People of the world, get ready to spice up your life … again. Apparently, the world just wasn’t savory enough. By now, every boy and every girl has probably already heard that the Spice Girls are reuniting for a world (well, eleven cities) tour. My response to the (pre-)Fab Five’s announcement is a resounding “zig-a-zig whaaa?”
Listen, I’m not going to get into an academic discourse about the musical merits of a group whose lyrics include such profound social statements as “slam your body down and wind it all around.” While I was never a fan (I’m averse to all groups who have their own dolls), I didn’t hate the group. They represented a superficial kind of “Girl Power” (gosh, remember when that was all the rage?) that, while simply a by-product of its marketing machine, still seems downright scholarly compared to the trash-talking, lady parts–flashing and rehab-entering that is so in vogue with today’s starlets.
Also, at least they all had easily identifiable personalities: Ginger, Scary, Sporty, Posh and Baby. (Though, side note, what’s up with calling the one person of color in the group “Scary”? Uh, not cool.) By contrast, try naming more than two of the Pussycat Dolls and telling me anything about their “personalities” other than a penchant for wearing as little clothing as possible.
My real beef with the Spice Girls reunion is how quickly we’re recycling our nostalgia. After a mere nine years, are we really going to get misty when we hear those first few notes and then an exuberant, “Yo, I’ll tell you what I want, what I really want…”? I mean, sure, the camp value alone is almost enough to warrant a ticket. But, really, I think it’s the media that is the most happy to have the women (come on, they’re in their 30s and deserve an upgrade) back. The then and now retrospectives are enough to make graphics editors really really really wanna zigazig ha. Ten years later and I still have no idea what that really means.
