Girl power

[8] The authors of Young Femininity: Girlhood, Power and Social Change argue that the term also draws inspiration from 80s Black female, hip hop vernacular, "You go girl".

[11][12] The Riot Grrrl movement was pioneered by Bikini Kill in the 1990s through their music and pushback on the punk industry’s sexist culture.

[22][23] According to Billboard magazine, they demonstrated real, noncompetitive female friendship, singing: "If you wannabe my lover, you gotta get with my friends.

[21][26] On the other hand, some critics dismissed "girl power" as no more than a shallow marketing tactic, while others took issue with the emphasis on physical appearance, concerned about the potential impact on self-conscious and/or impressionable youngsters:[22] As American feminist Jennifer Pozner famously remarked, it was "probably a fair assumption to say that a 'zig-a-zig-ah' is not Spice shorthand for 'subvert the dominant paradigm'".

[27] Regardless, the phrase became a cultural phenomenon,[28] adopted as the mantra for millions of girls[23][21] and even making it into the Oxford English Dictionary.

as a slogan), the term has been particularly and repeatedly associated with popular music; most notably in the early 1990s with the briefly prominent "riot girl" movement in the United States (cf.

And tellingly, Cameron has done it by mixing the sober feminism of his Terminator and Aliens characters with the sexed-up girl power of a Britney Spears concert.

"[40] Rebecca Hains also criticized mainstream "girl power" for its commercial function, arguing in Women's Studies in Communication that it "undermines true work towards equality, serving corporate interests at the expense of girls' personal interests," and called it an "updated version of 'commodity feminism.

Further, Alvarado claims that "the ethos of girl power discourses, as propagated in popular culture... promote whiteness via neoliberal, postfeminist, and postrace representations of empowered girlhood.

"[42] Young Femininity authors Sinikka Aapola, Marnina Gonick, Jo Campling, and Anita Harris note that the Girl Power movement "appropriat[es]... images and discourses of black women's strength, power and agency to serve a mainly white middle-class young women" agenda.

For example, Hannah Jane Parkinson of The Guardian criticized the term "girl power" as something "young women [that] are feeling more confident about calling themselves feminists and standing up for principles of equality" hide behind.