“When she walks, the revolution’s coming…When she talks, I hear the revolution” (Hanna et al., 1993).  Bold, badass and unabashedly female. Confident, shameless, and assertive, she jumps on stage with a guitar in hand, indifferent to the fact she has no musical background. Firmly grasping the microphone and unleashing a primal scream, fueled by the angst of the divine feminine, she addresses her metaphorical sisters in the crowd and courageously plays an anthem of hope  - hope for a better, freer, united future. She is the Riot Grrrl.

Few movements can claim they have embodied the true ethos of counterculture, or more specifically a revival of its purest form after its inevitable commercialization and downfall. A movement of wide-scale cultural radicalization, Riot Grrrl fused the foundations of 70s punk-rock unique self-actualization philosophies and the politically-charged radical ideology of second-wave feminism and created a new reinterpretation of individual experiences as socio-political phenomena of historical and political effect (Nguyen, 2012) as a form of rebellion in an age of rising technological monopolization.

A quintessentially 90s but unmistakably modern happening, Riot Grrrl raised concerns about “contemporary” past and present culture in regards to feminist, racial, and queer issues of discrimination, abuse, and emancipation, the majority of which are nonetheless discussed somewhat 30 years later. The time-bending relevancy of these discussions and the need for such conversations then begs the question - does Riot Grrrl still exist today? In this essay, I will discuss the history and significance of Riot Grrrl as a truly countercultural movement in its utilization of means of free creative expression through fanzines and manifestos to personify the political, as well as uncover the traces it has left in our current social climate.   

A sad heart at the punk concert 

In his essay “A Sad Heart at the Supermarket”, Randall Jarrell outlined the distinction between the Medium - virtually all media conglomerations from magazines to TV, and the Art in terms of message-making. He states:

The Medium mediates between us and raw reality, and the mediation more and more replaces reality for us [...] Art lies to us to tell us the (sometimes disquieting) truth. The Medium tells us truths, and facts, to make us believe some reassuring or entertaining lie or half-truth (Jarrell, 1960, p. 367;368).

For Jarrell, the Medium’s deceptive fabrication of reality contrasts Art’s fictional depiction of reality in an oxymoronic clash for the public’s attention. Ultimately, however, if Art gets assimilated into the Medium and undergoes a certain devaluation of itself and subsequent commercialization, it serves the purpose of an upholder of the status quo rather than its opponent. Such was the case with punk.

By the end of the 1980s, the punk countercultural movement, especially in areas of music and clothing, had become fragmented, its popularity had assigned its great commercial value, and its ethos had become diluted and somewhat obsolete. Punk had turned from marginal to mainstream. Because of that, the punk scene largely reflected and perpetuated dominant values, namely a large machismo front, violent and aggressive misogyny, homophobia, and racism (Dunn & Farnsworth, 2012), which made the predominantly female members of the community feel unsafe and unfairly targeted during shows and within the punk press (in the zine Sniffin glue by Mark Perry it was stated that “Punks are not girls” (Polyphonic, 2018)).

Riot Grrrl raised concerns about “contemporary” past and present culture in regards to feminist, racial, and queer issues of discrimination, abuse, and emancipation, the majority of which are nonetheless discussed somewhat 30 years later.

On the music side, hyper-masculine bands, reflective of patriarchal tendencies, dominated the scenes and charts instead of the female-driven, softer and experimental ones, and so the punk movement had largely abandoned its core values in demolishing gender inequality and heteronormativity in rock and roll (Dunn & Farnshworth, 2012). Enter Riot Grrrl.  

Society tells me : Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak 

Riot Grrrl is counter to counterculture. Emerging from the university dorms of Olympia and Washington DC in 1991, Riot Grrrl was a vehement response to the toxicity of the fallen punk movement and positioned women at the front of it (“Girls to the front”). This was an ideological as well as a physical proclamation, signaling the time of female domination and freedom within the scene - at the front of the stage as to protect each other from the widespread harassment and assault during punk concerts but also vocally, intellectually and creatively to establish a metaphysical haven for female expression. The distinct musical sound of Riot Grrrl is credited to the founders of the movement Allison Wolfe and Molly Neuman from the band Bratmobile, Jen Smith, Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill, the members from the bands Heavens to Betsy, Huggy Bear, and Sleater-Kinney. 

Riot Grrrl was a countercultural message-driven movement.

However, it is important to point out that categorizing Riot Grrrl as a subgenre of punk or as an art style is nothing short of discrediting - the musical aspect of the movement was only a small part of the creative ventures undertaken by the members. Crediting specific individuals as founders of the movement is also particularly unfair since it goes against the anarchic principles of self-governing and community building that Riot Grrrl stood for, as described by Erika Reinstein for her fanzine: Even though we try to tell them [reporters], they just can't seem to grasp the idea of a movement of individuals working together [...] they understand even less that we don't have leaders and we are actively and continually trying to eliminate hierarchy whenever possible” (Reinstein Fantastic Fanzine no. 3)(Dunn & Farnsworth, 2012). 

Riot Grrrl was a countercultural message-driven movement. Less interested in aestheticizing itself and creating a unique, memorable look, Riot Grrrl started as a mass DIY project. Members from all walks of life and various occupations such as zine-makers, musicians, artists, academics and activists, writers, filmmakers, and visual artists congregated and established circles, where creating was not only encouraged but integral for an ideological formation.

Performing music or spoken-word poetry was a reclamation of the female body, ripping it away from the intransigent grip of sexualization and objectification. Mixed-media artworks, journals, and essays served as a reaffirmation of cultural power within the women and girls and acted as philosophical political, and cultural catalysts for a new form of radical protest - one, that transforms trivialization and erasure of femininity and repurposes sexist stereotypes into politically-charged weapons for cultural revolution (Lusty, 2017).

Revolution Girl Style Now 

Existing some 30 years before Riot Grrrls, Jarrell's sad heart observes the strict roles, ascribed to people by the Medium. He states: Children of three or four can ask for a brand of cereal, [...] by the time that they are twelve they are not children but teen-age consumers, interviewed, graphed, analyzed [...] For them, the People of the Medium are reality, what human beings normally, primarily are: and mere local or personal variations are not real in the same sense (Jarrell, 1960, p.361; 367). The Medium, solidifying its position at the top of the cultural hierarchy through consumer capitalist systems, created societal positions and certain stereotypes, which if were to be disputed, resulted in ostracization and alienation from the “community”. 

The ‘girl’ subject as a figure of political and cultural rebellion, linguistically transformed and redefined as Grrrl is a signifier of the movement’s countercultural nature. Traditionally perceived as passive consumers and impotent political subjects (Lusty, 2017), the primal roar within the Grrrls connects them to the roots of second-wave feminist rhetoric of independence and self-sufficiency to communicate the untamable nature of women (Wright, 2016).

The Riot Grrrl cemented herself as a cultural producer by reconceiving feminism, which had become a victim of consumer capitalism.

The decision to frame Riot women as Riot Grrrls, however, additionally attacks stereotypical images of the girl as immature, naive, ever-dissatisfied, and in need of constant consumption and draws parallels between the freedom of expression and freedom found in childhood before girls were forced to fulfill constraining and unattainable societal expectations (although such conviction is highly debatable). 

Returning to primordial and universal “girl values”, the Riot Grrrl cemented herself as a cultural producer by reconceiving feminism, which had become a victim of consumer capitalism. The return to lost radical aspirations using politicizing personal experiences challenged the wide historical erasure and exclusion of the girl as a radical and political subject because of her volatility and rebelled against those practices by promoting forms of resistance through self-actualization within the community - the awakening of the social consciousness about abuse, discrimination, and harassment through the manifesto and the fanzine (Lusty, 2017).  

Satan wears a bra: A critique of a male-dominated society

As Karl Marx and other manifesto producers, became irrelevant and obsolete old men, the traditional structure of the manifesto was assimilated into intimate accounts and stories of women’s personal experiences with sexual assault, rape, incest, objectification, homophobia and racism, and thus became part of everyday political awareness, tied to the ordinary lives of its producers and those who read it (Lusty, 2017). Echoing the 1920s avant-garde Dada manifesto and combining it with the politically-charged second-wave radical feminist one (The Bitch Manifesto and SCUM Manifesto for example), the Riot Grrrl manifesto both critiqued mass culture and created a political slogan without the need to comprise an official doctrine or assign leaders (Lusty, 2017).

The result of that was widely accessible political collectivization, which juxtaposed but encouraged and fused the vocabulary of radical politically-charged text (riot) and that of the intimacy of the female youth (girl)(Lusty, 2017). The manifestos, which offered opportunities to rethink revolutionary discourse and politically mobilize through DIY ethic, a celebration of differences and unique forms of expression, were domestic but simultaneously hostile, echoing the angry, shameless, and unapologetic nature of punk music (Lusty, 2017). Their publishing and dispersing through self-made fanzines, concert banners, and fundraisers, established a countercultural ideology by utilizing underground hybrid forms of politicizing, community-building, and raising awareness - the Holy Grail of the punk ethos - the zine.      

The Riot Grrrl Times 

The Riot Grrrl zine catalyzed not only political and social change but also cultural enrichment led by women for women. The zines “were personal, small-scale paper ventures, which told stories and raised awareness about issues deliberately ignored, glossed over, or entirely forgotten by mainstream media” (Dunn & Farnsworth, 2012), which challenged widespread misogynistic stereotypes about female hobbies and interests as insignificant, vein and useless, continuously discrediting mixed-media art, produced by women and girls.

The zines, oftentimes illegally copied and mass-produced, were distributed en masse to cultural events, concerts, in the parks, playgrounds, academic environments, and other everyday sites and connected women to other women’s art, which was a core principle of the Riot Grrrl ideology - the uplifting and encouraging of the production of female art and a unified sisterly support for ideas, dreams, and ambitions, campaigning for both self-empowerment and educational solidarity. 

The expansion of feminist discourse beyond the halls of academia and into intimate spaces such as the bedroom, motivated members of the Riot Grrrl communities to openly share personal experiences about sexual identity, self-preservation, sexual abuse, and other day-to-day struggles.

The expansion of feminist discourse beyond the halls of academia and into intimate spaces such as the bedroom, motivated members of the Riot Grrrl communities to openly share personal experiences about sexual identity, self-preservation, sexual abuse, and other day-to-day struggles. Such confessional writing, combined with other forms of media like collages, drawings, poems, and photographs, aligned a political message with an individual and therapeutic one, which transcended the personal and identified itself as a collective to challenge mainstream publishing culture (Lusty, 2017; Nguyen, 2012).

Suddenly, knowing oneself was a revolutionary act of rejection of the socially constructed beliefs about femalehood and assigned a level of expertise, which had previously been denied to women and girls - “tired of being written out – out of history, out of the ‘scene,’ out of our bodies … for this reason we have created our zine and scene (from issue 3 of the zine Riot Grrr)(Nguyen, 2012). 

Riot Grrrl’s ideological pillars of sisterhood, community, freedom of female expression and fight against gender-based violence, misogyny, homophobia, racism, and abuse can be still found today, even if not under the banner of one particular niche community.

This all culminated in mass events such as the Riot Grrrl convention in 1992, the establishment of Riot Grrrl Press, Riot Grrrl Radio, and the nationwide call for a Media Block as a form of protest against mass media. Founded directly out of the frustration from teleological misrepresentation of the movement and its goals, Grrrl Press served as the main opposition against mass media’s misconstruction of the ideological goals and the perpetuation of harmful misogynistic stereotypes about the members (Dunn & Farnsworth, 2012).

Riot Grrrl Press, in its role of a motherboard for zine production and redistribution, collected zines made by girls from all parts of the United States, as well as produced its content (the zines Girl Germs, Bikini Kill, Satan Wears a bra, Thorn, Mamasita and many more). The Press and other “institutions” of the same nature created an intimate but political Grrrl media ecosystem for female creative and labor empowerment and further denouncement of mass media structures cemented the Press and zine creation as truly and quintessentially countercultural.    

Death becomes her

Nevertheless, Riot Grrrl, no matter how unabashed, staunch, and anarchic, could not escape the curse of rebellion - its inner fragmentation and societal assimilation and erasure. Despite establishing itself as universally empowering for women and preaching sisterhood and community, writer Mimi Thy Nguyen, a member of the punk scene herself, recalls the alienation of women of color from the supposed safe havens for expression and their repeated tokenizations as teachers of racism but never marginalized enough themselves (Nguyen, 2012). 

TikTok Grrrl appears to be concerned with the hyper-individualisation of its message and the worship of deity-like “girlboss feminists”

Furthermore, the large co-option of Riot Grrrl through mass media by reframing its commodity form (dress and music) into mass-produced objects, and the redefinition of its ideological form, palatable for larger audiences, contributed to its downfall (Hebdigfe, 1994)(Jacques, 2001). As mentioned, Riot Grrrl was repeatedly misrepresented by mass media and its message was, if not diluted, completely erased to market it as unsuccessful or as just a whim. The aesthetics of Riot Grrrl, consisting of hyper-feminine attire, make-up, and sarcastic bimbofication as a form of mockery of mass culture’s depiction of women, were plucked out from their context and marketed as their less offensive sisters - neoliberal glamorous feminism and unobtrusive girl power.    

Oh, Riot Grrrl, where art thou?

The original Riot Grrrl movement may have stayed in the 90s, but its ghost still haunts the present day. As Caroline Busta notes, the inability of a large-scale countercultural movement to exist in the age of social media is for the same reasons Riot Grrrl ceased to exist in the first place - the large co-option by mass media, now including social media, and commercialization of uncommon styles and aesthetics, which would and has killed any form of rebellion against a status quo right in its infancy (Busta,2021). 

The remnants of Riot Grrrl, especially on platforms like Tiktok, have committed a cardinal sin - the Riot Grrrl of today is extensively teleological, appearance-based, and politically uncertain (Nuckles, 2021). Scholar Joshua Citarella argues that algorithm-based platforms such as TikTok and the aftermath of neoliberal consumer culture promoting indifference and apathy, have resulted in the hesitancy of young people to form concrete opinions (Citarella, 2019), which is ironic when considering the future of Riot Grrrl former strongly political identity cannot take a side. In addition to that, TikTok Grrrl appears to be concerned with the hyper-individualisation of its message and the worship of deity-like “girlboss feminists” (Nuckles, 2012). But reality is not always so bleak. 

Riot Grrrl’s ideological pillars of sisterhood, community, freedom of female expression and fight against gender-based violence, misogyny, homophobia, racism, and abuse can be still found today, even if not under the banner of one particular niche community. Mass campaigns such as the MeToo movement, BLM, and protests against femicide, oppression, and occupation, like those after the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran in 2022, Giulia Cecchettin in Italy in 2023, the seven maternal deaths in Poland due to strict abortion laws in 2020, against the murder and ethnic cleansing of women and children in occupied Palestine in 2023 (and ongoing) and many, many more, echo the large scale congregations of Grrrls and second-wave feminists alike.

Zinemakers in countries such as Brazil, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, and Argentina, cite Riot Grrrl as the source of their inspiration (Dunn & Farnsworth, 2012). Even social media platforms offer opportunities for artists to publish their art freely, reach audiences, and create communities with like-minded individuals. Maybe Riot Grrrl has died and attempts of its resurrection have been barren. But maybe it exists under a different name. Maybe we are all Riot Grrrl.  

References

Busta, C. (2023, August 18). The internet didn’t kill counterculture - you just won’t find it on Instagram. Document Journal.

Citarella, J. (2019, April). Irony politics & Gen Z. NEW MODELS 2023.

Dunn, K. & Farnsworth, M. S. (2012). “We ARE the Revolution”: Riot Grrrl Press, girl empowerment, and DIY self-publishing. Women’s Studies, 41(2), 136-157.

Jacques, A. (2001). You can run but you can't hide: the incorporation of riot grrrl into mainstream culture.  Canadian Woman Studies Les Cahiers De La Femme, 21(1), 46-50.

Jarrell, R. (1960). A sad heart at the supermarket. Daedalus, 89(2), 359–372.

Lusty, N. (2017). Riot grrrl manifestos and radical vernacular feminism. Australian Feminist Studies, 32(93), 219–239.

Nguyen, M. T. (2012). Riot grrrl, race, and revival. Women & Performance : a Journal of Feminist Theory, 22(2-3), 173-196.

Nuckles, R. A. (2021). A resurrected revolution: Riot grrrl remembered, revived, and redefined. Women’s History Theses.

Polyphonic. (2018, March 8) - Riot Grrrl: The '90s Movement that Redefined Punk [Video]. Youtube.

Wright, L. (2016). Do-it-yourself girl power: an examination of the riot grrrl subculture. James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal, 3(1), 52-56.