At the start of the 1990s, a movement sprang up among young women whose feelings of frustration, alienation and solidarity were expressed through music and fanzines. As an archive of their art and jottings is published, Olivia Laing recalls the 'riot grrrl' phenomenon – and how it changed her life
Way back in the early 1990s, long before Tumblr or blogs, long before Lena Dunham or Pussy Riot, a revolution started in America. An uprising of smart, angry girls, who for a few years broadcast their solidarity and rage by way of radically homemade art. A revolution that brought punk and feminism together with such a bang you could see stars. The reason for riot grrrl, an early zine announced, "is because I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will, change the world for real".
The riot grrrl movement began by way of a newsletter produced by a collective of punky, politically minded girls in Washington DC in July 1991, and quickly spread across the country. That was the summer that Anita Hill testified to sexual harassment by the supreme court nominee Clarence Thomas, igniting a vicious row about race, female sexuality and the treatment of women in the workplace. Naomi Wolf's second-wave feminist classic, The Beauty Myth, was published that year, and everyone was listening to Smells Like Teen Spirit. Girls across America were beginning to question how far feminism had taken them and riot grrrl exploded from out of their frustration. Teenagers began forming bands, putting on gigs, making zines, organising local groups and building networks, often by way of letters.
These days, it's the music that tends to be remembered: the likes of Bikini Kill, Heavens to Betsy and Bratmobile, with their hardcore sound and gleefully wrathful songs, strutting on stage in glasses and plaid skirts. But for those involved at the time, the central mode of communication was the zine: lovingly handwritten or typed manifestos, full of collaged confessions, rants and recommendations, photocopied and disseminated at concerts or by post.
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For a long time, this written documentation remained secret, tucked away in filing cabinets or under beds. It took New York University archivist Lisa Darms to realise that "'historical importance' is partially a result of what's saved and preserved by institutions". She established the Riot Grrrl Collection in 2009 at NYU's Fales Library, gathering together archives from mostly American participants. In June the Feminist Press published her book of the same name, a beautiful, intense compendium of reproduced zine pages, letters, stickers and drawings.
I was a riot grrrl in 1993, when the movement leapt from America to Britain, where it was quickly picked up by the media. I was 14 that year, disaffected and gawky, gearing up for my GCSEs. I saw Huggy Bear's incendiary performance on The Word, shrieking about revolution in bobs and shades, with words scribbled up their arms. I read the controversial cover story in Melody Makerand knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was for me.
I sent off for a zine from one of the addresses printed in the article (50p and an SAE) and within days was making and disseminating my own. We all were. The old DIY spirit of punk is nowhere as meticulously adhered to as in a teenage girl's bedroom, where armed with Pritt Stick and a stack of old magazines she can set about subverting a culture that has never been entirely sure if it despises or desires her.
It's hard to believe now how isolated it was possible to be in the pre-internet era. I still remember the thrill of envelopes landing on the mat at my mother's house, in a hateful commuter village outside Portsmouth. I'd open them on my bed, spilling out sweets and long, wonderful letters from kindred spirits, similarly trapped and disaffected. I remember the zines – Sweet Sixteen, Dipper, Violet, Asking for it, Drop Babies– and the bands that sprang up: Linus, Pussycat Trash, Skinned Teen, Blood Sausage. I remember the intense pleasure of setting down my thoughts and sending them out; of being part of a community, a culture.
I'm not the only one to feel a shudder of nostalgia, confronted with Darms's meticulously curated evidence of the movement's commitment and creativity. In her introduction to The Riot Grrrl Collection, Johanna Fateman (artist, musician and, with Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna, founder of electroclash band Le Tigre) writes: "I'm brought back to a time when each girl's photocopied missive was a revelation… As a teen it astounded me to discover that girls were organising to fight their exclusion and silencing, and that they were doing it with intoxicating subcultural style."
Fateman and her high school best friend, film-maker Miranda July, were among riot grrrl's early adopters. The discovery of this "secret art world", Fateman explains, "radicalised me, and shaped my enduring attitudes toward collaboration, activism, and friendship". Some of her work is reproduced here, including the magnificently weird Artaud-Mania: Diary of a Fan, a zine produced in the wake of riot grrrl, using its handmade, confessional aesthetic for more ambitious cultural critique.
It's easy to be dismissive about teenage girls – frivolous, vapid, superficial – but looking again at these secret texts, what I'm struck by is their intensity of thought. Early zines discuss ways to empower girls, to stay safe, to reclaim streets and mosh pits. There are confessions about sexual abuse (Darms wisely chose not to reproduce these more vulnerable texts in the book), and, especially in the later period, much examination of privilege and issues of race. As Fateman puts it: "It emphasised the need to confront one's own participation – material and psychic – in the diseased parent culture." But the potential self-righteousness is undercut by an avant-garde irreverence of style. Mainstream culture is literally chopped up and rearranged, embroidered for good measure with a doodling of guns and stars.
By 1996 the movement had sputtered out. Darms cites various reasons, among them increased and unwanted media attention and, for some women, a growing frustration with the inability of the movement to address privilege. Many, I guess, like me, just outgrew it, moving on to different kinds of activism or art-making. When I think of riot grrrl now, what I see most clearly is how empowering it was. It's no coincidence that my closest friend in the movement and I graduated to road protesting and environmental activism. No coincidence, either, that many of the women who cut their teeth on zines went on to flourishing creative careers, among them novelist Sheila Heti, critic Bidisha and Miranda July.
Even after the movement drifted apart, its influence lingered on. Russian art-activist collective Pussy Riot have spoken of how important riot grrrl was for them, stating "what we have in common is impudence, politically loaded lyrics, the importance of feminist discourse and a non-standard female image". It has been inspirational too for a variety of girls too young to have participated, who relish the radical permissiveness, the sense that their thoughts and feelings matter.
At the end of her introduction, Darms drops for a moment the tone of the archivist and speaks instead in riot grrrl's own passionate tongue: "While I have tried to be objective in representing various aspects of the riot grrrl movement in this book, ultimately I do have an agenda. I hope this book will be a manual: a set of instructions for remaking the world. Use it to learn from riot grrrl's successes and its mistakes. And then go out and start your own revolution." I'm with her. Bring it on. Revolution Girl Style Now!
The Riot Grrrl Collection is published by The Feminist Press at £24.99