Where did the Girl Power go?
Source: By Bryan Borzykowski
Posted: 11/28/07 12:53PM
Filed Under: Music
When the Spice Girls announced in June they were reforming for a world tour, likely more than a few twentysomething women called their best friends to waxed nostalgic about the day they dressed up as a member of the band for their junior high school talent show.
“I remember being Baby Spice,” says Stacey May Fowles, publisher of Shameless, a Toronto-based magazine geared toward progressive teen girls. “I don’t think it was a guilty pleasure. I was totally into them.”
Fowles didn’t call her old buddies, nor did she buy a $150 dollar ticket to the Spice Girls' Toronto show, but the self-professed feminist did have a few flashbacks when she heard the band was reuniting.
Like so many other young women, Fowles wasn’t just a fan of the Spice Girls’ infectious singles, she was also captured by their messages of empowerment and “girl power.”
It was “fun feminism” she says. “It wasn’t very serious or deep, but it was these five girls who did what they wanted to do and wore what they wanted to wear. It was about friendship and solidarity between women.”
But what has become of girl power? Today we have the Pussycat Dolls whose brand of so-called feminism looks a lot different from when the Spice Girls were around.
“Who is this for?” wonders Concordia prof Leslie Shade as she checks the Pussycat Dolls’ website. “Maybe it’s for young men? It’s quite racy.”
The communications professor is clearly taken aback by the nearly nude singers on the Dolls’ homepage. While she’s not sure who the band is for, she’s sure of one thing, this has nothing to do with girl power. “I don’t even know if you can say that term anymore,” she says. “I’m not sure what the newest buzz word will be, but it’s not girl power.”
Robert Jensen, a Journalism teacher at the University of Texas and the author of 'Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity,' says that today, girl power has more to do with sex than anything else. “There’s this idea that women, especially young women, can gain power through their own sexuality, but that evaporates very quickly in a youth-obsessed culture.”
For proof just take a look at the Dolls. The quintet’s rise to fame had more to do with their skimpy boy shorts, bikini tops and declaring themselves “freaks,” than their songs. In less than two years, the band sold millions of records, had their own reality show and toured the world. Now, they've disbanded with lead singer Nicole Scherzinger gearing up to release her first solo record.
It’s hard to blame the Pussycat Dolls for marketing their hyper-sexuality. It’s the music industry as a whole that put all their eggs in the old “sex sells” basket. In the last 15 years, rap videos have gone from the 'hood to the strip club, while Britney Spears’ crotch is considered more newsworthy than her new record.
So what’s happened over the last two decades? “It’s the hyper intensification in corporate commoditization that sexualizes everything,” says Jensen. “In pornography you see things today that didn’t exist 20 years ago. Things that used to be only in the fringe are smack in the middle of mainstream. That’s going on all over culture, from music to TV and Hollywood. It’s a cultural phenomenon across the board, and one I think is very disturbing.”
Fowles is troubled by the Pussycat Dolls, and other acts like them, too. She says their type of sexuality is “not about empowering women. It’s more about being sexy to sell a product. That’s where the shift is.”
Of course, as wholesome as the Spice Girls appear in hindsight, they’re no Gloria Steinems. The band was an industry creation—much like the New Kids On The Block—not a group of socially-conscious feminists hoping to bring about meaningful change. The five-piece, and their management, made millions off concert tickets and products by pushing their girl power slogan everywhere they went. And, with Scary Spice’s leopard print outfits, Posh Spice’s miniskirts and Baby Spice’s cute, blonde pigtails, these girls could have belonged to a much older profession.
Jensen admits the Spice Girls presented a “message of solidarity and that’s a good message,” but he argues that the pop act isn’t that different from today’s more suggestive, girl groups. “The Spice Girls were being promoted by an industry that knows perfectly well that a number of people buying their music are purchasing their sexuality. In the end [the Pussycat Dolls and The Spice Girls’] fundamental status is as objects to gratify the sexual desire of men.”
While Fowles takes another view—he thinks Spice Girls were created for women rather than men—any fan has to admit that when Scary Spice wore her skimpy bikini tops or Baby Spice sported blonde pig tails and a cutesy dress that fell just below her butt, that these women knew they were pushing sexual mores. And their tween admirers followed suit, donning tube tops, tight skirts and Ginger Spice's British flag shirt with tiny blue underwear outfit, to the band's shows.
The band's limited use of fabric seems tame compared to what the Pussycat Dolls wear, but if it wasn't for the Spice Girls, Scherzinger and her crew might never have made it big in the first place.
As Jensen says, the Spice Girls weren't just purveyors of positive messages, they were also the product of the post-Erotica world, where a seemingly over-sexed Madonna could sell millions thanks to her risqué image. For some, especially boys, the Spice Girl's lessons got lost among all the hair gel and spandex, helping to drive home the point that sexual imagery can be more powerful than words. At some point even the Spice Girls clued into this, singing "Come on and tell me how you unwind, and if you open I'll blow your mind. I'll take you places you've never been before," on their last single "If You Wanna Have Some Fun" released in 2000.
The idea that sex sells worked so well for the Spice Girls (and others like Madonna) that record companies took their next crop of females - Britney, Christina - and made them wear even less clothing. The industry also drilled into girls' minds that they need men to survive and that other women are the enemy. It's a different message than what the Spice Girls espoused, but it sure sells well, if not better than lessons of inclusion.
With the Spice Girls' return to the stage on December 2, their happy-go-lucky tunes still intact, will we see a return to pop culture feminism of the early '90s? Don't bet on it, especially with Geri Halliwell quoted in the Guardian newspaper last month saying feminism is just "bra-burning lesbianism."
“I don’t think we’ll stop seeing little girls like Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan,” says Fowles. “It’s not going to change the shape of pop music and how screwed up it is for women, but I wish it would.”
0 %
0 %
