Repeat: Serene. Not Serena.

Key Bands: Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, Huggy Bear, Excuse 17, Team Dresch.
Supporting document: The Riot Grrrl Manifesto

The riot grrrl movement was an important clash of third wave feminism, punk rock, DIY politics (and aesthetics), and youth culture in the early nineties. Twenty-something women wanted to play their guitars loudly and be heard; they were tired of being sidelined through patriarchal musical standards and business; they wanted to reconstruct femininity and make it tough. The isolated clusters of pissed off college educated (mostly) white women located in Washington D.C. and Olympia eventually spread into a little feminist army, resembling to consciousness raising groups of the second wave feminist movement. Loud punk music with nationwide tours combined with ‘zine distribution and mainstream press coverage to give salience to their message.

And for the first time, mainstream media took notice of these women taking music production and cultural revolution into their own hands. Soon, publicity ranged from sincere Sassy profiles to hilariously patronizing television exposes, rich with “look at how these cute girls are destroying their dresses and yelling and spitting and smearing their lipstick.” Consumption culture cast the death spell on the movement, because once riot grrrl mentality was being sold back to the suburban girls in the form of pseudo-feminist role model Courtney Love and the latest scent of Teen Spirit deodorant, the cultural movement was a joke. Maybe the movement was destined to peril with the insistence of decentralization and social democracy. Maybe we can only rage so long. Who knows.

Regardless of the inevitable death of the movement, evidence from its relevance still exists. Everything from the Spice Girls and the bubblegum “girl power” moment of the late 90s to Lady Gaga of the current moment highlight how the path for independence and feminist politics was paved by these Olympia and D.C. bands in the early to mid 90s. Riot grrrl was a true a cultural and political revolution.