Books: Girl Power

I made a slightly unnerving discovery yesterday. I am not, as I thought, a card-carrying member of Generation X. But I'm not quite young enough to count myself among the ranks of Generation Y. This makes a lot of sense in hindsight: I was still playing Barbies when Madonna broke, and I was old enough to know better when the Spice Girls did. There wasn't a lot out there for a teenage girl in the late 80s and early 90s. Little did I know that while I bided my time between The Facts of Life and My So-Called Life, there was a groundswell of politically charged, female-led rock bands forming.

Fast forward a few years. It's the mid 90s, and I just scored a copy of Sleater-Kinney's Call The Doctor. I was just out of college, and looking to supplement my record collection when I should have been looking for a job. Here were three women about my age, who dressed like me and sang about all the shit that was bouncing around in my head. Until then the only band I remotely identified was the Replacements -- four working class guys from the Midwest who found (moderate) success without actually leaving their hometown of Minneapolis. At the time, this was groundbreaking stuff. I had no idea one could achieve if not fame, infamy, without moving to a coast. The only problem was that as much as their image -- or lack thereof -- spoke to me, the music didn't. Sleater-Kinney's did. And it led to the discovery of more and more "girl" bands, without whom this site probably wouldn't exist.

Marisa Meltzer's book, Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music, tells the stories of those bands and the girls they inspired to pick up a guitar, or rage against the machine. And it's about time. There have been a lot of books about the 80s and 90s indie rock scene published in the last few years, but something's been missing: The women! Girl Power is a much needed addition to the canon. Along with the riot grrrl bands of the 90s, Meltzer also writes about the Spice Girls phenomenon and the rise and fall of Britney, which I'd never really thought of as a parallel to the more political, erudite bands, but whose influence on girls cannot be understated.

Related Links:
The Feministing Five: Marisa Meltzer (Feministing)
Marisa Meltzer’s Actual Girl Power: The Autostraddle Interview (Autostraddle)