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It’s 1990, and Kurt Cobain, frontman of Nirvana, is passed out drunk in a motel room. His friend, Kathleen, writes “Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the wall with a Sharpie. Nirvana would later release a song titled “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, selling 16 million units and becoming one of the best-selling songs of all time. All with a title owed to Kathleen believing Kurt smelled like Teen Spirit, a brand of deodorant.
Besides Nirvana, the alternative music scene of the 90s was rife with music by iconic bands whose legacy lives on in the H&M men’s graphic tee section: Radiohead, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Green Day and more. The scene was dominated by boy bands in edgy packaging.
This isn’t to say there were no women in alternative music at the time. Kathleen Hanna, Kurt’s Sharpie-wielding friend, was a revolutionary musician in her own right.
In comparison to the likes of Nirvana, Hanna's band, Bikini Kill, (which was also active throughout the 1990s) remains relatively obscure. The legacy of alternative music in the 90s may be male-dominated, but there certainly were women in the scene - writing songs, performing, and coming up with iconic song titles on motel walls.
It was not all smooth sailing for these women. Instances of harassment, belittlement and exclusion experienced by women in the scene birthed Riot Grrrl, an underground feminist punk movement in the 90s that Kathleen Hanna is often seen as a figurehead of. Riot Grrrl had its imperfections and detractors, but its importance cannot be understated, with its legacy living on today.
Punk Origins: It's Not A Phase, Mom (1970s)
Riot Grrrl was the result of twenty years worth of music, frustration, and music about frustration.
Think of punk and you may think of aggressive guitars and sky-high dyed mohawks, though behind all this gritty flash is a message. The movement is often cited to have began in the 1970s, as a subculture featuring music and fashion intertwined with a main philosophy. Punx In Solidarity, a blog run by self-proclaimed “punk rockers” notes: “In its original incarnation, the punk subculture was primarily concerned with concepts such as rebellion, anti-authoritarianism, individualism, free thought and discontent.”
Bands like the Sex Pistols expressed these ideologies through their music with songs like “God Save The Queen", putting an ironic spin on the United Kingdom’s national anthem to express their anti-monarchy sentiments. Lyrics like:
"God save the queen
The fascist regime
...
God save the queen
She ain't no human being
There's no future
In England's dreaming"
earned the song a ban by the British Broadcasting Company. In spite of this, the track still reached number 1 in the UK.
Unfortunately for the queen, punk was no passing fad. By the 90s, punk was still alive and kicking, though it became obvious that a scene that sought to unite the misfits of the world was hypocritically exclusionary. This would all culminate in a movement that sought to quash this hypocrisy, and would pave the way for equality in alternative music.
The Riot Grrrl Is Born: Revolution Girl Style Now! (1990s)
If you were a woman in the punk scene in the early 90s, you may have had some unpleasant experiences. After a long day at work, you might have wanted to go dance and listen to music at a punk show - however, you'd most likely feel unsafe, considering your peers often experienced sexism or sexual harassment at these shows. Maybe instead of being part of the audience, you'd try getting onstage. But women in bands were taken less seriously than their male counterparts. Like Kathleen Hanna mentioned in her memoir, venues refused to get Bikini Kill a real sound technician, and men backstage called her a "diva" for asking for a bottle of water.
Considering this, it’s no surprise that women students in Olympia, Washington, felt discontent. Many sources credit the beginnings of the Riot Grrrl movement to discussion groups held by these students. They would share and express their frustration with the rampant sexism in society and the punk music scene, a space where they felt marginalised and voiceless.
The origin of the term Riot Grrrl is disputed, though its message is clear: it was a label meant to empower women to “riot” against the oppression they were facing. Their ferocity and passion was emphasised through the growling “rrr”, reclaiming a word that misogynistic men in the scene used to infantilise them, dismissing them because they were "just girls”.
The Riot Grrrl Manifesto summarises the movement's ethos:
"BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways.
…
BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak.
…
BECAUSE I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will change the world for real."
This was published in Bikini Kill Zine 2, one of the many zines that were circulated in the Riot Grrrl community. These DIY, self-published magazines embodied the rebellious creativity and ideology behind the movement. Cultural studies researcher Janice Radway notes how these zines “discussed domestic violence, incest, and rape; wrote about sexuality and explored the meaning of identifying as lesbian, queer, straight, or even straight-edge; and laid out their hopes for a more egalitarian, girl-friendly future."
These messages were not contained to zines. Bands like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile and Heavens to Betsy and many more spent the early to mid 90s penning, recording and performing music that sought to raise consciousness surrounding these issues.
Just like old school punk music, Riot Grrrl was loud, brash and chaotic, with bold lyrics like:
“Gotta smack the square world,
Corporate collective,
Boredom! Rage! Fierce intention!
This is the sound of a revolution” - Herjazz by Huggy Bear
and even bolder performances, with vocals like war cries and thrashing instrumentals.
Riot Grrrl zines and music were essential in raising awareness about the issues women faced in the alternative music sphere. They helped women carve out a space for themselves in a culture where men tried to crowd them out. Kathleen Hanna would call for “Girls to the front” at her shows to get the women in the audience to see Bikini Kill play their instruments, hoping to empower them to start their own bands. Huggy Bear, a Riot Grrrl band from the UK, was kicked off a national television programme, when they heckled the host of the show for being sexist.
This earned Huggy Bear some bad press in popular music magazines at the time, scoffing at them for being overly politically correct. But these writers weren't the only people critiquing Riot Grrrl and its artists. The Riot Grrrl movement helped to bond and empower women, but it certainly had its imperfections.
"Love"-Hate: The Problem With Riot Grrrl
Not every woman chose to call themselves a Riot Grrrl. The band Hole, released Rock Star in 1994: a grunge diss track about Riot Grrrl. In the song, lead singer Courtney Love makes purposeful false starts and puts on a ditzy affectation in her voice to mock the women of Riot Grrrl as being vapid. She references how those who “went to school in Olympia”, as many key artists of the Riot Grrrl movement did, “look the same” and “talk the same”. She also critiques the goals of the movement to start a “revolution”. According to Genius, ““Rock Star” is Courtney Love’s sarcastic take on the riot grrrl movement, and specifically Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill, whose friendship with (Nirvana’s) Kurt Cobain had been a point of contention.”
There is potential for discussion with Hole's criticism of Riot Grrrl's goal of a revolution, but in my opinion, the rest of the digs in "Rock Star" seem a bit petty and high school bully-esque (there are, in fact, lots of stories of physical fights and harsh comments between Love and Hanna that echoes a bully's repertoire, but that's another story.). Besides "Rock Star", there were other more serious discussions of Riot Grrrl's issues in retrospect.
Musician Tamar-kali spoke about her perspective on the movement as a black woman: “I didn’t think it was exclusive, but it didn’t feel inclusive to me. I didn’t see myself or my story… it just felt super white.”
In an interview with KEXP in 2023, Bratmobile’s Alison Wolfe and Molly Neuman, responded to the suggestion that Riot Grrrl was a “white girl thing”:
Neuman: …I think in real time at the time there was legitimate critique around what was perceived to be a homogenous kind of group. I mean, that doesn't exclude it from being valuable and critical for other progress that I think we can sort of see evidence of still today…
Wolfe: … I think it's important to recognize that, you know, the people who were involved in riot grrrl who don't fit that white, middle-class, whatever. So, there are some people like Ramdasha Bikceem who did [the] GUNK fanzine. Really integral to riot grrrl. Although she also does complain about the lack of diversity within it at the time and has spoken about it since as well. And there's a lot of other people. I don't want to erase them. And sometimes it's also a part of who gets to write history and who gets written in and out of history. It's like, these women were there, you know, And they should be talked about more and their work should be seen more.
It's important when reflecting on Riot Grrrl that we view it through a critical lens. As Wolfe notes, just like how the originators of Riot Grrrl had felt excluded from male-dominated punk, Riot Grrrl had also perpetuated the exclusion of other women.
Still, it cannot be ignored: as Neuman mentions, Riot Grrrl had a massive and important impact on music. Modern bands inspired by the original movement like Cherry Glazerr and Tacocat still make music discussing the issues those women in Olympia started the conversation about 30 years ago. Perhaps without the foremothers of Riot Grrrl fighting for space and equality in punk music, we would have less women who were empowered to start making their own art.
35 years later, Riot Grrrl's cries for “Revolution Girl Style Now” are still being answered.
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