Let's Blame The Spice Girls For Everything

The disappointments of Progress, as seen from a feminist point-of-view:

FORGIVE me for being blunt but if a generation of our young womanhood has taken to binge drinking, Saturday night sluttishness and "happy-slappings", I blame the Spice Girls.

There are other factors such as the cult of consumerism, the decline of religion, easy credit, alco-pops, morning-after pills and the rest but, if we're going to look for scapegoats, Posh, Ginger, Sporty, Baby and Scary are obvious candidates.

Though some will no doubt disagree and argue that the Spice Girls are simply a slice of bubblegum pop history, I believe the aspirations and attitudes of these five women go hand-in-hand with the decline of our culture over the past decade.

...But what we thought was the ultimate triumph of feminism was, in fact, its death knell. Girl Power was a sham and its five proponents nothing more than desperate wannabes.

Now they're on tour again, but this time the image they project is obviously and entirely contrived, with all that youthful zest replaced by weary cynicism.

The difference between those five breezily-sexual, energetic, bouncy girls singing about Girl Power and the five air-brushed, painfully-thin, desperate mums-on-tour is clear to see.

Seeing them strutting about the stage in weird aluminium foil-style corsets - like trussed-up festive turkeys - in Canada this week, I found myself wishing this reunion had never taken place. I was embarrassed for them.

I'm embarrassed for them because, despite the fact that they already have so much, they are still desperately clinging on by their brittle, lacquered acrylic nails to the fame which they so craved when they were young.

Somehow, they make rather a pathetic spectacle, these Spice Women (no longer Spice Girls) clinging to youth, celebrity, a tiny bum and the fading memory of a fabulous and fortuitous meeting with the then zeitgeist, when they sang about friends and love - and all the little girls (and the big ones, too) sang along.

It all seemed so empowering at the time: the idea that girls should take charge of their own sexuality. But did anyone stop to think what would happen next? Now, with the dubious privilege of hindsight, we have the answer.

...They have been hammered into a kind of robotic perfection, every curve calculated and every move choreographed. But every smile seems false; every gesture of togetherness suspect.

With their tumbling hair, spiced-up smiles and carved cheekbones, the girls who once raged about Girl Power now seem desperate for male approval.

They may brandish the whips and tight leather of the S&M dungeon on stage, but the act just comes across as risible.

I'm saddened for the feminist movement because Posh, Ginger, Sporty, Baby and Scary were once meant to be Girl Power role models - independent, sexy, high achievers. Look at them now.