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SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT: RIOT GRRRLS, REVOLUTION, AND WOMEN IN INDEPENDENT ROCK
In the meteoric rise of quintessential Seattle grunge band Nirvana from indie obscurity to corporate rock fame, there emerged among rock circles nationwide a small but significant rumor: that the cryptic title of their megahit "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was the invention not of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain, but of his neighbor Kathleen Hanna, who jokingly scrawled it on the wall of Cobain's house prior to his ascension to rock stardom. From this one gesture and its retelling ensue multiple ironies, dizzying, in their cumulative effect. First, the anecdote hints at the creative in visibility of a woman behind what was to become an ubiquitous, industry-changing, top-ten hit for a male rock group. The story additionally implies the male appropriation of Hanna's own ironic reference to a brand-name deodorant marketed to teenage girls (Teen Spirit). While the pointedness of Hanna's reference gets lost in Nirvana's translation, she uses a brand name which itself conjures notions of female teenage identity, group activity, and group solidarity. In solidarity. IN short, in an ambiguous use of "teen" which actually refers specifically to female teens, "Teen Spirit" creates a marketable fantasy of female youth culture. Moreover, in contrast to her previous invisibility, Hanna now suddenly occupies a position of mass visibility as lead member of Bikini Kill, a band which has gained particular prominence, both within the independent music scene and in the corporate rock press, for its role in fostering the riot grrrl "movement" of young feminist women in underground fork. Given these origins, Hanna's slogan consolidates several themes that we propose to explore in this essay: namely, girl-specificity within commodity culture and youth subculture; the historical in visibility of women in rock; the newfound prominence of women hands; the relation between performance, gender, and sexuality; and the possible links between women's musical production, feminist politics, and feminist aesthetics.
We will examine these themes in the context of the recent explosion into the independent or underground rock scene of all-women bands or individual women artists making loud, confrontational music in the ongoing tradition of punk rock? The appearance of these bands and their widespread recognition in both the mainstream and alternative presses would seem to...