‘Killing Ourselves is Not Subversive’: Riot Grrrl from Zine to Screen and the Commodification of Female Transgression

Abstract

This article draws on material from the riot grrrl archives at New York University's Fayles Library to examine the culture of 'zine' production in US riot grrrl communities during the 1990s. After investigating the relationship between the political issues and aesthetic strategies explored by riot grrrl literary producers, I analyse the points of tension arising within the movement which become illuminated by zines' revelatory confessional modes, or what Mimi Thi Nguyen has called riot grrrl's 'aesthetics of access'. I subsequently enquire after the implications for riot grrrl politics of understanding experiences of oppression and transgressive behaviour as cultural commodities. Finally, I go on to trace the commodification of the transgressive feminist gesture in mainstream popular culture and contemporary US online feminist activism. Biographical information Emily Spiers is a Research Associate at the Department of European Languages and Cultures at Lancaster University. Her doctoral thesis explored modes of popular contemporary feminist writing in the US, Britain and Germany. She is currently researching feminist literary activism in relation to spoken-word poetry.

DIY and Popular Music: Mapping an Ambivalent Relationship across Three Historical Case Studies

“…The riot grrrl message of female empowerment as urgent and vibrant was popularized globally by UK pop act The Spice Girls, whose "girl power" slogan was taken directly (though perhaps unknowingly) from a zine by riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna (Spiers 2015, p.14, note 17). Whilst The Spice Girls' endorsement of beauty products, clothing lines, and a range of dolls may have identified their brand of empowerment as problematically consumerist for many (Spiers 2015), their encouragement to girls and young women to be visible and "loud" was, at least tonally, in keeping with riot grrrl's aims (Jacques 2001;Schilt 2003a).…”