Ginger at 50: How the Spice Girls defined feminism for a new generation

Geri Horner (or as most of us know her, Halliwell) is 50. The Spice Girl celebrates her milestone birthday on Saturday 6 August. Does anyone else feel old yet?

In a telling sign of my age, the Spice Girls’ Spice and Spiceworld albums were the first two I ever owned. I would spend afternoons after school placing them in my ginormous CD player and dancing to them without a care in the world.

I would listen as Geri, along with Melanie Brown (Scary), Melanie Chisholm (Sporty), Emma Bunton (Baby), and Victoria Beckham (Posh) belted out the lyrics to “Wannabe”, a track I would later realise was my first introduction to feminism.

Twenty-six years since the song came out, “If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends” and “If you really bug me, then I’ll say goodbye” are still rally cries for women everywhere to put their friendships first (and one that is guaranteed to get us to the dancefloor).

While it might have been a subtler version of feminism, the song was an introduction to what the Spice Girls, and their “spice world”, was all about: girl power. The Spice Girls were seen as confident women who knew who they were, were going to put themselves first, and weren’t going to settle for just anybody.

At the time, they were the epitome of female friendship, and the faces of a growing movement of New Age feminism. Long gone was the (misjudged) idea that feminism meant hating men, the Spice Girls showed a generation of younger women that you can love and empower everybody.

While their stint as a fivesome was relatively short-lived – Geri left in May 1998, when they were at the height of their fame – the lasting gift they gave the generation that would soon be called millennials was a bevvy of empowering songs and the knowledge that women can do anything, and have some stellar fashion sense while doing it.

Yours,

Laura Hampson

Deputy lifestyle editor