Revisiting The Spice Girls: Of Sugar, Spice, & For Once, Not Everything Nice- Firstpost
On the 23rd of July, David Beckham took to his Instagram, to put a video of his wife, Victoria Beckham singing Stop, captioning it — ‘Karaoke Night with the one and only Posh Spice’ For those unversed, Beckham was a part of the girl band, Spice Girls, along with Mel B, Mel C, Geri Halliwell, and Emma Bunton. Victoria was Posh Spice, while the others were Scary Spice, Sporty Spice, Baby Spice, and Ginger Spice, respectively. It was a moment of perfectly served nostalgia, and for all the girls out there who’ve crooned ‘if you wannabe my lover, you gotta get with my friends, make it last forever, friendships never ends’ growing up; a line from their 1996 single Wannabe, this was nothing less than iconic.
The girl group last performed together in 2012, at the Summer Olympics, after which the 5 girls never came back together. In 2019, the Spice Girls went on a world tour, called Spice World, however, Beckham wasn’t part due to her fashion business. The girl band was a sultry brand of female empowerment and championed the girl power mantra, making them a pop culture phenomenon that often sought an audience in a young female fanbase. Given their five distinct personalities, and nicknames, which encouraged girls to identify with one of the five spice girls.
The retained individuality of each of the five was a welcome departure from the homogenous group identity that bands were usually asked to form. It compelled young girls to embrace themselves and allowed them to fit in while standing out. Their legacy still lives on, as their nicknames become pop culture slang and girls around the world adopt the names, according to their personalities. Everyone had a Spice Girl, they wanted to be (I was Posh, and sometimes Baby) because it made them feel less alone, and at the fringes.
My love for them was initiated when I would have people come up to me and call me Posh Spice, and naturally, I loved Beckham — I resonated with her, be it the reserved, pouty attitude, or the little black dress that she flaunted; her style remained iconic. As I sat down to write this piece, I realized that the haircut that I got months ago, after chopping my alluringly long tresses, had a stark resemblance to Beckham’s from the Spice Girl era, and goes without saying I was ecstatic. Years later, in adulthood, I have a choppy bob cut, that Posh was known for, and I promise that even though it’s a coincidence, I couldn’t be more ecstatic, because that was the colossal impact the girls left, in terms of style, music, philosophies — it was frivolous feminism, and it may be far off, from the woke pop culture today, but it was glamorous, seductive and powerful in equal measure.
The Spice Girls delivered a dose of feminism and girl power, irrespective of how one-dimensional, at a time when men dominated the charts, and magazines overtly objectified women. In today’s post-Me-Too world, and intersectionality-conscious space, their feminism may be too simple, but for many girls in that generation, the stylised empowerment was enough to inspire confidence. They celebrated sisterhood, friendship and picking other women up — these mantras that hold weight even today, even if we word them differently and more somberly. The girl group wasn’t the most polished, perfect and poised — they were messy, and they were kicking arses to be honest, but that was their charm, the sultry recklessness in a highly prim and proper Britain, where girls were porcelain vases, rather than minds and hearts of their own.
Unlike modern bands, and pop culture, they didn’t promote a sophisticated discourse around equality, they simply screamed in all their glory, that at the end of the day, girls rule! They taught young girls to have fun, to not conform, and break free, almost with a spicy rebellious streak, and even though critics might see a problem in their renegade, most women were there for it, happy to be taken along on the ride filled with sugar, spice, and for once, not everything nice.
So tell me what you want, what you really really want…starts Wannabe, and just there in the starting, I know that Spice Girls, can be old, inappropriate, and even a tad bit rustic, but never irrelevant, because hey, who has ever asked women what they want, not many right? So if someone is asking, and if they are women, then we must listen to them, and yell back, if you wanna get with me, better make it fast. Now don’t go wasting, my precious time!
Takshi Mehta is a freelance journalist and writer. She firmly believes that we are what we stand up for, and thus you’ll always find her wielding a pen.
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Originally published at https://www.firstpost.com on August 1, 2022.
