The other day I read an opinions piece in a The Herald Sun, written by female journalist Fay Weldon targeting the Spice Girls as the reason for dwindling morals in Generation Y women, called “Society’s on the Skids: I Blame the Spice Girls”.
Quoting album track Saturday Night Divas hook, “But on Saturday night you know the feeling is right/Tonight we’re gonna get so high” as evidence for their tarty messages, the article claimed that “Girl Power” was a sham teamed with their suggestive lyrics penned by male producers.
Lumping the Spice Girls in the same category as “the cult of consumerism, the decline of religion, easy credit, alco-pops [and] morning after pills”, Weldon crucifies them as “desperate wannabes” and brandishes their latest tour as one of “weary cynicism”.
Like many girls still in primary school when Scary, Baby, Sporty, Ginger and Posh obliterated the charts, I was a huge fan. We dressed up like the girls, cranked out their choreographed routines and sung their tracks for the talent quest, and collected and traded posters, newspaper and magazine articles, and smelled of their Impulses and lollipops. We saw the movie, videotaped the Live in Istanbul concerts and watched them over and over again. My Dad even banned me from purchasing the photo collection, though I was satisfied already having the autographed Emma shot. We laughed as they knocked girly-looking Hanson out of the top ten, and we cried when Geri left to pursue a solo career on her wave of Spice success.
We grew up alongside them. We went to high school, they got married. We went to University, they started having children. They evolved their personas and showed young girls that it was alright to break out of stereotypes. They showed young girls that success wasn’t all there is to happiness; they didn’t say women shouldn’t be mothers and wives and girlfriends, and they didn’t say that we should be sluts either.
What I think opinions like Weldon’s show is an easy way out. There are professions that take a lot of compromise to get into – and Weldon should know; journalism is one of those. Music is another. And music is an easy target. Song lyrics reflect only a moment, one line of thought that can easily be changed, and it always has. Lyrics have always been suggestive, just like they have always been sad, funny, inquisitive and laced with revolutionary concepts. So the Spice Girls said “I need some love like I never needed love before”, they also said “Mama, I love you” and “If you wannabe my lover, you have got to give”. Judging artists on one lyric in a song that wasn’t even released seems a thin argument to me – and hey, they didn’t name drop designer products into their lyrics like Mariah Carey and her Louis Vuitton, Ricki-Lee and her Prada bag and Destiny’s Child and their Armani, picking up men in Lexus’s. Now if that isn’t promoting consumerism and encouraging “running up vast credit card bills on designer shopping they can’t afford”…
I personally just do not believe that one musical group can be blamed for society’s problems because five young women were in the spotlight. Compared to Britney, Lindsey and Paris they were decent enough role models, balancing their careers, their relationship with one another and the demands of their record companies in a clean sweep. Though I may have been to young to have taken much notice, I don’t remember any terrible scandals emerging abou the Girls, just that they found it difficult to get along – and look at the current rate of divorce; people can’t get along with one other partner, let alone four.
The Spice Girls took the idea of sexual liberation and translated it so it was comprehensible to young girls. They told us we could be anything we wanted to be and showed us they were living their own dreams. I don’t think they “killed romance”, I think they enchanting a young generation of girls, just as many who have gone on to be outstanding citizens and caring friends as those who hook up on Saturday nights.
The Spice Girls are not the ones putting sexual pressure on young girls.
