The Spice Girls sang about empowerment – better than the #MeToo whinging
The recent news of a Spice Girls reunion will, I suspect, be greeted by some former fans with nostalgic longing and others with an embarrassed cringe. But whether you’re a fan or foe, I think it’s worth remembering that golden decade of Girl Power — the 1990s — when it was bliss to be young and female. With our present preoccupation with the abuses of male power, we’ve forgotten about Girl Power. It was a fun-fuelled feminism for the mainstream; a materialistic and hedonistic celebration of female assertiveness, ambition and self-reliance. Girl Power was Thatcherism in sexy underwear. OK, so maybe Girl Power didn’t produce much in the way of great pop music or feminist polemics.
