The Girls of Rock and Roll

Seeing as we’ve been talking about sexualisation and representation this week, I thought it was important to discuss the subversion of traditional gender roles used by the Riot Grrls. Riot Grrl was feminist movement that began in the early 90’s and peaked in Washington in the mid 1990’s. By creating hyper-femininity and girlishness, the women in this movement subverted traditional representations of women in rock music to make a feminist statement.Their use of irony and comic use of makeup and clothing as a way of examining traditional media roles brought them significant media attention (Wald 2002: 198-201).

Bands like Bikini Kill wrote ‘whore’ and ‘Slut’ on their bodies, drawing attention to the double standard of sexualisation in the male dominated music scene (Peraino 2001:696). While the music was supported by students and feminists, the music press gave them less attention. Riot Grrl was always referred to as ‘a ‘female version of punk’, which not only avoided coverage of the political motivations for such a movement, but also denied the Riot Grrl’s of any recognition of their originality (Davies 2001:314). This would explain by Riot Grrl bands avoided the traditional media, and photocopied fanzines gained alot of popularity.

But the message of Riot Grrl did not die out. Uber-girlishness has been used by artists like Gwen Stefani to sing what it’s like to be ‘Just a Girl’, and because of No Doubt’s record deal, Stefani’s message was taken to a much wider audience.

Alex