Grrrl’s negative image. Their messages have gradually been diluted into mainstream music, marketing “girl power” to young audiences through pop music in all girl group bands such as the Spice Girls. The Riot Grrrl concept was twisted and reassembled to be more appealing to mass consumer culture. The political messages were essentially erased and the Riot Grrrl’s original concept of female empowerment was degraded as another marketing scam.

Over a decade later, a casual observer would say that the Riot Grrrl movement was only a blip on the musical timeline, but other writers beg to differ. Others have written and shown evidence of the influence of the Riot Grrrl movement on culture today through international zine networks and Ladyfests. A significant band of loyal Riot Grrrl fans have sprung up in the current generation and have taken seriously Riot Grrrl’s message of musical activism and becoming “cultural producers” (Harris 171). The first Ladyfest, a “non-profit, community-based event designed by and for women to showcase, celebrate and encourage the artistic, organizational and political work and talents of women,” was organized in 2000 by previous Riot Grrrls while trying to evade the errors they made with the Riot Grrrl movement, staying away from an identity based movement towards a more action-based movement (Wolfe). Since the first Ladyfest, other Ladyfests have spread worldwide to 27 other countries. Women all over the globe still identify themselves as feminists and take an interest in feminist music, art, and politics. International zine networks have also sprung out of the Riot Grrrl movement and have provided a public forum for women to discuss a variety of topics, such as music, pop culture, feminism, and others. The advent of the Internet allowed zine makers from different countries to connect in new and advanced ways. Unintentionally, Riot Grrrl has also left an impression on music culture. While not itself a standard of pop culture, Riot Grrrl has inspired a trend in music culture of angry singer songwriters such as Alanis Morrisette and Lisa Loeb. Riot Grrrl helped make it possible for women to feel comfortable expressing their femininity through music.

This question of whether Riot Grrrl was itself a viable movement and whether it has had any significant effect on women’s rights in today’s culture is something I want to pursue further by reading more of the current “zines” and looking closer at the “angry women in rock” phenomenon that has evolved through the history of rock music. I also want to measure up the different counterarguments against punk rock feminists from different books, magazine, and newspaper articles. During Riot Grrrl’s fallout with the media, several news articles brought to my attention the contradictions in the movement, such as their play on stereotypes by acting the part of the vixen or helpless lady. These contradictions and blatant “anti-male” campaigns undermined the movement and partly led to its demise. However, it is worth observing how despite its failure, the movement morphed into new types of activism for the new generation of Third Wave feminists.

Also worthy of attention is the forecasting of the future of feminist rock by tracing the patterns of female rock history since the 70s. I would examine how more opportunities for women have opened up in the music industry due to the contributions of female punk rockers of the 70s and 90s. There was one particular angle that I found interesting in Simon Reynold’s The Sex Revolts: seeing if female rock can, on its own, capture the same extremity of expression that male rockers have, without losing their own feminine identity, or in other words, sound anti-woman themselves the way that most of male rock music does.

While the Riot Grrrl movement was not the first group of punk rock bands to express feminism through music, they were certainly the first to ultimately solidify all of their beliefs under one banner, making it every girl’s duty to create and rebel, to take control of her own life, no longer the passive and dependent on men for identity. The movement created a place of strength where women did not have to feel ashamed to express their opinions and feelings on different matters that they felt was not taken seriously in any other public forum. It is this prerogative for making and doing, creating one’s own culture, that is relevant for future generations of feminists who mean to shape popular opinion by means of cultural production.

I plan to hopefully access more primary sources, specifically grrrl zines, to have a more well-rounded sense of their ideology. Video interviews and listening to the music itself have given a much more viable insight into this movement. By listening to a mix of different feminist musicians, it creates an opportunity for primary source analysis. For the centerpiece of my paper, I plan to use a scene from “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains” to capture the overall essence of the punk rock feminist movement. This scene has a young, male punk rock singer on stage head-to-head with a stadium full of angry girls. The exchange between him and the mob of girls is something of a metaphor and an ironic twist—with the man in the place of submission and girls in dominance and power. This, however, may change, since there are also many other potential centerpieces at my disposal, such as the Riot Grrrl Manifesto which serves their movement’s credo, stating their motives and overall agenda. I also mean to do more reading of the history of feminist punk rock as a whole, not just the Riot Grrrl movement, in order to create a more wholesome argument and to better predict the state of punk rock feminism today.