“Women in music” points reached their tragic peak in 1997. First came Spin’s “The Girl Issue,” the cowl of which featured Fiona Apple alongside the headline, “She’s Been a foul, Bad Girl.” Inside, the accompanying profile included the line, “Fiona Apple is a pop star trapped within the body of a reasonably teenage woman.” (The profile seems unable to cease reminding readers of Apple’s gender, comparing her to different female musicians and repeatedly speaking about her seems to be and “sexy and girlish” outfits.) To not be outdone, Rolling Stone printed its personal “Girl Issue” later that yr, with a cowl featuring the random-seeming combination of Madonna, Courtney Love, and Tina Turner. She simply gave start to Ronnie’s first baby this month. The event grossed $16 million its first yr, making it the highest-grossing touring festival, but not everybody was completely satisfied. Diffuser.fm’s “10 Best Female Rockers of the ’90s” consists of L7’s Donita Sparks, Björk, and Juliana Hatfield – all women, yes, however all women making fairly different music. Should you were a woman making music and Cobain identify-checked you, you had been automatically cool.
If there was already a girl on a festival lineup or in radio rotation in the ’90s, there was resistance to adding another. “When you’re a woman working in a man’s world, your gender is acknowledged always,” wrote Jillian Mapes in a Flavorwire piece on girls rock musicians. 250-page history of Seattle’s rock heyday … “The all-women’s issue. The girls in rock. “The reason she is mostly unknown has all the pieces to do with racism and misogyny. Those tastes could differ significantly each geographically and demographically. When a person has been attacked severely and abusively, the terms of his reply are usually not measured in very nice scales, however excess in reply could so exceed a reasonable view of the necessities of the occasion as to offer proof from which malice may be inferred. Female musicians are sometimes granted legitimacy based mostly on their proximity to more successful, male musicians, and Bell is no exception. “In basic, in most histories, women’s participation has been disregarded from the get-go or lower from the narrative after-the-fact,” wrote Jen B. Larson in a tribute to Bell on the web site Please Kill Me. Nowhere was there any point out of the musicians who had influenced riot grrrl acts like Bratmobile and Bikini Kill.
Lilith Fair launched in 1997 to counter the lack of ladies on festival lineups and offer support and exposure for female artists – not to say all of the Biore pore strips audiences wanted. As for the lists themselves, they often highlighted artists who had little in frequent besides their gender. L7 typically avoided group interviews and refused to be a part of “women in music” particular issues because the band felt they deserved their own article and didn’t wish to be labeled by their gender. “They refused to do critical interviews with us, they misprinted what we needed to say; they’d take our articles and our fanzines and our essays and take them out of context. Yet, while Bell is usually referred to as the “Godmother of Grunge,” she’s also not noted of most histories of the scene. However, when Bam Bam is referenced in accounts of the scene, it is generally referred to as a three-piece, eradicating Bell and her legacy utterly. When she does obtain a mention, it’s often in the context of Kurt Cobain being rumored to be a fan of Bell and the band.
