“The riot girl movement embodies much of what is key about the third wave. The Riot Grrrl movement was in-your-face, pull-no-punches, do-something-about-it, space-claiming, brutally honest, anti-all-kids-of-oppression and, as if you needed more bang for your feminist buck, a screming-out-loud kind of fun. And it used cultural change to, like, change our culture.”
“You can’t talk about Riot Grrrl without mentioning Kathleen Hanna, then of the band Bikini Kill, now of Le Tigre. She was key to the movement’s kickoff and growth. Hanna, talking about bikini kill, says a lot about Riot Grrrl generally: “(We are) radical not just because (we) challenge standard business practices, media expectations, and hierarchical bullshit, but also because (we) are feminist thrill-seekers.” Right on.
The music and the movement also spawned a new kind of zine culture and harnessed that energy for an explosion in political expression and DIY culture, creating a whole new mechanism for dancing past the by then well-understood dangers of participating in corporatized mass media.”
“But maybe one of the most important things to remember is that Riot Grrrls didn’t start with the Riot Grrrls; that movement was build on the feminist influences, idols and ideas of all the grrrls who came before. Think about the Guerilla Girls, around since the mid-80s, who expose sexism and racism in the art world and culture at large.”
- Lisa. B. Rundle. 2005. Herizons Vol. 19 Issue 1 p31. Accessed by the Academic Search Complete database on the 13 April 2011
By Sarah Gill
