E2: They Wannabe Famous Transcript

Sep 27, 2021

Ashley: Hi everyone, this is Ashley, a producer on the show. This is a chronological podcast. So if you haven't listened to the first episode, I highly recommend going back and doing so. We are still recording from different homes with different setups. We hope you can forgive a slight audio glitch here and there. Alright, let's go to the show.

 

Cheryl:   Last time I relied on my boobs to keep something in place and they just don't. Really annoying.

 

Elyse: Well there’s our cold open.

 

[Laughter]

 

Spice Invaders Theme Song: [over trumpet music] It’s got theme song vibes. Like danceable, funky. [Laughter]. So 90s. Girl power. Spice Invaders.

 

Cheryl: Do you want a recap of what we know so far?

 

Steph: The only thing I'm remembering right now is the sex dolls in the river.

 

Elyse + Cheryl: That’s a great place to start the recap.

 

Elyse: Okay, so from what I remember, the Spice Girls had just been flown to the U.S. to sort of kick off the rise of their actual industry careers and look into signing a contract. And they were supposed to show up for a big signing party, and instead stacked a car full of inflatable sex dolls in their stead to sort of deke out all of the people there. They then later showed up and threw all of the sex dolls into a canal making quite the entrance. And they are about to work on releasing their hit single of “Wannabe”

 

Cheryl: That covers a lot. And in this episode, we're going to get into the tension surrounding “Wannabe” as the first single, sort of the lay of the land that “Wannabe” is coming into, and some funny post-signing high jinks. So we signed the deal in July 1995. And in October of 1995, the virgin team invited the girls to an industry event at Kempton Park, it's supposed to be a day at the races. There's a showcase of other Virgin artists and networking. This is meant to be sort of a fancy classy event. Which, of course, brings the girls to do exactly what they're not supposed to. So what I'm about to send you is a photo from the day of their most scandalous action.

 

Elyse: What [Laughter] Okay, wait, is that a real statue

 

Sinead: Right now we're looking at a statue of a big horse. We have Melanie B and ginger on top and Emma Victoria is in the middle and Mel C’s got her arm around Victoria. And some old white men are looking on in horror.

Megan: Can I just say that posh is getting close to the posh hairstyle in this one... like all the early photos she had long, longer hair anyway. 

 

Elyse: Really good point kind of 

 

Megan: The rest of them kinda look like they look when we know them, you know.

 

Elyse: What is this statue? 

 

Cheryl:  So this is a memorial for a racehorse. So like it's scandalous, not just because A) you're not supposed to jump on the statues but also this is apparently like a big deal racehorse that you're supposed to, you know, revere a little bit and the girls are just like ‘we're gonna jump on this’.

The dude you see in the background, who's about to come to chase them off, according to Geri is security of Kempton Park, who's about to take them off the statue. The journalists who are there really enjoyed this. This is sort of like the first sprinkling of press they get for being an outrageous girl group. And also, their other big stunt for the day is they actually do an acapella version of “Wannabe” in the girls bathroom because they love the acoustics of the space so much. 

 

Elyse: That's cute.

 

Elyse: I don't think this guy that's rushing towards them is upset. Like if you zoom in on his face, he looks just tickled with what he has to deal with today.

Megan: Racehorses... like someone riding them like that's not that weird, right? 

 

Sinead: I mean, we have to remember we're dealing with English people here and they've broken a cardinal sin just showing an emotion in public and breaking a rule.

[Laughter]

 

Cheryl: I also feel like it's got to be really great for your day to be like ‘oh geez, I have to remove five attractive young women from a place who I'm sure if I'm like reasonably nice to will calm down eventually once they're done with their photos.’

This is their one big event and then the other part of sort-of the honeymoon pre-stardom phase is going to America again. They and Simon Fuller head over to start getting some networking done stateside and start getting a foothold in that massive market.

They're signed with an American agent William Morris Agency. this trip is a major first for the girls and that they get to stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel. They get to get in a little bit of shopping, a little bit of seeing the stars. Starting to experience that like Star lifestyle for the first time after you know slumming it in that Maidenhead house. One of the other highlights from the trip is they're actually told to take a holiday. they're about to go back into the recording studio to finish off the album. They're about to start having to do a lot of press to get both the single and the eventual album off the ground. And they've already got a promotional tour to Japan scheduled after this trip as well. And I'll drop the photo and they just look really cute and charming. 

 

Elyse: Oh my god. Sorry, but Mel B is so hot. 

 

Steph: Beach babes.

 

Elyse: They're all so hot. 

 

Megan: Wearing the classic 90s bikinis.

 

Sinead: The thing that catches my eye is how gigantic the front of Mel's bikini particularly is all of them but like how big do you think labia are that you need to have a bag?

 

[Laughter]

 

Elyse: Oh, wait, oh, we should describe what we're looking at. So we're looking at a photo of the Spice Girls. We have Mel B in front and then Emma then Geri, then Victoria and then Mel C at the back. And they're all in different colored little bikinis. And yes, Mel B's front is genuinely giant. It looks kind of like the stripper thongs from the Full Monty.

 

Sinead: The thing about this picture, especially because they've all been swimming and they're not really wearing makeup and they're not really styled at all is that they all look so young. And particularly Mel C looks like she's 15. Like...which probably not that far off from her age. But she really does look like the youngest person there. 

 

Megan: Now she looks 30 and she's not so maybe... 

 

Steph: She's reverse aging or something.

 

Elyse: She looks ... This is the picture I sent earlier today. She just looks better with every year. She's one of those people that as she ages gets more and more beautiful. And I don't understand the science.

 

Megan: So this is a story I heard on a podcast that was interviewing Mel C years later, she said they didn't have a lot of money. And this was sort of their first vacation with money. They went to Maui I think, it was, they stayed at this really fancy five star resort. And it was like, you know, other rich and famous people. And she said it was so luxurious and the beach was incredible. And all this. But like something happened with their last night at the hotel, it was actually a day before their flight was leaving the airport. So they, I think they went to the airport and found out it was like a day early. And then they're stuck there. And they had to find a cheap motel to stay at. And like they didn't have money with them. So they just stayed at this really cheap place. And there's a photo of them all looking, like, really salty and upset and it became sort of like these whiny pop stars, you know, sort of in the media like complaining about being in Maui or unhappy in Maui, or it wasn't really the whole story.

 

Sinead: So yeah, when we look at this trip to the US, it was a pretty major part of Simon Fuller’s strategy for the band, his intention was to plant the earliest use of doing a film. And they actually on this trip they met with DreamWorks, they met with Disney and they met with Fox. Which is crazy because they don't even have a single out yet. And they're meeting with film studios.

Um, he was pretty single minded in his approach to spread the brand of the Spice Girls into as many different markets and sectors as possible. So whether this meant creating interest for a film, or the myriad of brand sponsorships that the band would eventually have. It was later reflected in the music industry that their brand-first approach was pretty unique for the times. And it obviously hugely influenced the future of the industry. In the past a band had built their brand by becoming famous first for their music, then getting fans,then getting brand sponsorship deals, that kind of stuff. For the Spice Girls, they became famous as a consequence of their brand. And that's sort of like going at the same time between the music coming out and the mass commercialization of the brand was very unique at the time.

For the Spice Girls, they wanted to be really famous. They were really fame hungry. They picked Simon Fuller for a reason. And this is him starting to deliver from the moment basically that they sign him as their manager. He is trying to put them everywhere that they can be.

 

Elyse: They were also really driving the movie thing because apparently they had made it really clear to Simon Fuller from the time that they agreed to work with him that they wanted to do a movie because all of the girls had grown up with “A Hard Day's Night” with the Beatles. thinking like that is the epitome of fame. We want to do that. And it didn't have anything to do with their musical aspirations. It's just that they all dreamt of being Hollywood stars. So that's really cool that he made that a priority on their first trip to the states

 

Megan: And I also wonder because that's not a normal thing before an albums out to want to make a movie of a band. I also wonder if it's just like their personalities and when people met them they're like oh we can market this in like more sectors

 

Steph: They all had like theater school background so... like doing music and theater and a movie, it's not that much of a stretch, except for Geri I guess.

[Laughter]

 

Elyse: Geri takes a hit in this podcast.

 

Sinead: This is not the Geri fanclub podcast.

 

[Deep tone]

 

Megan: So are they laying the groundwork for what became like Paris Hilton and the Kardashians who went with the first part of fame but never came out with like the musical part?

 

Steph: Well, Paris Hilton has a pretty good music career, I don’t know what you’re talking about. 

 

Elyse: Sparkling track record.

 

[Laughter]

 

Sinead: I wouldn't say it's exactly the same because the girls themselves were quite private about their personal lives and they didn't enjoy necessarily their personal life being part of the media firestorm, they definitely paved the way for something heavily commercialized as being very normalized. And like you were entering your understanding of the band through commercial means not because you heard a song on the radio that you loved, maybe you saw a piece of merch first, or you saw an advertisement but it wasn't focused on the music. I think that leads later on into influencer culture for sure.

 

Cheryl: I also before I get to be plotline, I think this speaks to sort of two things. One I'm not sure how much of the goal was to be singers and how much of the goal was fame because there's a quote of Victoria’s that gets thrown around a lot that is ‘We want to be as famous as Persil Automatic” which is like a laundry detergent in the UK so like they want to be as famous as like Tide. Everyone knows what Tide is. You know what I mean? Even if you don't do laundry you know what Tide is. Like picture, like, even if you don't listen to teen pop, you want to know who the Spice Girls are? Or you know who the Spice Girls are was like their goal. So I definitely think a film's a part of that and that's definitely why they chose to work with Fuller because Fuller has all these connections to make them that famous like the roadmap. I'm not sure if the roadmap was to be a girl group or the roadmap was to be famous. 

 

[Deep Tones]

 

Megan: Do you guys remember hearing about the Spice Girls before “Wannabe”?

 

Ashley: Sinead? Did you living in the UK? Because I feel like it might have started a little earlier in the UK with their press.

 

Sinead: So I was in Canada by that time but it was going home for Christmas that Spice was already out in the UK but it wasn't out in the US slash Canada yet. It was like the Spice Girl Christmas hauls that year. There was already such an overexposure even though their first album was barely even out yet. I think it had been out for a few months by that time.

 

Elyse: Do you remember any of the Christmas gifts that were part of that Spice Girls year haul?

 

Sinead; It was mostly like the erasers and like, um, you know just like stationary stuff like, a lot of it had the gold ring on it. Do you guys remember an album cover with a gold ring that said spice?

 

Steph: Yah, That's their first album cover.

 

Sinead: Yeah, so there was a lot of stuff with that on it. 

 

Steph: If you tell me that one of them is a Tolkien fan. I'm gonna die. 

 

Elyse: Wait, I have information about the gold ring. 

 

Sinead: Cheryl does too.

 

Cheryl: Oh no, I’ll let Elyse tell it because she's already started to go for it. We literally come back from the UK. We start, the girls, start recording and putting the finishing touches on their album. One of the finishing touches that needs to happen is they need to return to Sheffield and head to Elliot Kennedy’s studio again. And near Elliott Kennedy’s studio is a local jeweler. Which brings us to...

 

Elyse: Me! My story. Um, okay. So once they're out there, it's so the thing is they return essentially around the time of their one year anniversary of recording “Wannabe” for the first time. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's what the one year anniversary is. And so Geri really wanted to do something special for the girls to sort of commemorate it. So she went to the jeweler around the corner and she took five gold rings there. Actually, I think she went to an engravement place. And then they were like you can't do it here., but you can go to the shoe place around the corner and you can get them engraved there. So she then actually went to a shoe place and had them engraved which is just the cutest little thing. So each of the girls received a gold ring that said Spice on one side. And then on the other side, it says one of five, which is just the sweetest little way to say I mean both limited edition, so they're worth $1 trillion in the future. But also just to commemorate their group vibe so I thought that was a really sweet gift.

 

Megan: I think that's actually a really sweet gesture commemorating all their hard work up to this point and like what was to come and what they all seem to like to know what's to come.

 

Elyse: That seems to be the thing about Geri. She seems to be very loving and very warm and very thoughtful and just genuinely like a sweetheart in that sense. Politically, she is a complete disaster, and I wish she never made public appearances on political matters. But in terms of being a part of someone's life, she genuinely does seem to be a very thoughtful and supportive person.

 

Ashley: There we go some Geri love.

[laughter]

 

Steph: I wonder if they still have them?

 

Elyse: I think they must be because I did a cursory search on the internet to see if I could even find photos of them, and there aren't any that I could find at least. so I think they must all keep them pretty, pretty close.

Sinead: Or they melted them into something else? 

 

Elyse: Or it is in the fires of Mordor. And that's why none of us are being bothered by Dark Lords. That's the other possibility. 

 

Steph: Interesting plot twist.

 

[Deep Tones]

 

Cheryl: Despite the fact that we're talking about what's going to become a world dominating force, there's actually a lot of tension and anxiety with the record company about what to do with the group.

The first hint of this is actually Robert Sandal, who's the director of press Virgin, explains, “because they were a group of girls who weren't conspicuously glamorous, it was difficult to know who they were supposed to appeal to. There had never been a group of girls who were addressing themselves specifically to a female audience before this gave a lot of the plans a hazy aspect”

Before this moment, the girl group sells to a male record buyer, the girl group is one unit, like you think of them as a unit, but they support a lead singer. Like usually, when they sing, you've got one of them out in front, and two to four of them are in a supporting role. And they all dress the same. If you're thinking of like the peak of the girl group, in a lot of ways you're thinking of like the 50s and 60s with the beehives and the matching gowns.

And we keep experimenting with that model until the 80s with Bananarama, which is cited as a big inspiration for Heart Management. But they're the same model, they've got one lead singer, they just have big 80s hair instead of big 50s hair.

And the girls rail pretty consistently against that mould, both in the recording studios, and also they rail against it kind of accidentally, I'm going to share a quote that Mel C says later for love magazine about sort of how the look came to be; “When we got together, you know, we were trying to find our way. And we went through phases of old dressing the same, it didn't work for somebody in the band. And then when we used to rock up to rehearsals, you know, Geri would have some crazy outfit from a secondhand store, and I'd be in tracky, and Emma would be in a baby doll dress. And we were just like, one day, I don't even know how we came to this decision. But we were just like, why don't we just wear what we want as individuals”

 

Megan: Girl Power, right there.

 

Ashley: I do love though how I mean, it is really important that they did that. But I love how impactful and revolutionary It is like, oh, let's dress as individuals.

 

Steph: So simple. Like how about we just dress how we want to dress? Presumably the clothes they already had in the closet at that point.

 

[Laughter]

 

Elyse: I think part of it was a strategic decision too, because in Geri’s bio, my favorite place to go, they talk about how they decided to wear different outfits to highlight their personalities specifically to play down the perception that they were a manufactured group, which of course they were. And you know, there's nothing wrong with being a manufactured group, lots of bands are but they really wanted to dissuade people from thinking of them as something that's been baked up by an agency and it's just a genuine sort of group of girlfriends.

 

Steph: By this point.. Yes, they started manufactured, but by this point, they are their own entity. like they've come this far on their own. Like they're not the Heart management, whatever they wanted them to be, Touch.

 

Sinead: They are kind of like... a lot of money was put into developing their talent together and teaching them how to work together. We weren't sure when we wanted to put this in…. But like they fully lied about their origins for like years until they finally got called out by the Daily Mail. They were like, ‘Oh, we all knew each other before. And like, Oh, this was actually like a plan.’ 

 

Elyse: What?!

 

Cheryl: Yeah, the press they do leading up to ‘Wannabe’ until about February 1997 ish. That date might be wrong. But the Daily Mail does like an expose about the fact that someone else was behind the group. But yeah, they lie about it for at least a good almost a year before they're called out on it.

Ashley: Wow. 

 

Elyse: Woah, I don't remember any of that

 

Megan: Me either. And I guess again, pre social media, like even though a lot of people probably knew because they've gone to the auditions or been involved or heard of them or whatever, where are going to say it?

 

Cheryl:  Also, I'll get back to the story in a second. But also part of the deal with Heart management Originally, I think was just to kind of keep them out of it. They just requested like “keep us out of it as you can:

 

Elyse:  Keep the Spice Girls out of it or keep heart out of it?. 

 

Cheryl: Keep Heart out of it. From an optics perspective, they asked not to be named. And so the person who actually goes to Daily Mail is the vocal coach Peppe Latimer and she's the one who It's like, “Oh yeah, all of this happened.”

 

Sinead: And then their cover was blown. They also were a very cohesive group but it's like both things are true at the same time.

 

Cheryl: I also want to talk about some of the dude bands they were against who were also manufactured bands and did not get nearly as much hate for it. 

 

Elyse: Ooooh, I want to know. 

 

Cheryl: So Take That was definitely manufactured. So I don't understand why everyone is hating on the Spice Girls and the other side of this coin... So we've got the boyband sound and also Britpop with Oasis and Blur are being sort of big banner names at the time

Ashley: Is Oasis also a manufactured band?

 

Cheryl: I don’t think Oasis is. 

 

Sinead: I think Cheryl was referring to the boy bands being commercially used, but not getting the same criticism. Oasis and Blur I think were more like the traditional band mould which is why this feud began because they were all “i’m pure, i’m man, I do music”

 

Steph: Nailed it. Just perfect.

 

Cheryl: The situation with Britpop is... well, there's a media manufactured feud. So in the first piece of real press the Spice Girls get by Paul Corbin and Music Week said “just when the boys with the guitars threaten to rule pop life in all girl in your face pop group have arrived to burst that rockets bubble”

 

Megan: I hear a lot especially in interviews with Mel C about her hating on take that said I wonder like how much of that comes from her as one of the ones who can actually sing? And like from a musical perspective or did that come from like this produced feud?

 

Cheryl: I think it really showcases. If you replace Brit with boy and teen with girl and you get BritPop versus teen pop. It makes a lot of sense why we hate teen pop. Because we hate anything women like.

A big part of creating the genre and a big part of reawakening the idea of teen pop at the time, their music is sort of dismissed and belittled by fans of Britpop, who are mostly men and mostly male record buyers. Again, like to fall into a pretty predictable archetype of you know, music that women are into being criticized as not being as real or as serious or as important and this is a pattern like we see today. Right? You know, everyone hates Twilight because teen girls are into it. Everyone hated the Spice Girls cuz teen girls were into the Spice Girls 

 

Sinead: I mean, but Twilight fucking sucks though. 

 

Megan: I was gonna say...sometimes it’s like...please.

 

Ashley: But like Taylor Swift got shit for a long time because she was a teen pop girl. Teenyboppers is like almost a derogatory term. So it's absolutely true. And even like teen boy bands, they're still marketed towards girls. That's why they're looked down upon for the most part because girls are into them.

 

Cheryl: So one editor takes a look at this whole cacophony at the time, and she's talking about why the girls are struggling for coverage because we don't know who to market them to. There's this boy band and Britpop situation happening. And the editor explains “our female readers always hated all girl bands, they fear they will steal their boy idols”.

 

Megan: The 90s though, of like women hating other women or thinking they're different or better than other women, but that was a big time mindset then or I think it was.

 

Elyse: It was I remember growing up with that the whole like, though there can only be one, tearing other people down to make yourself feel better. It's the whole not liking other girls' conundrum. 

 

Sinead: I mean, when you think about how Britney Spears was treated first for dating Justin Timberlake, and then for having the audacity to end her relationship with Justin Timberlake, which was only five or six years after this all goes down. It's horrific, honestly, the way she was treated. And that was for trespassing on a very popular boy band idol. 

 

Megan: How dare she in her personal life end a relationship that's not working for her with someone that like teen girls idolize and would love to date, right. Like, it's just very dehumanizing too.

 

Sinead: And she dressed in matching denim for him.

 

[laughter]

 

Megan: And the big poofy hat.

Sinead: Oh, I forgot about the hat.

 

[Deep Tones]

Cheryl: There's also a smaller Girl Power resurgence that's happening on the R&B chart. Eternal has the top selling album in Britain, and they're a group of four young women. And in the States, we've got En Vogue, Salt and Pepa and TLC who are climbing up the chart. They're not quite blockbusters yet.

But they're cited as influences on the girls music and Emma talks about TLC and Salt and Pepa in an early interview. And she says “they're cool and they have an excellent attitude. They're more in your face and sexy, although sometimes too sexy. We're more the cheeky types. Boys love us and that's great, but we're definitely out to appeal more to the girls.”

 

Sinead: So we have the whitest creepiest infantile Spice Girl bashing some Black girl groups. That’s cool. That’s totally a coincidence.

 

[laughter]

Steph: For being too sexy. 

 

Megan: I was trying to think how to say that Sinead, so thank you for jumping in. I was like, okay, just the language she's using and that quote, I was like this is a little problematic. 

 

Sinead: Baby is the most like white femininity safety icon, which she leans into and is marketed that way. And yeah, it is very problematic / probably racist. The way she's hyper-sexualizing Black women, Black women who made their own music, I also should say, and continued to have music careers long after Emma Bunton was gone.

 

Elyse: Were they even outwardly sexy?

 

Steph: I would say I mean any, I can only remember TLC being at award shows and stuff. And I kind of remember them being more or less relatively fully clothed, maybe a crop top here and there. 

 

Ashley: Not far off from the Spice Girls, the Spice Girls were wearing short skirts and crop tops and bras and as clothes and all sorts of stuff, which I like but yeah, like, why are they allowed to do it?

 

[Deep Tones]

 

Cheryl: One of the things they try to do is they try to start giving the girls you know, shorthand so that you can get to know them. And so that once you get to know them, you'll like them. And so they bring in freelance journalist Sonia Poulton to interview them and get a feel for them and she starts assigning them the earliest signs of their archetypes. So Mel B is described as “feisty and strong with lots of attitude”. Yes, I am also amazed that no one said sassy. 

 

Elyse: Thank God. 

 

Cheryl: “Geri. You're a vamp. Seaside Saucy meets exotic dancer.”

 

Elyse: The lady is a vamp!

 

Sinead: Sorry. What is seaside saucy? 

 

Elyse: Oh, Sinead you don't know? I guess you’re not seaside saucy.

 

Sinead: I guess not

 

Ashley: Is it like Geordie Shore or whatever?

 

[laughter]

Elyse: So, trash. It means you’re trash.

 

Steph: Did Geri not address this in one of her many autobiographies?

 

Elyse: Not yet. I mean, I have some content about their brands but no she did not mention she was seaside saucy.

 

Steph: Maybe she didn’t like that reference.

 

Elyse: Shocking

 

Sinead: It sounds like pirate wench. But like a nicer way of saying it.

 

Elyse: I would love it if someone was like you really have the pirate wench vibe of the group, that would be the best moment of my life.

 

Cheryl: I thought it was a euphemism for mermaid or siren, like, like men would destroy things to be with you. 

 

[Deep Tone]

 

Cheryl: So going back to the one who doesn't just wave their boobs, Emma is classed as cute and needing protection. So she is described as a baby doll. Mel C gets clocked as sporty from the start. Like Sonya is like this is your adjective. And Victoria is described as ‘you're the sophisticated one you have a snobbish quality about you’ and she's been told that ‘snobby’ is her personal adjective, which yes.

 

Steph: Apparently baby didn't actually mind being called baby like she was pretty into that sort of nickname. 

 

Ashley: She's like, call me baby.

 

[Laughter]

 

Cheryl: So as the girls are going through doing interviews, trying to garner some hype for ‘Wannabe” they're doing all these tours, and they're trying to try on these personalities. So in the summer of 1996, they sit down with some editors from Top of the Pops magazine. And Top of the Pops chooses to run a piece that will change the perception of the band, possibly forever.

“Peter Lorraine the editor suggested presenting them as a spice rack and the girls were already like cartoon characters of themselves, So it only took about 10 seconds to come up with nicknames. Victoria was Posh Spice base because she was wearing a Gucci-style mini dress and seemed pouty and reserved. Emma wore pigtails and sucked the lollipop so obviously she was Baby Spice. Mel C spent the whole time leaping around in her tracksuit. So we called her Sporty Spice. I named Mel B Scary Spice because she was so shouty and Geri was Ginger Spice, simply because of her hair. Not much thought went into that one.” 

Elyse: She was shouty?

 

[Laughter]

 

Sinead: I think that they mean there was a black girl near them who had a personality and some ambition. So they were terrified.

 

Elyse: I think that's exactly what it meant. 

 

Ashley: Because it's so negative in sentiment, like everything else is just objective. It's just like observation and that is like she was so shouty, it's like like fuck you, whatever your name is.

 

Elyse: It’s scary, yeah.

 

Megan: I even thought I don't know if anyone else did.. But even as a kid like in the 90s I thought that like name like, was just different from the others and like, wasn't good. Like, I wonder how she felt about it at the time. 

 

Sinead: It’s interesting because she doesn't have a lot of reflections on the name. I read both of her autobiographies. She only has two. I don't know if that beats Ginger or same

 

Elyse: Same level, I think, yeah.

 

Sinead: She definitely talks about her experiences with racism and being in a band that's otherwise all white girls, but never really about the name. I think she thought it was funny. And she was very ambitious and she didn't care who was in her way. And she definitely had notable times where when someone was treating her poorly, including someone extremely famous that you're not supposed to talk back to, which we will talk about later, she had no problem admonishing those people and putting them in their place. So I think part of her was just assertive. And generally all women get punished for that. But Black woman definitely get punished the very most for that. And that is definitely why her nickname is Scary, or was Scary. 

 

Elyse: Well, I'm really looking forward to hearing more about that. 

 

Megan: I also heard a quote about Posh Spice and you know, accents and class in the UK, and how she looked posh but then she opened her mouth and got called common spice because of her.

 

Ashley: Whoa.

 

Sinead: Funny now that you say that in Mel B's one of her autobiography, she talks about how she never altered her accent. She has a pretty strong Yorkshire accent, which is not considered to be class friendly in the UK. But she was always like I am who I am, I’m not changing myself.. And then she had some subtle shade for other women she knows who have changed their accents since, which definitely includes Victoria Beckham, who does not speak with her accent of her youth at all now, so I just put two and two together on that.

 

Cheryl: I think it's also though, like Mel C talks about this in a later interview where like, they became the characters as like a character and like a protection mechanism, though too right? Especially, like after this, the names take off because they're in the Daily Star. And this is what all the tabloids refer to them as. So it's really easy to sort of put that character on and just treat it like it's a shield between you and the rest of the world.

 

Megan: It's true, though, they were fairly private in their personal lives for the most part. So you know, if you can play a bit of a character for your famous front, like that makes sense. 

 

Sinead: I personally was really surprised that their names actually came from Top of the Pops and not from the record company or from within, like, I definitely thought that that was more intentional and learning that it actually was something that was kind of stumbled upon, And then they just went with it. Because I mean, those nicknames became a huge part of their branding and all the stuff that was being sold and everything and yeah, it was just from a magazine. And so it was those editors who are the ones who named the Spice Girls.

 

Cheryl: The editors weren't sure the Spice Girls were gonna go anywhere. Like basically what happened is the Spice Girls came in and they did their usual Spice Girls act where it's like, we're really charming, but we're also really excitable. So we're gonna do this full on performance in the Top of the Pop offices, and they bust into this like full on performance, you know, getting all excited about everything, and then they're just met with like half hearted clapping according to Jennifer Cawthren. So yeah.

 

Elyse: That's odd for them. I feel like normally they got people so jazzed up that was their whole thing.

 

Cheryl: Yeah, I think it's also like one of the editors has also admitted like, they found the group super in your face and like, kind of just not appealing, like it was just too much in scare quotes. And also, I think it's like, some of this too is like if you're the Top of the Pops. acts come through all the time. So I could understand being a little bit jaded about it. But also like how many people pull a full acapella performance in your offices, including like, jumping,leaping around as one of them described and shouting and like having such clear characters, it takes you 10 seconds to come up with nicknames. So

 

Sinead: Again, because I cannot help myself, it's just not a very English thing to do. 

 

[Laughter]

 

Sinead: I feel like that is definitely a part of it, especially for like the seasoned veterans who are in a very professional office type setting and they're very business like this is how things are done and the girls had their own idea of how they wanted to do things which is totally why they became so famous, but you can totally see it, ruffling the feathers of like random white collar workers who are like please don't do emotions at our workplace.

 

Cheryl: I think also part of please don't do emotions at our workplace, is please don't be political at our workplace. So when the girls start whipping Girl Power, it is like a scandal. So Girl Power, as we know, becomes the mantra the band lives and markets itself by, because they were kind of tired of being pushed around by dudes in the company.

Melanie B gives a summary of Girl Power as ‘it's about spreading a positive vibe, kicking it for the girls. It's not about picking up guys, we don't need men to control our lives’. The way the girls describe Girl Power in their eventual book Real Life Real Spice. ‘Feminism has become a dirty word. Girl Power is just the 90s way of saying it, we can give feminism a kick up the arse’.

 

Elyse: So much to unpack there.

 

Ashley: Yeah, I’m just replaying it in my head.

 

Sinead: I've been thinking about that quote for a few days. And I don't know if it means they're trying to reboot feminism. Or if they're trying to, like give it a kick up the arse to get it going again, which is definitely like a context that works. Or if they mean like go away feminism, we have Girl Power now.

 

Elyse: I think like intrinsically, in that approach, thinking that like, Girl Power equals feminism, like feminism is not ‘go girls’. Feminism is like a very deep understanding of the importance of equal rights for men and women and everyone that falls on the spectrum between her on either side of those categories. And like, Girl Power just really doesn't touch really many of the important things to do with feminism. So even if that's what they want to do, it's just like a very superficial understanding of what feminism is. 

 

Sinead: So one other thing I wanted to kind of add, the 90s was definitely a time of like a very heightened backlash against second wave feminism. And it was a real time I'm starting to see like the boomerang effect of a lot of social progress, like really regressing in the early to mid 90s. So I suspect, even if they did know what feminism was, which I don't think they honestly did, they would never have been allowed to talk about it even if they actually wanted to. And, um, yeah, I think that's a part of like the pithy kind of Girl Power, because Girl Power is not really defined, but it's not connected to a social and political movement for equity, either. So it's safe, but fun. 

 

Ashley: Mmhmm. 

 

Megan: As children growing up listening to the message, like I do think it was like the beginning of instilling a next generation of feminists like, obviously, the understanding wasn't deep, and it wasn't really necessarily aligned, and like political, as you said, but I do think it had an impact, on girls growing up, who maybe would learn more and evolve more into feminists in the future.

 

Ashley: Like, I think it has less to do with feminism. And just to do with like, I mean, it's in the title, empowerment, which is an important stepping stone. And I think it achieves that, but I think it kind of stops there.

 

Elyse: I don't even know. I feel like everyone said some really good things. But like, yeah, I feel like it gives you the impression that all you have to do is like, believe in yourself, which is a good message. But it doesn't address all of the things that need to be torn down in order for you to do that.

But on the other hand, like I agree with you, Meg, that it was a good message for us to grow up with. I was talking to my mom about the fact that we're doing this podcast, and she was like, “Oh, she's like, if I'd known that one day, the Spice Girls would be fodder for a feminist podcast, I really would have relaxed” because like, they really stressed her out seeing me and my friends engaging with this band. My mom's always been a feminist and she felt really conflicted. She's like, oh, boy, this is not, you know, really the message that girls need to learn. And she was very relieved to hear that this is what it led to. 

 

Ashley: Wow.

 

Cheryl: It’s also a lot to why Girl Power was so effective, because like, it hid the fact that it was consumerist. Because like you were able to say I believe in individual actions. However, you have to buy things to have those individual actions or you have to buy things to display those individual actions. 

 

Elyse: That's such a good point.

 

Sinead: Totally. And by the 2010s we have like commodification of feminism using the word feminist. But again, it's just more consumerism, it's really only for white women who are middle class plus, and those are the only people that that sort stupid #GirlBoss wave was directed towards.

 

Elyse: And I feel like there's a lot of wine moms out there that didn't really get the message.

 

Sinead: There's a direct line from Ginger Spice being your favorite Spice Girl to having those wine mom socks now.

 

Elyse: Oh my god

 

Sinead: I just feel like if you did a study that would be true and also other weird like wine paraphernalia at your home. 

 

Elyse: Yeah I think if you grew up with Geri as your favorite Spice Girl, you now only buy couch cushions that have embroidered sayings on them.

 

Cheryl: I'm pretty sure the straight line is from Ginger Spice to Sheryl Sandberg.

[Laughter]

 

Elyse: That’s perfect.

 

Ashley: That's where we'll leave it today. Thank you so much for listening. To see any visuals we talked about in this episode as well as bonus content, be sure to follow us on Instagram @spiceinvaderspod. Spice Invaders is hosted by Cheryl Stone, Elyse Maxwell, Megan Arppe-Robertson, Sinead O'Brien and Stephanie Smith. It’s produced, researched and written by Sinead O'Brien and Cheryl Stone and produced and edited by me, Ashley McDonough. Thank you to Lukus Benoit for composing our theme song.

 

Transcript edited by Sinéad O'Brien and Cheryl Stone