Girl Power Curriculum: Spice Girls and the representation of women

Abstract

As a symbol of popular feminism in the late 1990s, the Spice Girls, the most successful female pop group in history, became not only an extremely profitable brand for the hot pop music market, but also a behavioral reference for a legion of fans all over the world who needed Female references in behavior and style. I realize that an ethos was formed through the songs, video clips, performances and speeches of female empowerment that marked the Spice Girls event. Inspired by post-critical theorizations of the curriculum, post-structuralist gender studies and communication studies, I aim in this text to understand how the representation of women in the artistic production of the Spice Girls is constructed. For that, I use the lyrics of the three albums of the group to carry out a cultural analysis of the findings. From these, I understand that three lessons are taught by pop singers: 1) the power and valuing of friendship between women as tools of mutual support against life’s dilemmas; 2) emotional independence from romantic relationships, which represents a counter-discourse to stereotypes of female fragility and insecurity; and 3) sexual empowerment expressed as an attitude of resistance to the processes of docile women’s bodies.