Friday, February 27, 2015

Today's Riot Grrrls

The Riot Grrrl movement started in the 90’s alongside the grunge and punk movements, with not many differentiating features of the grunge style besides it’s blatant stances in socio-political matters of women. This on-the-forefront feminist message created a whole new genre of music for women as well as a whole new way of life. The Riot Grrrl movement pushed for a DIY attitude on and off the music scene and called for the notice of injustices towards females across the globe. The movement also called for leading ladies to take charge and become role models towards other females in order to inspire and encourage other women to be everything that they’ve been told that they could not be. Although the movement mainly took up space with in the music world, this was to be applied to everything. If women could make and be serious about music, play instruments and write meaningful music, then they could take charge of business industries, science fields, and their own lives. Bands such as Bikini Kill, Pussy Riot, and Babes in Toyland encouraged women to get loud about the problems within their lives caused by a patriarchy. Although the actual punk and grunge movement is much smaller and less talked about, many women within pop culture today have taken to talking openly about the injustices of women, and yes they are still just as angry as the original riot predecessors.

For example Ladyfest started in the early 2000s, a whole festival devoted to all types of female artists, and all female bands like Nimmo, Skinny Girl Club, and Slutever have been popping up singing about the same problems the original Riot Grrrls have been loudly singing about for years. Even with more popular stars we see a comeuppance of feminist ideals within musicians especially. Pop artists such as Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and Beyoncé are often criticized for their produced music however it is very noticeable that they’ve slowly been introducing feminist issues and making statements for a long time on feminist issues. Whether music and media producers like it or not the feminist messages will not be going away anytime soon, or at least until some real changes are being made. It’s sad to think that today’s women are still singing about many of the same injustices as they were in the 90s, however with a larger force of leading ladies in music speaking out about feminism they can continue to riot louder than before – and sooner or later everyone will have to listen.

No comments:

Post a Comment