Grrrrrl Power to Girl Power to Girl Power 3.0

The phrase "girl power" is commonly attributed to the mid to late 1990s pop sensation the Spice Girls. However, the pink, peppy, and consumer-happy version of the term was itself an appropriation of the an earlier version of the term "Grrrl Power" made popular by the feminist informed Riot Grrrl movement, which was very subversive and political in nature. In our girlhoods studies class we learned about how the term Girl Power as commonly used is a commodified version of the once feminist term, that has been stripped of its subversive messages to become an empty cultural trope used to imbue products with a sense of dynamism, rebellion, freshness, and youthful femininity.

Several girlhood theorists, such as Angela McRobbie, Dawn Currie, and Elline Lipkin, link the contemporary term "Girl Power" with both postfeminism, which is a notion prevalent in popular culture today that gender equality has been achieved and thereby positions feminist struggles as irrelevant, passe, and longer necessary, and also with neoliberalism, which is an economic ideology that promotes privatization, cutting social programs, and deregulation. Currie explains that "girl power" positions girls as ambitious, success bound, and independent, and this celebrates both youthful feminity and individualism. She writes that "in the current neoliberal social and economic order, young women are being constructed to signal freedom, personal choice, and self-improvement with little to no attention being paid to persistent gender and other inequalities" (p.42). Lipkin (2009) argues that in unpacking constructs of "girl power" today, what we are left with is "the power to shop and to excite men, the power to serve capital and patriarchy" (p. 134). McRobbie explains how postfeminist notions of girl power present images of equality, individual success and self-achievement which serve consumer culture and hence, neoliberalism. At the heart of neoliberalism is the neoliberal subject, the rational, autonomous, competitive, entrepreneurial, consuming subject who is responsible for his /her own well-being. McRobbie asks us to pay attention to how postfeminism supplements the neoliberal agenda. She explains how popular representations of girls in media which celebrate female freedom and gender equality through appropriating quasi-feminist vocabulary is very dangerous because it diverts attention away from, even masks, the very real conditions of patriarchy that continue to shape girls lives.

Upon learning this history, we decided to 'resignify' the term "Girl Power", as Judith Butler would say, and give it a different meaning from the one commonly held in popular culture. Our term Girl Power 3.0 has many layers of meaning. We are playing on the literal meaning of the word "power" by using it in reference to girls engaging with electrically powered technologies, we are updating the term to its third version following the riot grrrls and spice girls, giving it a technological reference twist by calling it 3.0, and we are resignifying the term Girl Power to refer to the power girls have by creating their own media, music, film, entertainment, information, etc., and sharing it amongst themselves. Not only does creating our own media disrupt consumerism, it also disrupts patriarchy by promoting what Kearney refers to as a "Girls Gaze", media made by girls for girls, and also by entering into a technological domain that has been naturalized as a 'no-go zone' for girls for generations.

We realize that the riot grrrls movement was largely dominated by white girls, and that most representations of pop "girl power" also idealize whiteness, as well as heterosexuality. We at Girl Power 3.0 are aware that race, sexuality, ability, and other identities can never be separated from gender; we must be careful not to homogenize anyone's experiences of girlhood because each of us experiences our intersecting identities differently in different situations. We believe that the internet and technological fields opens a space for girls of different backgrounds to come together and collaborate around our shared sensibilities of resistance, of hope, of despair, of power. We realize that we are all historical subjects and it is important to know our histories as we work together and not to erase or conflate our differences. Because there is no essence of "girl", we encourage each and every one of you reading to ask for yourself what Girl Power 3.0 might mean to you.... ;)

WELCOME TO GIRL POWER 3.0... Here's how we came to be.

Welcome to our blog!! We are so excited to have you joining us!!

We, Erin, Whitney, and Nathalie, are undergraduate Women's Studies students at the University of Victoria, in Victoria, BC, Canada. We met in an upper level wostud's course called Rethinking Girlhoods, designed by our brilliant and inspiring professor Dr. Jo-Anne Lee. The class introduced us to feminist Girl's and Girlhood Studies from an intersectional, anti-racist, decolonizing, transnational perspective. We learned about the geneology of Girlhood Studies, which is a relatively new field of study (circa 1990s), about the importance of taking a critical perspective on the knowledge produced about girls in the earlier days ( which tended to universalize experiences of white, able-bodied, heterosexual, middle class girls as representative of all girls), about the ways neoliberlism and consumerism present a post-feminist notion of "girl power", about girls and media, about how girls bodies are regulated and medicalized, about how issues around girls represent larger moral /political concerns in our society, about girls and interenational development (very frightening stuff), and so much more. For our group project part of the class, we were given creative freedom to synthesize our new knowledge and also engaged girls in producing new knowledge.

We initially had a project that involved meeting with a group of young moms and doing some culture jamming stuff in response to the negative representations of teen moms in popular culture , but unfortunately, the adults in control of the group decided we should not talk to them. Although we were disappointed, we were not surprised because we had been learning about how girls voices are often silenced by adults who think they are protecting them, doing the "right thing". We started analyzing the situation. It struck us that if girls have access to technologies that allow them to produce their own self-representations and the skills to use such technologies, they don't need to be given permission by adults to have their voices heard. They can become cultural agents and produce their own knowledge, unfiltered and unapologetic. We remembered back to a section of our class where we learned about girls and media production, how cultural messages that promote technology as a "boy thing" often prevent girls from learning the skills to share their voices publicly through the use of technology, and how empowering it is for girls to produce their own media. We learned that "as girls begin to create their own images and generate narrative that truly reflect their lives and concerns, they have the opportunity to take hold of the stereotypes of girlhood learn, disrupt or deliberately deconstruct them, and offer something else instead" (Lipkin, 2004 p.147). 

We recognized how important this is, and were all really keen to produce knowledge and disrupt the 'girl' stereotypes that we had learned about. We wanted to create our own narratives , our own stories, but how? We needed the very technological skills that we lacked in order to produce media and alternative messages. Bingo!! This would be our project -- learning the technological skills required to communicate publicly from a self-identified 'girl' identity and then doing it!! We started talking within our group. Nathalie had recently learned how to make films, Erin had recently learned how to blog, and Whitney wanted to learn both. Given the time limits, we agreed it made the most sense to work collaboratively on making a blog about girls, technology, and culture. Our goal is to subvert popular stereotypes that tell us girls and technology don't mix by learning new technological skills ourselves and supporting other girls to do the same. Only couple weeks ago some of us believed we didn't have the ability to create and maintain a blog, and now here we are doing it and loving it!!

However, we recognize that we are very lucky in our access to computers, internet, and cameras available through UVic. We are able to learn these skills because we are surrounded with costly equipment that we can use freely as part of our university program, and this is something not all girls are able to do. However, even without all this equipment, blogging is something you can do at an internet cafe, or on school computers, and in our increasingly technological world, it is imperative that girls are encouraged to seek out technological skills so they too can speak publicly. We need to hear girls voices. We don't need adults regulating them. We as girls need the technological skills the produce and disseminate our own knowledge freely. We also need to encourage each other that we are capable, that technology is not some "dorky" "boyish" thing, but that it is a political tool that we can use to get our voices heard.

Our blog is a space to track our learning and research, share information and skills, and engage with girls from all around the world about our relationships with technology. We hope you enjoy your time here and share your comments with us!!

We're sick of postfeminist notions of 'Girl Power' that are all about shopping and sex appeal. So we present Girl Power 3.0 ... we're pushing buttons, we're speaking out, and we're not asking for permission.

Technology Defined!

The word of technology is so broad. We defined the term earlier in the blog but I wanted to share my thoughts on the word. In the context of today……..I posted the question “Girls, what is your relationship with technology?” on Facebook and I got mixed bag of responses, but most referred to their cellphones, or Skype, or computers. But when I think critically about it, technology can be anything, according to the Encarta World Dictionary (1999) it is defined as:

tech·nol·o·gy n

1. The study, development, and application of devices, machines, and techniques for manufacturing and productive processes

2. The sum of a society’s or culture’s practical knowledge, especially with reference to its material culture

Technology can be anything from your blender to web design. However, for the purposes of this blog, we aim to interrogate girls’ involvement in production technology. This is technology that is used to produce something for public access, to communicate something, to express opinions, to pubically produce! We focus on a few main forms of production technology, this entails:

*Music production and DJing.

*Film, Photography and Videography

*Production of Public internet sites, such as blogs and webpages.

We want to see how girls interact with these forms of technology because it is in these forms where the great power of resisting and expressing ideas to the public exists. It is with this power that girls are recognized, girl activity switches from bedroom culture to public access. It is with these technologies that the girls’ voices, which were once missing in public discourse are now made loud.

The Gendered Dialectic of Technology

So much analyzing media and so little producing it. This is a common theme in feminist studies; we critique, critique, critique, but don't offer an alternative. And why not? Perhaps its because we don't have the technological skills to do so... Many of us girls were never encouraged to learn media technologies, because it's not a "girl thing". So we're left overflowing with ideas, yet lacking the ability to disseminate them. It's interesting our that production technology, our communication and media technology, is largely dominated by men. Generally speaking, girls and women lack the technological skills, knowledge and perhaps even motivation to produce media and communicate publically. Why? Is it because girls and technology actually don't mix? Because they don't have anything to say? Or is that a master narrative in our society, a story that is told over and over, that permeates our institutions and discourses in such a way that it appears natural, inherent...? I argue it is the latter.

I am beginning to realize that this lack of technological skills and abilities in girls and women is part of what Luce Irigaray calls a phallogocentric economy, an economy of castration, an economy of lack. By this she means that women are signified, defined, by what they lack in relation to men. It is women's lack of a penis, lack of "rational thinking", lack of "production skills", lack of "power" that defines her. Men's power and higher social status is dependent, is contingent on what women lack. So to bring it all back together, the master narrative that girls and technology don't mix is a cultural story that keeps girls and women locked into a position of inferiority, of naturalized lack.

But, just like Hegel's master / slave relationship, men's supposed natural technological abilities are in a dialectical relationship with women's supposed natural inabilities. What happens if girls and women start touching the buttons, crossing the wires... ?? That's what we want to do here... we want to empower each other to master the skills many of us have long believed and accepted as purely boys and men's domain.