Spice Girls To Blame?

[Officer Dibble]

Interesting piece in one of the Sunday supplements this week by, Fey Weldon. In it she puts forward her view that the Spice Girls were instrumental in turning Britain?s once gorgeous girlies into the shrieking coven of obnoxious, skanky charver that they seem to be today. Here?s a snippet.

?And if that energising, ?down with men? girl power devolved down to estate level to create a new female climate of disrespect, with a lot of swearing at mums and thumping of teachers, a careless sexuality, fancying and pulling, not loving ? creating as a complement an equivalent male breed of skulking, vandalising hoodies ? you could hardly blame the Spice Girls. Could you? They were just a pop group, artificially created by cunning managers who saw a future in girl groups after a 10-year rule by boybands.
If boys became the new girls, nervous of sex for fear of failure, old-fashioned and blundering, their macho malehood discredited ? ?If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends? ? it was just another song: don?t blame the Spice Girls. A new breed of anorexic, bulimic, drunken girlhood on our street corners, indifferent to icy winds, bringing up their bile over the white-trainered feet of noble paramedics? Surely not because of lyrics sung by a generation of impressionable little girls ? ?Well it was Saturday night, I know the feeling was right?? It couldn?t be as simple as that.?




Officer Dibble

[Ace]

Thats a fair shout.
When this 'Girl Power' came out, I noticed a nasty attitude change in lots of women, especially when loaded on the new alco-pops craze that came out around the same time.

[Flat_Eric]

Officer Dibble wrote:

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I think there's some mileage in that view. And at the same time I'd contend that **male** chav "artists" that made it big in the '90s (like Blur, Oasis, Robbie Williams et al) had a similar effect on the lads - with boorish oiks like the Arctic Monkeys continuing the 'good work' today.

Not the sole reason of course - but an important contributory factor.

- Eric

[spider]

It's good to see that although all the Spice Girls are now multi millionaires, they still "ordinary" and do their shopping at Tesco.

I see in today's paper that Eddie Murphy has told Mel B to ?F**K Off? because she's trying to stick him for child maintenance.

I'm all for father's having to pay for their kids upbringing - but let's face it she doesn't need any money from him. She thought she'd snared herself a Hollywood Star, and all he wanted was to shag a Spice Girl. Silly cow.

[Jonone]

Yes it coincides with culture being feminised. Everything is about consumption and the schedules filling with interior design/ house makeovers/ property and the phoney drama of Big Brother and 'reality' tv dates from around the same time. Spice Girls, Diana ...

Elsewhere in the times (on the site) someone commented that women have a 'bloated sense of entitlement' ... we should qualify that to 'some women'. It's inarguable really that the culture has changed and constructions and perceptions of femininity have changed too.

Spice Girls were vapid nonsense but it seems they ushered something in which is akin to the lunatics taking over the asylum !grin!

[Robches]

Are the Spice Girls to blame? Yes. For everything.

[Deano!]

I would think that the way young women are portrayed in popular American movies and TV shows have a lot more to do with it than the Vice Girls. The modern young assertive 'take-no-shit' slag is taught to think of herself as automatically deserving of everything she wants immediately. Its no wonder they now get treated like shit - they asked for it. They have no respect for respect.

[one eyed jack]

I always thought it was the climate that created the music rather than the other way round. I do agree however that The Spice Girls perpetuate that era of chav but then I think Destinys Child exuded a level of class that The Spiceys lacked with their girl power and always saw DC as more commercial and influential than their girl power counterparts.

I think Alice has hit th enail on the head that the germ of this came in with the likes of Blondie, Toyah Wilcox and Bananarama so I dont think Spice Girls should be held fully accountable. I think that new Lilly bird (her name escapes me) is more guilty of perpetuating the new chav image more than anyone at the moment.

The upside of all this female empowerment is that more girls have come int the adult industry as a result of it.

It cant all be bad right? If we returned to the era of virtuous women there wouldnt be as much porn around today. Something tells me that wouldnt be a bad thing but what about the poor old porn fans. What about them?