How did we go from ‘friendship never ends’ to rude boys and party in the U.S.A.?
One thing the ‘90s had going for me, aside from plaid shirts and the ubiquitous Oshkosh jumper, was music. Sweet, sweet music.
I got my first CD when I was eight: a collection of Mariah Carey’s greatest hits that my mom bought after hearing my attempts at Hero in the shower. And the rest, as they say, was history. Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Shania Twain, Natalie Imbruglia, Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow, and, of course, the Spice Girls. I’d make lists of “albums-to-buy” everywhere — on the way to school, during recess time, class hours, while playing cops-and-robbers in the playground… And these weren’t just any albums, they were albums of women I considered my icons. No room for the Backstreet Boys or N’Sync just yet; I wanted to amass a whole shelf-full of pop star love — of girl power, more specifically.
Because that’s what the ‘90s were all about, if you think about it. Bands as unapologetically brash and sexy as they were teenybopper-ish and oversexed. Hot on the heels of Madonna, it finally became acceptable for women to be angry and sensual and flirty, and it was finally mainstream enough for music to be feminine (feminist?) and proud.
June 7, 1996. The Spice Girls released their debut single, Wannabe; marking, for better or worse, the start of a beautiful movement. I was barely six years old at the time, but the next few years of my pre-adolescent life was to be defined by the waves of midriff-baring, guitar-slinging, doe-eyed pop stars baring their souls (and occasionally, some cleavage) through their music. It was a great time to be a young girl, perhaps to the dismay of most still-conservative parents. The sexuality implicit in much of the songs was something that most pre-teens rallied behind, whether they were conscious of it or not. In my case, it wasn’t until years later that I realized the full extent of what Britney meant every time she danced to choruses of “I’m not that innocent;” while the lines from Alanis Morissette’s You Oughta Know (“It was a slap in the face how quickly I was replaced/ Are you thinking of me when you f*** her?”) was, until then, something I would just hum to when feeling especially sassy.
Sure, I may not have understood everything I heard, but I do remember liking how the songs made me feel. Because back then, girl power actually meant something. It may have been founded on the marketed image of one British super-pop group, but it was a phenomenon that quickly translated into so much more than just Ginger, Posh, Baby, Sporty, or Scary Spice. Girl power became a phenomenon that worked on the power of friendship, girl bonding, cool clothes, independence and, above all, self-image.
Some might call it campy, a consumer bait-trap, or just the Coke Lite version of women empowerment — the point is that it had intention, and respected the kind of consecrated, private thing that young girls had going for themselves: secret diaries, coded messages, all-girls clubs, and whatnot. Fast-forward to 16 years later, and pop culture has been taken over by the likes of Miley Cyrus and her equally prepackaged alter ego. This is the age of “Girls Gone Wild,” where sexual knowingness is not so much alluded to as thrown right in your face. Indeed, everything seems so calculated nowadays, that even decidedly unapologetic female stars like — dare I say — Lady Gaga, comes off as just another overly constructed antic. Bereft of the kind of symbolic oomph that Madonna and Cyndi Lauper exuded in their heydays. And if acts like the Pussycat Dolls, Jennifer Lopez (what is she doing on American Idol?), and the new-and-improved Britney are anything to go by, then it’s safe to say that the era of girl power has been sorely overcome by the power of the booty.
I miss the days when candy-flavored lines like “If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends / Make it last forever, friendship never ends” could be sung in all seriousness, without having to feel like flimsy psycho-babble in the face of works like Rude Boy or Don’t Cha. I feel sorry for the pre-teens of today, where being one of the cool kids means having to sing along to stuff that touches on the finer points of whether his dong is big enough, or whether any boy could find a hotter, freakier babe than you.
Ten- and 16-year-olds can’t bear to be associated with anything too reminiscent of bubble gum pop and similar clichés, precisely because, in this age of rapid everything, they’re already all grown up.
Is it because women have nothing more to prove that music and pop culture has taken such a nosedive? After all, we’re economically, politically, and socially more dominant than we were just a decade ago... But who are we kidding? Times change, and with it, values. Sexuality and hip-shaking are no longer statements of confidence or control, but empty, careless gestures.
There was still something sacred about being a young girl in the ‘90s. Not anymore. Privacy is, for all intents and purposes, a myth. And if all it takes to make a pop star nowadays is a skimpy wardrobe and an even skimpier chorus line, then I would just rather walk around in my flabby, bare midriff. A throwback, if you will, to the good old ‘90s.