Girl-power

Girl power is a slogan that encourages and celebrates women's empowerment, independence, and confidence. The slogan's invention is credited to US punk band Bikini Kill, who published a zine called Girl Power in 1991.

In 1991, US punk band Bikini Kill published a feminist zine called Girl Power. The band's lead singer, Kathleen Hanna, said was inspired by the Black Power slogan. The term became popular in the early and mid 90s punk culture. The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll credits the zine with coining the slogan: "In their feminist fanzine Bikini Kill they articulated an agenda for young women in and outside of music; the band put those ideas to practice. (Ironically, the zine first coined the "girl power" slogan, later co-opted by England's bubblegum pop band the Spice Girls.) Bikini Kill earned a reputation in the punk underground for confronting certain standards of that genre; for example, asking people to slam at the side of the stage, so that women would not get pushed out of the front, and inviting women to take the mike and talk about sexual abuse."

The phrase is sometimes sensationally spelled grrrl power, based on the spelling of riot grrrl.

Some other bands who have used the slogan in their music are Helen Love and pop-punk duo Shampoo, who released an album and single titled Girl Power in 1995.

British pop quintet Spice Girls popularized the slogan in the mid-1990s. In her 2002 book Girl Heroes: The New Force in Popular Culture, Professor Susan Hopkins suggests a correlation between girl power, Spice Girls, and female action heroes at the end of the 20th century.Geri Halliwell, a member of the Spice Girls, credited former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a leading conservative, as the pioneer of their ideology of girl power.

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