The problem with Girl Power? Feminism isn’t meant to be fun

Young women watching Anita Hill’s case were galvanised to tackle some of the unfinished business of the second wave with renewed vigour, while also reshaping feminism for a modern time, including seeking to make it more inclusive and “intersectional”.

“I am not a postfeminism feminist,” declared Rebecca Walker, writer Alice Walker’s daughter, in a 1992 article for Ms. magazine in which she gave the budding movement a name: “I am the Third Wave.”

Loading

It was this moment in time, the dawn of the third wave, that was foundational to my feminist awakening, and what led me, four years later as an undergraduate at New York University’s journalism school, to seek an internship at Ms. magazine, an experience that gave me a firm foundation for my career and advocacy that was to follow. But then things began to get a bit complicated with the arrival of Girl Power.

The term Girl Power was first credited to the US punk riot-grrrl band Bikini Kill in 1991 and grew up out of the third wave, but it was later popularised by the British girl group the Spice Girls in the mid-1990s.

Bikini Kill’s frontwoman, Kathleen Hanna, was famous for calling out “girls to the front” at gigs, a symbolic gesture that offered women at their concerts both a platform and safety.

The 1980s had been a bruising decade for feminism, well documented in Susan Faludi’s Backlash, which gave the phenomenon a name. All the ills that befell women and society were blamed on “angry”, “hairy-armpit” feminists. Childless? It’s because you pursued a career and left it too late. Stressed and unhappy? It’s because you’re trying to “have it all”. Left your kids at childcare? Did you know they’re staffed by paedophiles?

The “spicified” version of Girl Power offered a way forward, an opportunity to rebrand feminism and entice the next generation, in theory at least, back to the barricades. “It’s like feminism, but you don’t have to burn your bra,” Geri Halliwell, aka Ginger Spice, boldly proclaimed. “We’re freshening up feminism for the ’90s.”

There were five Spice Girls, each with her own niche brand: Halliwell, plus Melanie Brown (Scary Spice), Victoria Beckham (Posh Spice), Emma Bunton (Baby Spice) and Melanie Chisholm (Sporty Spice). They portrayed themselves as devoted to each other, a girl gang that was cheeky, playful, and didn’t take male power too seriously, as when Scary Spice planted a big kiss on Prince Charles. “You’ve got lipstick on you now,” she said.

That proved a prescient comment. We all had lipstick on us now, as this new brand of feminism was very encouraging of traditional expressions of femininity that the second wave had, stereotypically, jettisoned. In the Spice Girls movie, Spice World, Scary Spice scares a potential lover by saying the word feminism … wait for it … out loud. As he runs away, she joins the other Spice Girls in raucous laughter.

I suppose this cinematic interlude says a lot about the perceived “brand value” of feminism post-1980s and the widespread belief that it badly needed a refresh. “No way we’re gonna stay at home and do washing up for some man … he can take me out for dinner,” proclaimed Brown. What a simple solution to the unequal division of domestic labour between women and men. We can all go out to dinner!

Except many of us don’t have the privilege of dining out regularly as a solution to our domestic woes. And what about the wages and conditions of those who dish up that dinner? Or clean our houses? Or mind our children?

It was just about showing up with your T-shirt and swagger. Girl Power was focused on the individual quality of “confidence”.

Feminist academic Katharine Coman has described Girl Power as a “jumble of feminist insights and hopes”. But at its most simple, the issue was that Girl Power and feminism defined the problems and solutions very differently.

“Girl Power” refers to an attitude that women and girls should be confident, make choices and achieve things independently of men. “Feminism”, on the other hand, is the belief that women should be treated the same and permitted the same rights and opportunities as men. Notably, feminism also involves taking action to achieve this state.

There are a few subtle but important differences between these two definitions. One is that Girl Power was never particularly focused on how women might achieve things independently of men, the vitally important “action taken to achieve this state”. It was just about showing up with your T-shirt and swagger. Girl Power was focused on the individual quality of “confidence”.

From Girl Power, Lean In would be born. Girl Power was “like” feminism, but it wasn’t really feminism at all. It didn’t interrogate the power dynamics between the sexes. It didn’t examine the structures in which those dynamics operate. It didn’t ask hard questions about privilege, class and race, and who gets to benefit from the “power” part of Girl Power in a deeply classist and racist society and who doesn’t.

Loading

Those of us who came of age in the ’90s (present company included) were sold a pup. And I can’t emphasise the word “sold” enough: Girl Power was a product sold to young women in the form of merchandise, alongside the promise that the hard and necessary work of confronting structural inequalities and power imbalances needn’t happen.

You could be a feminist, but a “friendlier”, less scary version who didn’t hate men, wore make-up and got everything you wanted in life.

Women of this generation were lulled into a sense of complacency that Girl Power did nothing to disrupt. The Girl Power generation could take the previous generations’ feminist achievements for granted. Was there a great feminist fight for us to embark on collectively? Or were we now, as individual girls, the great feminist project? Yes indeedy, we were.

“The problem is – the problem has always been – that feminism is not fun,” wrote Bitch Media co-founder and author Andi Zeisler. “It’s not supposed to be fun. It’s complex and hard and it pisses people off. The root issues that feminism confronts – wage inequality, gendered divisions of labour, institutional racism and sexism, structural violence and bodily autonomy – are deeply unsexy.”

Edited extract from Leaning Out: A Fairer Future for Women at Work in Australia (Hardie Grant) by Kristine Ziwica, out now.

Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.