Jigsaw Youth

I got all sorts of nostalgic last night after seeing this posted on Jezebel last night- it's an 11 part documentary on YouTube titled "Riot Grrrl Retrospective," featuring Tobi Vail, Corin Tucker, Allison Wolfe, Sharon Cheslow and other heroines of my youth. I get really gushy about that shit, you should know. It turns me right into a 12 year old fangirl.

When I was in middle school, I lamented the fact that I wasn't quite old enough to really take part in the whole riot grrrl thing- other than reading Sassy and a bunch of west coast zines, buying albums and writing "riot grrl" on my knuckles during study hall. But, you know, upon further thought- I was the exact right age at the exact right time. A couple years later, middle school girls would be fed "girl power" in the form of the Spice Girls and Britney Spears... and Sassy wouldn't even exist anymore. It was an important age to get that message- that feminism was awesome, that you were awesome, and that you shouldn't take any shit. It's a message I got from my mom, of course- but who listens to their mother half the time anyway? Who knows how cool I would have thought feminism was if it weren't for these chicks?

I'm a tough ass broad, ya know. I owe that to my mom, to The Golden Girls, to Jem and to Kathleen Hanna and the whole riot grrrl movement. I still listen to Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, The Gits, Heavens to Betsy, Sleater-Kinney, Babes in Toyland etc. I still have copies of Girl Germs and Rollerderby and Sassy tucked away somewhere, and knee-high black docs in my closet here. I like to think of my show, and of most other things I do as a product of the riot grrrl aesthetic. Things change, ya know, we don't wear baby barettes anymore, but the message is still the same.

/sap.

Come back to me, Roseanne!

She looks amazing. I could plotz.

I love this woman so much it makes my heart hurt. Outside of my mother, no other woman has had such an impact on me in my life. She is everything I want so much for women to be- unapologetic, funny, angry, whipsmart, fearless, passionate and completely unable to shut the fuck up.

I looked at her blog, and I read this and as a result I am writing this right now with tears coming down my face.

It's very difficult, you know, to have grown up with my mother, to grow up with Roseanne on TV, to grow up listening to Bikini Kill... and to just have all that hope, and to be so sure that the concept of women being vapid barbie dolls and homemakers was so, so far in the past- and then to be here, now. To see all these bimbos who are famous for nothing, who never say anything- unless it's something stupid that we can all have a good laugh at. You know! Because women are stupid! It shatters my heart. I wanted so much more than that.

It all went downhill after "Hit Me Baby One More Time." I swear to god, it's when everything changed. I'll say it til the day I die. I've always felt like it was in some way a conspiracy. You know, like- if you've ever read "The Feminine Mystique," there's this whole part about women's magazines. How in the 1940's they all had stories about bad ass chicks who went to work, and 5 minute recipes, and then after the war all the stories were about chicks who gave it up to be housewives, and recipes that took all day. I feel like they got tired of mouthy women, and started parading these bimbos out in the hopes that women would emulate them instead. And it worked, too. Because now we have a bunch of idiots who find "empowerment" running around topless in front of video cameras during spring break and saying "Wooo!" a lot.

What does it say that women on television 20 and 30 years ago were ten times more badass than the women on today? Maude, Mary Tyler Moore, The Golden Girls (yes, I realize that's two Bea Arthurs), Julia Sugarbaker, Murphy Brown...

Roseanne needs to get her fabulous ass back into the damned spotlight! It's practically an emergency.