Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus

Apr 15, 2013 Nathaniel Taintor rated it 4 of 5 stars

I hadn't thought about Riot Grrl much in years, but reading this book I was reminded how much I loved the whole subculture that sprang up around Riot Grrl in the early 90's and how much impact that scene has on my politics for many years. I moved to DC in late 1992, drawn by the energy and potential of the DC punk scene. Soon enough it became apparent that what defined the scene in a lot of ways was the Riot Grrl movement and the reactions to it - even people who had a long and interesting histo...more I hadn't thought about Riot Grrl much in years, but reading this book I was reminded how much I loved the whole subculture that sprang up around Riot Grrl in the early 90's and how much impact that scene has on my politics for many years. I moved to DC in late 1992, drawn by the energy and potential of the DC punk scene. Soon enough it became apparent that what defined the scene in a lot of ways was the Riot Grrl movement and the reactions to it - even people who had a long and interesting history of their own already got a clear chance to prove themselves all over again by responding well, or disgrace themselves by not responding well, to this new energy.

Like most intense movements, Riot Grrl burnt out the people around it nearly as much as it burnt out its participants, and for years afterwards, I found myself consciously defining myself against what I felt were Riot Grrl's shortcomings as a movement, as much as I knew I was influenced by it.

I spent years afterward looking for some kind of political work that felt more empowering to be a part of, and more effective, than the endless cycle of calling people out on their privilege and getting called out on your own privilege that characterized what remained of the Riot Grrl energy by the time I found it.

But at the same time, I spent years looking to recapture the feeling of hope I got out of it - that feeling that your subculture actually mattered in the world. That if you put enough thought into making every aspect of your appearance and music and writing and presentation articulate your outrage and your critique, a community of like-minded people would crystallize to back you up.

That's what Bikini Kill did, and its the most instructive I can think to draw from Riot Grrl. How a real movement that had a huge influence on American cultural politics was born from a few bands and zines, a style and an attitude, and a few people who weren't afraid to be a lightning rod for all the women-hating, youth-fearing attacks of everyone from the mainstream press to the music industry bigshots to the boys in the scene. Its almost not an exaggeration that Bikini Kill were the reality of the hip kids revolution that Nation of Ulysses promised in their preaching, and I think exploring that reality is one of the most interesting parts of this book.

When I first picked up this book, I flipped to the end to read the painful and embarrassing denouement, much of which described meetings I was at or conflicts I lived upstairs from. Some of those recriminations were even more painful and embarassing to read about 20 years on than they were to live through in the heat of the moment.

Then I flipped to the beginning to cheer myself up. I still wasn't impressed. "How it began" stories are a dime a dozen - everyone has stories of when they were young and ready to change the world - and I wasn't especially impressed with the writing style. There were so many amazingly intense writers involved with the Riot Grrl scene that anyone writing about it in retrospect is doomed to fall short of the reality.

But reading on, the stories that were teased out of diverse histories drew me in more and more, and I found myself tearing up several times. Sara Marcus might not be as visceral a writer as most of the zines that came out of the scene around Riot Grrl, but she has this ability for drawing subtle insights out of descriptions that struck me several times. And the story is inspiring enough to get hooked on for more than nostalgic reasons.

I have no idea if the author is related to Greil Marcus or not, but the only book I could think of to compare this to was Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. That's saying something good.
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Jan 27, 2013 Aubrey rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was a fun read, with interesting band facts, and tips on the pitfalls to avoid in feminist communities.

I'd recommend this book to Bikini Kill and Bratmobile fans, any feminist music fans, and lovers of zines.

This book chronicled the Riot Grrrl movement starting from the rise of Bikini Kill and Bratmobile and then switching gears to follow the young women who created zines, built communities and held conferences under the banner of "riot grrrl." It was fun to get to read the inspiration...more

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Sep 06, 2011 Deborah rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was born a few years too late and hundreds of miles too far away to have been involved in Riot Grrrl, but I do remember reading about Bikini Kill and Bratmobile and zines in Sassy magazine. I didn't really understand Riot Grrrl when it was happening, or even years later, although I do have a few Sleater-Kinney tunes in rotation on my iPod. This book confirms that Riot Grrrl was a pretty messy, convoluted movement, but with sincere intentions. I liked reading about the start of it all. Part of...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Amanda rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a good introductory book to use if you are teaching Intro to Women's Studies or a class focusing on the Third Wave of Feminism. Overall, this book was very detailed and thankfully didn't put the emphasis that the Riot Grrl movement was created/maintained by one person. The author makes SURE that we realize and understand that it took a combination of women's efforts that made Riot Grrl what it was. The history of Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, the writings on skin, the popularity of the zines,...more

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Jun 05, 2011 Kristen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: feminism, music

A very informative book on the world of riot grrrl in the early 1990s and probably the best book you're going to find about it. Sara Marcus did a commendable job compiling all this information. Zines, bios on Bratmobile and Bikini Kill, riot grrrl from U.S. coast to coast (Olympia, DC, conventions)... all done by grrrls who were moved by the second-wave of feminism and wished to make a change in the face of the 90's. This was otherwise an era that generally lacked a strong outlet for women wanti...more

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Apr 14, 2011 Ciara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: feminist-y-books, read-in-2011

i was nervous but excited to read this book. i bought it six months ago & kept putting it off because i wanted to be able to really relish it, & i kept thinking i should read my library books first. & i always have a new library book. but i finally read this last week & it was awesome.

first of all, i'm not going to pretend that this is perfect book. all historical accounts are subjective, even when they were written by people who were actually there or extremely passionate &...more i was nervous but excited to read this book. i bought it six months ago & kept putting it off because i wanted to be able to really relish it, & i kept thinking i should read my library books first. & i always have a new library book. but i finally read this last week & it was awesome.

first of all, i'm not going to pretend that this is perfect book. all historical accounts are subjective, even when they were written by people who were actually there or extremely passionate & knowledgeable about their subject. sara marcus became interested in riot grrrl in 1993 or so, as a teenager. so she was as involved with the scene as i was...which is to say, peripherally in a lot of ways. i was a young teenager living in small town ohio in the early 90s. i wrote zines, contributed to zines, traded zines, had tons of pen pals, traded mix tapes, was introduced to & introduced other people to riot grrrl bands through said mix tapes, etc. but i never made it to a riot grrrl convention (i was too young & my parents wouldn't let me go--they thought riot grrrls were "man haters" & "lesbians"), i never saw a lot of those classic riot grrrl bands play live, i was never in a local riot grrrl group (my best friends as a teenager were weirdo punk feminists, but they weren't interested in riot grrrl, even when i tried to get them pumped for it), i never even read some of the now-canonized riot grrrl zines, like "i'm so fucking beautiful" or "jigsaw" or "wrecking ball". so reading this book was really interesting, because i actually learned a lot about this movement that i definitely considered myself a part of at the time, & that was pretty awesome.

sara opens the book with her own personal history of learning about riot grrrl & trying to become involved. she then goes on to profile some halfways well-known riot grrrls who influenced the movement in a lot of ways, using a chronological framework. she starts with the formation of bikini kill & writes about the different places that kathleen hanna & tobi vail were coming from in terms of their feminist analysis. i found that really interesting, especially now that i am in a feminist book club populated by all kinds of people coming to feminism from so many different perspectives, with so many different ideas about what feminism is. sara writes about kathleen's history doing domestic violence outreach, & tobi's background in understanding gender as a social construct & feminism as one prong of a revolutionary movement encompassing all kinds of different liberation struggles. tobi has written a few posts about this book (including critiques, errors, & clarifications) on her blog, including taking sara to task for suggesting that women in domestic violence shelters don't care if gender is a social construct. i have to say, i agree with tobi about that: to say that reinforces the idea that domestic violence only happens among the undereducated. the way sara wrote about tobi & kathleen's differences also seemed to suggest that tobi was all about book-learnin' while kathleen was in the trenches, doing real work. i think that's a total judment call that says more about sara's own value system than anything else.

she writes about the formation of bratmobile, & allison wolfe wrote a piece in response, questioning why sara felt the need to constantly refer to her as "strange" or "dorky" every single chance she got. i have to say, i was way into both bikini kill & bratmobile back in the day. i probably liked them equally. & i never thought of allison as especially "strange" or "dorky". i have no idea where sara is getting that...but it informs most of her writing about bratmobile, which is kind of unfortunate. she seems to see bratmobile as more of a novelty or joke band, especially in comparison to bikini kill. she writes at one point that "bratmobile was always just something fun to do on school vacations," which allison refutes in her piece. who knows where sara got that idea, or more to the point, why she felt the need to write it down in a history. tobi wrote something about how the problem with histories like this is that things get written down & people perceive of them as the truth, even when they're not completely (or even a little bit) accurate.

so i definitely tried to keep my critical thinking lenses on while i read this book, reminding myself that this is one version of the riot grrrl story. i think it is the best version i have yet heard. there are only a smattering of other books about riot grrrl, & most of them frame it as a musical genre or a fashion statement. sara takes great pains to contextualize the rise of riot grrrl activities within the geopolitical moment. even though i was obviously alive in 1992, i never realized how close roe vs. wade came to being overturned that year--what a real & present danger it posed to american women. she writes about the clarence thomas hearings, the prevalence of sexual assault & sexual harassment, the crystallization of the beauty myth, all these things going on that informed riot grrrl's political militancy. & in response to critiques that riot grrrl was TOO militant, which scared away more timid girls that may have otherwise enjoyed the consciousness raising dynamics at meetings or the zine culture, she argues that militancy was less a tool of elitism within riot grrrl than it was the definition of riot grrrl. i would agree with that, & i do feel it's a piece that has largely been written out of the history of riot grrrl & is part of the reason i have a hard time with modern-day riot grrrl nostalgia. it's not just about listening to bands & dancing in the front at shows & having a goofy haircut. riot grrrls were angry, justifiably so. i think in the last twenty years, the anger element within feminism has been played down a lot in order to make feminism seem more appealing to larger masses of people, & i think that's unfortunate, because it robs feminist projects of some of their concrete politics sometimes.

anyway, moving on. sara doesn't just write about bands. she also writes about the formation of riot grrrl groups in washington DC, olympia, vancouver (canada), humboldt county, minneapolis, & elsewhere. she writes rather a lot about the riot grrrl conventions that happened in washington DC & omaha, nebraska. she writes about media coverage of riot grrrl at the time, & the differences of opinion about how riot grrrls should handle requests from the media. she writes about the different decisions that different riot grrrls made & the fallout that they experienced (both positive & negative). she writes about the formation riot grrrl press (the first zine distro i'd ever heard of back when i was like 15 or whatever), the prevalence of bisexuality among riot grrrls (& how it was alienating to queer girls who were otherwise interested in riot grrrl), the dearth of race & class diversity within the movement (& within punk as a whole), questions about whether riot grrrl was a punk spin-off or a political movement, the role of mail order culture...tons of stuff.

one of my favorite elements of the book was its dishiness. she writes extensively about jessica hopper's involvement in riot grrrl minneapolis, & how she agreed to give an interview to "newsweek" even after a lot of other riot grrrls had decided not to talk to the media anymore. but she didn't just give an interview. she also gave the reporter photos, letters, & zines she'd received from other girls involved with riot grrrl. the reporter used these items & people felt very betrayed. jessica immediately disassociated herself from riot grrrl & started hanging out with rock stars (like courtney love) instead, but the damage was done & a lot of people who felt betrayed by her actions had to try to make their peace with the fact that you can't always trust someone just because they say they're on your side. the stuff about jessica also illustrates the way that calls for a media black-out happened in a somewhat autocratic manner, & how a lot of difficult issues of elitism & self-promotion has to be addressed.

she also touches on erika reinstein, who wrote "fantastic fanzine," among other zines, & is kind of infamous in certain circles for writing a zine in which she uses the racist anetbellum "one-drop rule" as a justification for speaking on behalf of people of color everywhere & positioning herself as an anti-racist authority...even though she doesn't know for sure that she has any ancestors of color, & benefits from white skin privilege. a lot of zinesters of color at the time went to great lengths to call her out on that, & she responded by dropping out of the zine scene & re-emerging a few years later with a new name, writing zines on a different topic (but still engaged in the act of using oppression as currency & positioning herself as the most oppressed person of all time). sara writes about how this transformation, from outspoken, tough high school feminist to major star of the oppression olympics, started to happen. she doesn't go into the details that i did here, but she does write about other things i didn't really know anything about, & these stories illustrated the problems of a lack of diversity within riot grrrl, as well as the issues that plague all political movements & subcultures, in terms of in-fighting, sanctimoniousness, hypocrisy, etc.

i, for one, appreciated the hell out of these tales from the darker side of riot grrrl. ideas about riot grrrl have filtered down to the next generation of young punk feminists, who seem to have this idea that it's just all about girls going to shows together & being best friends. i think sara's book did a great job of illustrating the fact that riot grrrl really did aspire to be a real political movement in a lot of ways, & that it was hindered by authoritarianism, real & imagined hierarchies, betrayal, self-aggrandizement, etc--all things that we should be staying cognizant of & trying to avoid still.

obviously this book is just kind of the tip of the iceberg in terms of what could be written about riot grrrl, & i hope that as the girls that were involved in the 90s continue to grow up, more & more books & other histories emerge. (less)

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Mar 07, 2011 Krista Danis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Love. Sarah Marcus illuminates the Riot Girl movement as an undefinable subculture of young women that were unsatisfied with cultural and subcultural power hierarchies that cultivate and accomodate violence against women. Picking what they wanted from second wave feminist theory and leaving the rest, Riot Girls insisted that the personal is the political. "If you're angry or confused or depressed about things that are totally unfair, is it really your reaction that's the problem?" queries Marcus...more Love. Sarah Marcus illuminates the Riot Girl movement as an undefinable subculture of young women that were unsatisfied with cultural and subcultural power hierarchies that cultivate and accomodate violence against women. Picking what they wanted from second wave feminist theory and leaving the rest, Riot Girls insisted that the personal is the political. "If you're angry or confused or depressed about things that are totally unfair, is it really your reaction that's the problem?" queries Marcus. As she details, one of the goals of this movement was to turn the critical lens outward instead of inward, with an emphasis on healing and consciousness-raising whose roots hold strong in sixties feminist activism.

Marcus illustrates how the interaction between art and activism created a nurturing environment for the movement to develop in Olympia and DC. It is this relationship that sets Riot Girl apart from other social justice movements. Though Kathleen Hannah rejects her position as the leader in a worthy effort to remain communal, she played a critical role in drawing women to feminism through music.

The author's ability to chronical the end of Riot Girl without devolving into essentialist rhetoric or stereotypes was refreshing and commendable. She states, "Ambivalence enters the living room and sprawls out on the couch when the image you're using to mark something substatial gets decoupled from its meaning. Adrift from its original reason for existing, yet still scented with some totemic version of it, the symbol becomes portable, malleable, saleable". Just when Riot Girl was at its most successful, the urge to define it, by the mainstream media and, subsequently, the Riot Girls themselves, was what eventually undermined the revolution. Once the patriarchy could define it, the patriarchy could control it.

Girls to the Front is a much needed history. Riot Girl's resistence to the mainstream played a critical role in its success and potential disappearance forever. (less)

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Jan 15, 2011 Kristina A rated it 4 of 5 stars

It’s pretty rare for me to read an entire nonfiction history from front to back, but I had to read this book. The topic is close to my heart, and there has not been much written to document the Riot Grrl movement, which continues (in my opinion) to be under-rated and dismissed.

Reading this took me back. I never considered myself a riot grrl (frankly, I never considered myself cool enough), but the music and zines were absolutely vital to my development as feminist. Marcus’s book really captures...more It’s pretty rare for me to read an entire nonfiction history from front to back, but I had to read this book. The topic is close to my heart, and there has not been much written to document the Riot Grrl movement, which continues (in my opinion) to be under-rated and dismissed.

Reading this took me back. I never considered myself a riot grrl (frankly, I never considered myself cool enough), but the music and zines were absolutely vital to my development as feminist. Marcus’s book really captures the spirit of that moment in time – both in terms of capturing the early 90s as a time (perhaps the last time) of exciting, palpable feminist potential, and in terms of capturing (sometimes to the point of hilarity) what it’s like to be a 16-23 year-old girl. In fact, oddly enough, at first it’s the latter trait that was the only thing I didn’t like about the book; Marcus writes in this kind of breathless, youthful voice that is appropriate for the topic but which I worry might contribute to the idea that this is not something to take seriously. Eventually, though, I became accustomed to the voice she was using, and it certainly made for a quick but still very thought-provoking read.

One thing I really appreciate about the book is that it focused on the feminism of the movement. I went into it eager to read about my favorite bands and instead became much more interested in the consciousness-raising aspect. I actually had no idea there were riot grrl meetings and conventions! Despite the disastrous nature of much of that (especially the conventions), I am really impressed with the energy and passion and commitment of these young women to organize themselves and others to that extent.

Another thing I liked a lot about the book was how it chronicled the disintegration of the movement, which raised many provocative questions. If you hadn’t noticed, the book is very specific historically – it only covers the time period of 1989 through 1994, with the bulk of the book focused on 1992-1993. Marcus does not really talk about the way feminist music changed after that specific moment in time (for instance, she writes about Bikini Kill but not Kathleen Hanna’s later band Le Tigre, and Heavens to Betsy but not Corin Tucker’s later band (my all time favorite), Sleater-Kinney). While it might have been nice to have some mention of what happened post-riot grrl, I liked the specificity because it allowed for a focus on the major ideals and problems of the movement. Other goodreads reviews have mentioned they would have liked to hear more about the racism and classicism within the movement (which, of course, have been and continue to be major issues for feminism); in particular, I think that while it’s admirable that Marcus discussed immature reactions many of the girls had to confrontations about their own privilege (the descriptions of the convention sessions in particular will probably be painfully familiar to anyone who’s tried to have a conversation about privilege with high school or college age kids, particularly white ones), I still think she could have spent more time with some of the actual young women who were really critiquing the lack of attention paid to race by the movement. But what I found really compelling was a conflict at the heart of what Marcus paints as the death of the movement: do we make this an insular, private, and ostensibly “safe” group in which the members understand and support each other (and discuss very personal experiences), or do we risk potential misunderstanding by trying to explain ourselves to others and publicize our ideas? The former position intends to maintain the integrity of the group, but it does not allow for inclusion and diversity, or even of reaching out to others whose lives could be transformed by the ideas (interestingly, Marcus herself found out about the movement as a teen by reading a Newsweek article that is presented in the book as being disastrously inaccurate). The latter position allows for that potential transformation, but obviously opens this very personal movement up to misinterpretation and dismissal and disrespect. I found this conflict, and the ideas behind it, deeply compelling.
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Nov 15, 2010 Carlos rated it 4 of 5 stars

A writer's attempt at Social History and its not a bad attempt. Its certainly not written by a historian, her notes are extremely short, although she did do a lot of interviews. A book with a lot of notes is something like "The Origins of the Urban Crisis", that thing had 100 pages of just citations!
She said she spent 5 years on this topic and it shows. Its a well written prose, that doesn't delve too much into the aesthetics of the music, although she does do that at times. Less about "why i t...more

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Aug 11, 2011 Kyle rated it 3 of 5 stars

It’s hard to recommend this book to anyone who doesn’t have an interest in the early to mid-90’s Riot Grrl scene. As a story, Girls to the Front tells the untold story of the music, zines, and politics of the pro-woman movement. Unwaveringly positive in her portrayal of the movement, Marcus centers her story on influential bands such as Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, and most importantly Bikini Kill. These bands were defiantly positive in affirming and celebrating their gender. They featured brut...more

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Feb 01, 2011 Alexis rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

I felt profoundly disappointed by this. I feel almost as if I had another expectation of what Riot Grrrl was, and this book sort of killed it.

Sadly, I felt like there was a structural problem to this book. The author was either too in love with the subject, or she wasn't removed enough from the activities. There was a tonal problem to what was written here.

I also felt that the book had way too much of a focus on Kathleen Hanna, but again, I think that's because I expected her to be chronicling s...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Veronica Beverley rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a typical oral history volume that covers a sub-culture of the punk music scene. Marcus has a background in political writing, so I would add that it has a wealth of political backdrop (usualy absent in these kind of volumes) which is quite needed and makes the riot grrrl movement relevant to its day.

The book follows the pivotal Olympia and DC scenes, which can make the movement feel diminished to those outside the era--where the fuck were the riot grrls of NY or LA (the stomping grounds...more

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Jun 05, 2012 Rachel Lindan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Flawed, vital, unsettling and inspirational, just like the movement it chronicles, 'Girls To The Front' is an honest and well-attempted account of Riot Grrrl. Reading it I was both enthused and enraged: impressed by so much of what Riot Grrrls stood for and were trying to do, and seething at the personal stories and statistics of what they were fighting against. Yet I also found my differences of opinion with the movement were reaffirmed - to the point that I was upset by some of the girls' stan...more

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Dec 29, 2010 Meg rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: social-justice, feminism-gender, history

3.5 stars. I really enjoyed this book and it made me reflect a lot on my own adolescence (just a tiny bit too late to be part of the Riot Grrl movement) as well as on youth and social movements in general. The author did really exhaustive research through interviews, video footage, zines, letters, and mainstream media coverage. She does a great job connecting the Riot Grrl movement with what was happening on the larger political and social scenes, which really puts the story in context. She also...more 3.5 stars. I really enjoyed this book and it made me reflect a lot on my own adolescence (just a tiny bit too late to be part of the Riot Grrl movement) as well as on youth and social movements in general. The author did really exhaustive research through interviews, video footage, zines, letters, and mainstream media coverage. She does a great job connecting the Riot Grrl movement with what was happening on the larger political and social scenes, which really puts the story in context. She also describes her personal investment in the topic (her own participation in the scene), which I appreciated. And I liked her emphasis (throughout the book) on what the movement was really supposed to be about: empowering women and girls to resist the limited options offered to them. Reading this re-connected me with some parts of my feminism that I haven't paid as much attention to lately. Thanks!

My main problem with the book was that I dislike the narrative voice she used (a kind of omniscient narrator) when it comes to describing people's inner experiences. It's a journalistic pet peeve of mine. It seems to me that the individual voices get lost in this style of narrative, since we're never sure how much was directly said by the person and how much is the author's interpretation. I really would have preferred more lengthy direct quotations, even if they included a lot of "um"s and "you know"s. At times the author went over the top in trying to give amazing descriptions of people's internal experience, where it would have been more powerful spoken directly in the person's voice. Example: "A layer of Molly's self-hatred burned off, and its charred remains drifted out the car window." (p. 181). Did Molly actually say that? Cause if she did, you should just quote her.

Occasionally the book got too bogged down in the day-to-day lives and petty in-fighting that happened. It's a fine line to walk, for sure - a lot of the details are important from a writing perspective to give us the flavor of the story, and important from a political/historical perspective to help us understand the movement. Still, sometimes there was just a little too much information about what the weather was like or who ate whose tofu without permission.

As a side note, what's up with the several random snarky digs at L7? They were a totally awesome and feminist band!(less)

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Jul 01, 2010 Erica added it

Very much recommended to anyone who wants to know more about riot grrl or anyone who likes reading about grassroots movements or anyone who enjoys books like Our Band Could Be Your Life. OBCBYL is the obvious comp here, but whereas that was about individual bands, in Girls to the Front Marcus examines the riot grrl movement as a whole, concentrating on individual girls participating as well as those in well-known bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile, so there's a lot of non-music stuff in here...more

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May 07, 2013 Nerida Southam rated it 4 of 5 stars

1. I decided to read this book because I am very interested in Riot Grrrl culture and the feminist revolution in the 1990's. It interested me because it was written by a woman who was a part of the revolution and gave first hand recounts of what happened, as well as interviewed some of the girls who were at the front lines of the revolution.

2. This book completes the "Books that teach you about a different time in history" category because it is about events that happened in the 1980s and 90s. I...more 1. I decided to read this book because I am very interested in Riot Grrrl culture and the feminist revolution in the 1990's. It interested me because it was written by a woman who was a part of the revolution and gave first hand recounts of what happened, as well as interviewed some of the girls who were at the front lines of the revolution.

2. This book completes the "Books that teach you about a different time in history" category because it is about events that happened in the 1980s and 90s. I like reading books in this category because it teaches you about real life things that happened and historical events.

3. The ideas in this book widened my knowledge and made me think about a lot of issues in the world I had previously ignored. This book explores and documents the "Riot Grrrl" wave of radical feminism in the 1990s and it's affects on todays society. An idea I found most interesting was girls taking power and fighting against male oppression and patriachy. Marcus writes a concise account of the struggles girls such as Kathleen Hanna and Allison Wolfe, both prominent figures in the revolution, and how they attempted to overthrow patriachy and end male-dominated culture. Both women started out small, but with big ideas. Both were the lead singers of revolutionary all-girl bands, and showed that girls can do everything boys can do and we don't deserve to be oppressed by men for and be told to "get back in the kitchen" or "go make a sandwich". Women don't have to fit into the stereotyped "housewife" or "full time mum" roles. Women can do anything and everything, from fighting wars to managing large corporations. Women must unite against the undeserved oppression shown to us by men.

4. A quote I found particularily important was "We are tired of begging for our rights from men in power. We are going to take power". I find this quote very important because it represents the anger women feel towards patriachy and the force that is needed to end it. I think that women DO need to take power for themselves because many women are being harrassed and abused on a daily basis by men, which is terrible, and needs to stop NOW.

5. I learned from this book that women's revolutions and feminism is an important part of our history and present. Although there have been some laws put in place to benefit women since the Riot Grrrl revolution in the 90s, there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure equality among women and men.(less)

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Jan 18, 2011 nicole rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

It was much harder for me to connect with this book than I thought it would be. I always thought I had something in connection with this group of women who were into music and political change. I grew up reading Sassy, even though I was much younger than the intended demographic, and listened to Tori Amos and wrote a journal cataloging my motions and injustices suffered. But my definition of being a feminist is so far removed from their experience that it sort of took my breath away. It actually...more It was much harder for me to connect with this book than I thought it would be. I always thought I had something in connection with this group of women who were into music and political change. I grew up reading Sassy, even though I was much younger than the intended demographic, and listened to Tori Amos and wrote a journal cataloging my motions and injustices suffered. But my definition of being a feminist is so far removed from their experience that it sort of took my breath away. It actually made me question whether I had ever been one at all.

I grew up in a time of Title IX, playing soccer with equal field time, funding and town support as the boys' team had. I attended workshop after workshop dedicated to promoting women in the maths and sciences as a Girl Scout. With musical education properly funded in public education, it never occurred to me that I might not be able to one day be in a band because of my genetic makeup. I took co-ed karate classes, on days when I wasn't taking dance lessons. I attended an all-women's college within a larger co-ed university. I have only had women bosses. I have always had strong female role models from all walks of life.

I was never, ever told that I couldn't do something because of my gender. I could wear a dress or pants, cut my hair long or short, get weekly pedicures or not -- none of that changed who I am on the inside. I did well in school, always spoke my mind, had places where I felt that I belonged and pursued any opportunity I could to get myself to the points I wanted to be in my life. I was raised to believe I could have it all, not because of what gender I was, but because making the best of your time here on this world was what mattered most of all.

Am I a feminist? Yes. I believe in equal opportunities for women, be it political, economic or social. I believe in a woman's right to choose, whether that is in relation to her biological, sexual, educational, or occupational parts of life. But I don't let this world anger me the way the Riot Grrls did. At heart, I'm not just a feminist - I'm a humanist. I believe in the power of the human experience, that focusing on service and action can bring positive change to an environment. I believe in the power of people, for good or for bad, regardless of the arrangement of their race, class, creed and gender.

I couldn't believe the petty inclusiveness of this scene. Granted, I'd read enough books on the rise and fall of other scenes and participated in enough basement band shows to know the score. I was surprised by the preoccupation with totalitarian control of image -- taking it back the control from corporations and media, only to keep it locked up in regional meetings due to an aversion to the inevitable media spotlight. As a teenager, I'd alway sort of yearned for having had the opportunity to participate in this larger cultural phenomenon, but after reading this, I'm glad I grew up in the time that I did.

And if there were to be a second coming of girl revolution, I know the woman I'd want to lead it.

Leslie Knope.

Why? Let me break it down for you. A revolution is not dying your hair, standing with linked arms in the front of shows, creating different rules of conduct for different genders, writing your personal thoughts and feelings on paper for a public forum and then getting angry when major news outlets reprint it. It's not dancing at strip clubs when you say you're deconstructing the system or wearing girly barrettes in your late teens or starting a DIY band.

The real revolution is this -- earnestness.

Anger can get you so far, but the ability to wake up every morning and do the best you can to fight for what you believe in, as a calm, cool, collected professional who gets results, is never given the credit it deserves. (less)

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Apr 02, 2011 Cathleen rated it 4 of 5 stars

I missed the original incarnation of Riot Grrrl. In its earliest days I was graduating from my rural high school, and then I headed off to an only slightly less rural university for the rest of its relatively short life. I was out of the loop, busy trying to do well in college and struggling with questions about my sexuality, so it wasn't until the mid 90s that Riot Grrrl reached me. I don't remember how it happened. I don't know where I found my first Bikini Kill cd, but I did, and it spoke to...more I missed the original incarnation of Riot Grrrl. In its earliest days I was graduating from my rural high school, and then I headed off to an only slightly less rural university for the rest of its relatively short life. I was out of the loop, busy trying to do well in college and struggling with questions about my sexuality, so it wasn't until the mid 90s that Riot Grrrl reached me. I don't remember how it happened. I don't know where I found my first Bikini Kill cd, but I did, and it spoke to me. The band understood my rage, and they didn't ask, as most of the world did, why are you so MAD? They didn't have to ask because they knew, and they embraced it. Everyone that had any connection to RG has their own RG creation story, and that's mine. I was never in a group, I didn't bare my soul to other girls or graffiti feminist slogans on sidewalks, but I would have if I'd known any other RGs. I was a solitary practitioner of Riot Grrrlism, and it was lonely but not as lonely as it would have been had I not known there were other girls out there somewhere interested in feminism and mad at a society that let us all get as fucked over as it did and still does.

Marcus's book brought back a lot of memories for me, and oh, 90s, how I loved and miss you. It also taught me a lot about the RG movement that I didn't know. Marcus manages to highlight the true grassroots nature of RG. Truly, I was astounded by the sheer number of stories that she wove together. It made it difficult at times to follow, but really the point seemed to be not so much that we understand each individual girl's experience but the way those experiences combined, influenced one another, and morphed into something else. She also charts the beginnings and the gut wrenching endings of the groups crucial to RG's formation: Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Heavens to Betsy.

I recently got the chance to ask Kathleen Hanna what she thought of the book, and she was positive. She said that Sara Marcus sent out drafts to those in it for their approval. I respect that because, as with most biographies, she took a bit of creative license in describing people's thoughts and reactions. Ultimately, Hanna and I agreed that there was a little of Marcus's own story in each girl's story. I like that because it is RG to the core -- messy, not quite in line with the rules, and oddly communal.

For me, Marcus really captures the emotion of the time -- feeling finally connected to other girls, the exhilaration of taking back some control over your own female destiny, betrayals, band break ups, and finally the disintegration of a (somewhat) cohesive RG movement. Parts of it feel so good to read and others suck so bad I could have sworn I was there in the thick of it.

Ultimately, Marcus's book is a reminder of how important and powerful Riot Grrrl was to so many girls, and in the process it serves as a nice reminder of how important and powerful girls are in general.(less)

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Jan 17, 2011 Ami rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

It's basically completely unfair for me to pretend that my five star rating of Girls to the Front would translate to reading pleasure for anyone--it's completely rooted in my obsession with the riot grrrl movement and my complete and total disappointment for having missed the whole thing in my dumb suburban town. So please take this with a grain of salt.

A main takeaway for me is this dichotomy between the desire for privacy and the desire to connect with and create for a specific audience. Kath...more It's basically completely unfair for me to pretend that my five star rating of Girls to the Front would translate to reading pleasure for anyone--it's completely rooted in my obsession with the riot grrrl movement and my complete and total disappointment for having missed the whole thing in my dumb suburban town. So please take this with a grain of salt.

A main takeaway for me is this dichotomy between the desire for privacy and the desire to connect with and create for a specific audience. Kathleen Hanna obviously gets a big chunk of the book, and one interesting theory from the book is that as the movement she created began to expand, Hanna had to take a smaller and smaller role. Part of this is self-inflicted: Hanna didn't want to speak for everyone in the movement and also wanted riot grrrl to be adaptable, accepting the idea that what a women in NYC needed might be different from one in Kentucky. Part of it is just the nature of fame and celebrity--haters gonna hate, and the more members participating in the movement, unfortunately the more negative comments there were. If a main tenant of riot grrrl is to share your experiences as openly as possible, what does it mean when the movement's creator doesn't have a safe space to share it?

It may seem ridiculous to some people, but there was an expectation of privacy on the part of the creators of these zines. Not all--I'm sure some people felt comfortable reaching as wide an audience as possible--but for many ladies these writings were confessional, stream of consciousness kinda stuff, intended for friends and pen pals and maybe some strangers met at riot grrrl events. But the truth is, these zines were printed and most anyone could figure out a way to read them. The difference between writing something in a zine and getting it excerpted in Newsday magazine is huge.

Of course, my brain goes immediately to blogs and Twitter streams. There's less/no expectation of privacy with these online outlets, or at least I hope not, but I can understand again the desire to have a space where you're speaking solely to your friends.

Is there a way to create this in the digital age, a digital zine with a limited distribution? Does that defeat the purpose of online? What is the value of privacy in your writings? What would you say if you knew that your writings were intended to be viewed just by your friends? In writing that and thinking about the limitations I impose on myself in my own online writing, I can feel what has been lost, and by extension, how powerful the writing of these early zines must have felt.

(less)

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Oct 07, 2010 Rachel Bussel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Girls to the Front is an excellent history of a very specific time period that gets covers punk rock, feminism, media, politics and teenage girls and where they intersected to form Riot Grrrl. I only heard about Riot Grrrl and the associated bands long after they were over, and so often in the context of how it fell apart. Sara Marcus takes readers into the story from both a very personal perspective, letting us get to know not only the band members but the girls who got involved on a very intim...more

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Jul 21, 2012 Christopher rated it 4 of 5 stars

Cool Schmool.

Sara Marcus lavishes as much attention on the zine writers as much as Kathleen Hanna or the members of Bratmobile (whose on-stage demise feels utterly heartbreaking), as well she should. I happened to read this the same week Daniel Tosh suggested that it would be hilarious if a female heckler in his audience would get gang raped by his very male, very macho audience, and so I got to read women explain, AGAIN, to men how real a threat rape is to their lives, how constricting that co...more Cool Schmool.

Sara Marcus lavishes as much attention on the zine writers as much as Kathleen Hanna or the members of Bratmobile (whose on-stage demise feels utterly heartbreaking), as well she should. I happened to read this the same week Daniel Tosh suggested that it would be hilarious if a female heckler in his audience would get gang raped by his very male, very macho audience, and so I got to read women explain, AGAIN, to men how real a threat rape is to their lives, how constricting that could be. Surely things have "come a long way" in punk or indie rock, I guess, in the sense that women are being featured more often on stage and in print. But during a war to defund Planed Parenthood and trans-"V" ultrasounds, the Komen for the Cure fiasco, and eighteen years of ultra-conservative, misogynist national politics, it feels like the everyday realities these grrrls faced - the very fact of their femininity making targets of them in the larger world - is much more pressing than the Excuse 17 - Wild Flag lineage.

Marcus walks a severe tightrope in the books final pages, where infighting, pointless arguments and exhaustion join male leering and abuse in dissolving the grrrls hard-won unity, but it struck a nerve in this cis dude for a variety of reasons, most of them having to do with Olympia. At every turn I was reminded by all the things I loved about the place (THE SHOWS HAPPENING IN BASEMENTS! THE SERIOUS CONVERSATIONS! PEOPLE MAKING THINGS HAPPEN ON THEIR OWN AND LIVING LIKE THEY HAD CONTROL OVER THEIR LIVES!) and all the things I didn't (THE CLIQUEYNESS! THE I'M-MORE-RADICAL-THAN-YOU PURITY TESTS! THE HUMORLESSNESS!). There were so many times I wanted to shout at the principal arguers "OH MY GOD IT WAS BECAUSE YOU WERE TWENTY THREE! I KNOW, I'VE BEEN TWENTY THREE, NOTHING MADE ANY SENSE! YOU'RE BOTH ON THE SAME SIDE! QUIT ARGUING ABOUT HOW SOMETHING IS SPELLED!"

That been said, there's a larger conversation to be had nibbling at the heels of this book, which is what, exactly, were the results of the media attention and subsequent blackout? Does Riot Grrrl have a hold on the national conscious because it was such a great idea, the way to fuse punk with feminist concerns into something that made more sense to the kids of the nineties (a lot of the Riot Grrrl meetings reminded this author of the "rap sessions" read about in other books, zinemaking be damned) and because Bikini Kill were so good? Or was it just because they had an arresting look and played loud rock n' roll and Kurt Cobain dated one of them and so Spin covered them? A lot of the satellite groups formed as a result of the dreaded Spin and Newsweek articles, after all, and it was the old guard, themselves not more than five or six years older, that couldn't be bothered. I certainly don't have an answer for that.

Also, it was relieving to learn that Jessica Hopper was an insufferable shithead in high school, too.(less)

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Nov 12, 2010 Corinne rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is blowing my goddamn MIND right now. I was a little young to join in all the riot grrrl fun when it was at its peak, and this book keeps on making me sad that I did. Better late than never, I suppose.

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Aug 01, 2012 Vanessa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: feminism

This book was amazing to read! Unfortunately, I was too young when this movement happened, but I'm still amazed at the strength and creativity of these riot grrrls. I love it when girls are in bands and make their own music. It's a very strong action in a world where girls and women are supposed to be silent and never use their voice. I love Bikini Kill, and I was happy to read about the other riot grrrl bands as well such as Bratmobile and Huggy Bear. I am definitely going to check them out.

I...more

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Feb 02, 2012 elyse wilson rated it 4 of 5 stars

this book was so much fun. i entered the riot grrrl scene well past the events that took place in this book, and even though i haven't written a zine or been to a meeting in over 12 years, this book reminded me how little riot grrrl actually had to do with music. it was so much more than that. marcus highlights the experiences of riot grrrl through a variety of lenses -- straight girls (like me) who needed girls hands to hold to get through high school, art students who wanted to speak up about...more

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Nov 03, 2011 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

Riot Grrrl was something that happened near me (literally, many of the interesting things happened in D.C., though many other things happened in the Pacific NW and elsewhere) and that I was aware of while it was happening but was in no way involved with at the time. I knew that it was a thing, largely due to the media coverage (which this book does a nice job examining critically), but also because there were a few girls I knew in high school who would have considered themselves Riot Grrrl. I'm...more

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Sep 14, 2011 Meagan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was pretty much the right age for this when it was happening, but I was a weirdo in a small Southern town and my favorite bands in the early 90s were REM, the Indigo Girls, and Sly and the Family Stone. Never really got closer to riot grrl than my Sassy Magazine subscription, my Doc Martens, and my Hole tape playing on the white plastic boombox in the bathroom while I straightened my hair every morning before going to school until I finally got fed up and decided that if people didn't like my...more

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Mar 26, 2011 Genevieve rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: music, nonfiction, pop-culture, feminism

Made me want to start a girl riot.

I was in preschool when the original Riot Grrrl movement went down, so the perspective of someone who was actually there might differ. From where I am reading this in 2011 as a Gen Y female (and feminist) STILL living a world full of anti-feminist anti-woman backlash, riot grrrl is immensely inspiring, and Girls to the Front seems like a very well-written, well-rounded history of it--both passionate and informative, intensely readable.

But the great thing is tha...more

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Feb 14, 2011 Dragana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: diy

I purchased Girls to the Front by Sara Marcus following an inspiring Riot Grrrl: Traces of a Movement panel that happened this past November at the Art Book Fair in NYC. Sara Marcus shared her address with me upon talking to me about this very zine. I mailed her a copy after she said she wanted to see another zine revolution take place.

I discussed the book within the supportive environment of a newly formed book club; the members of which include Alyssa Javas, Miranda Taylor and David Rappaport....more

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Dec 19, 2010 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm a fan of this scene.... and a fan of this book. I really hope books like this get out there and recast the popular notion of riot grrls into a more true light. I've always cringed at what happened to the scene in the popular media. Of course, we are talking about the 90s, where big media's most effective move could be entitled, "co-opt, water down, and ruin." The muddying of the feminist movement during that time didn't help and in some ways, I think you can see how at the very same time tha...more

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Oct 29, 2010 Melissa rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really liked the rhythm Sara Marcus used in her writing for Girls to the Front - sometimes the words felt like song lyrics, other times like a prose poem. Very appropriate to a history about a feminist movement that included music and zines as outlets. I knew tangentially about Riot Grrrl in the early 1990s. I agreed with what sentiments I knew about - about objectifying women, treating them as substandard, pro-choice, pro-equal rights, pro-gay rights - but really didn't get the music aspect a...more

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