I’d Like to be a Riot Grrl
By Stacie Elliott
Is hot pink an acceptable color for my zine cover?
I am not as punk rock as I would like to be. Seriously. I look up to the women who can dress with a punk sensibility and pull it off. I would love to scream-sing into a microphone and have someone like it. I want to embody the spirit of punk, the disillusionment, the anger, the energy, the rawness, the no-fucks-given attitude.
I’ve tried. I’ve been angry. I’ve tried to disrespect my surroundings (I guess this is more of a metal reference but the energy is roughly the same). It’s just not inherently who I am. I have learned that I am happier not being angry at the world all the time. Feeling emotions other than anger is healthy and necessary for my health.
All of this in mind, I fucking love the Riot Grrl movement and Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney and all the others. These people inspire me, they get my blood going. I bet my roommate was quite concerned these past few days because I cannot stay still when I listen to this music. I first learned about this movement through a music YouTube channel I follow, Polyphonic. He did a video on the Riot Grrls in 2018, and ever since I have been a fan. He has also made a fantastic video about the Dead Kennedys and satire.
For context and background, the Riot Grrl movement was started by women in the punk scene who used their anger and frustration at the ‘postfeminist’ world that still distributed sexist ideas. Bikini Kill frontrunner Kathleen Hanna was a leader in the Riot Grrl movement and wrote the Riot Grrl Manifesto which stated the reasoning for the movement in wholistically punk terminology. Another paramount piece of literature from the Riot Grrl movement was the short-film documentary by Micheal Lucid about a group of eighth-grade women who proclaim themselves to be Riot Grrls. The group, lead by the main subjects of film Amber and Harper, are called the Dirty Girls by other students due to their *unique* hygiene and style. These two girls are seen as the epitome of the real-life Riot Grrls, making zines for their school and being bullied for it.
There is not a ton of reflection in this blog post. I was introduced to much of this information already, but damn I never thought I’d be talking about it in class! Some themes and ideas that piqued my interest, like the use of grrl (girl) instead of woman (I have given my fair share of speeches about how adult women are not to be referred to as girls because we are not children) or wide breadth of topics Bikini Kill covers in their songs.
I did get some answers from the Polyphonic video, like the reason for girl/boy language, which I thought was particularly interesting in the Riot Grrl manifesto, it is because the last time these women felt liberated, they were children. Also, I could say that the behavior of male audiences in the punk scene could also be characterized as immature, with their violence and juvenile style of aggression. Maybe for these women, a worldview more akin to children, black-and-white thinking, is more appealing in this complex world.
The declassing of feminism is fantastic. Listening to Bikini Kill’s backlog, they put some pretty complex concepts into their music. Topics can include the importance of female sexuality and the inequality in today’s sexual expectations, queer acceptance, the importance of education (especially about women’s rights). I think punk from both the 90s and today have the goal of bringing these complex topics to the mainstream. You don’t need a college degree to understand rape culture. You don’t need a college degree to understand why sex work should be decriminalized. You don’t need a college degree to support gay marriage. Like Amber from Dirty Girls said, “Anyone at any age can know that women are being raped.” Caring is so much more important than understanding the deep complexities of our society. Now, it is not unacceptable to study and understand society further, but it is not essential to understand the sociopolitcaleconomicracialsexual roots of why said bad things are bad.
Make feminism dirty, make it smell, let everyone touch it. It is not meant for the ivory tower, but the sweatshops on the streets. Just like bell hooks said Feminism is for Everybody.
I may never look like a Riot Grrl, but I can think like one. Nowhere in the Riot Grrl Manifesto does it say that “one must wear all black leather and dye their hair with homemade bleach in a gas station bathroom” to uphold these values. I need to remember that. It is our diversity of style, sexual orientation, background, body type, expression, skin color, and everything else that makes us strong. It’s our steadfastness to these beliefs that truly make us, myself included, Riot Grrls.
It’s people like Amber and Harper who bring others to revolution, who expose others. Kathleen Hanna, Amber, people like them, they influence and inspire this generation of loud, crass, explicit feminism. Grrls dirty grrls, like us.
Amber —
“They think we are stupid, because of how we look.”
Some of my favorite punk songs 🙂
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60q73ZqzN40
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrm2B0lhvYc
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MkRuV0aCcI&list=PLYvz938Sr5e6-f-mBadTr0AhrgYiqGeBQ
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZxxhxjgnC0
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAg9bItrsII
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbmWs6Jf5dc&list=PLvP_6uwiamDS23WxoCfqY4LBOXF_yF1l9&index=3
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZA_7FtttRY&list=PLvP_6uwiamDS23WxoCfqY4LBOXF_yF1l9&index=90
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVs7YB6o_2M
Works Cited
Hanna, Kathleen. “Kathleen Hanna/Bikini Kill, ‘Riot Grrl Manifesto’ (United States, 1992).” Essential Feminist Reader, edited by Estelle B. Freedman, Modern Library, 2007, pp. 394–396.
Lucid, Michael, director. Dirty Girls. Dirty Girls, Youtube, 4 Mar. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3MxEHQk644.