“Strength and courage in a wonderbra”: Femininity,drag,and the spice girls

Drag and femme theory

In Gender Trouble, Butler (2010) questions the notion of the body as a natural, biological entity that can be revealed below layers of cultural significations, further arguing that sex is always already gendered. It is impossible to understand the body without naming it, and every attempt to delimit or name the body is a further act of “materialization” (Butler, 1993b). For Butler, gender categories are contingent and function to maintain and bolster an existing hegemonic heteronormative order. Gender is thus a performative act revealing the gendered body as intelligible only through its cultural signification (Butler, 1993b). The cultural signification of gender is dependent on and maintained through repetitive gender norms, thus revealing the performative nature of gender and sex (Butler, 1997). The repetition of gender norms is performed by citation (i.e., the enaction of appearance and behavior attributed to each gender role; Butler, 1997). Due to their dependence on endless citation, gender norms bear the potential for subverting hegemonic order (Butler, 1993a).

One possible subversion to hegemonic order can be found in drag. Drag reveals the manufacturing mechanism of gender, while parodying the idea of a true, inherent, and natural gendered core in a subject’s body and psyche (Butler, 1993a). Underscoring the performative character of gender, drag denaturalizes the category woman, and challenges the imagined coherence that connects sex and gender (Butler, 2010: 187; Butler, 1997). Moreover, as a gender parody, drag fulfills its subversive potential through exaggeration and inaccurate repetition of norms that destabilize the hegemonic image of gender attributes as natural (Butler, 1997).

The parodic repetition of gender allows for a proliferation of gender formations by re-signifying cultural signifiers. Because of its denaturalizing and destabilizing character, drag is the key term I use in my analysis. I suggest that the Spice Girls’ enactment of the spices can be read as drag that utilizes the carnivalesque elements of pop music (Railton, 2001). Coined by Bakhtin (1984), the carnival constitutes a digression and parody of social order as well as an inversion of social categories that expose the arbitrary character of social hierarchies and their reproductive qualities. The deliberate repetition of the spices constitutes a subversive act that can be read as a drag parody of archetypal feminine ideals. Consisting of both a form of popular pleasure (Fiske, 1989: 2), as well as femme visibility (McCann, 2018a), the Spice Girls’ subversiveness ultimately undermines the naturalness and neutrality of gender.

The idea that femme visibility is subversive is further developed by Hoskin and Taylor (2019), who describe femme performative failures as opportunities to expand patriarchal femininity into a complex chosen identity rather than a compulsory one. Nevertheless, femme is not drag, but rather draws on Butler’s (2010) notion of performativity in its intentionality and performance, rather than an imagined nature. Femme theory examines different manifestations of feminine embodiments and their social acceptance, while highlighting how the devaluation of femininity is reiterated in feminist theory and politics (Hoskin, 2017a, 2017b; Serano, 2007). Within feminist theory, feminine performance is often reduced to a unidimensional identity (Hoskin, 2020; Hoskin and Taylor, 2019; McCann, 2018a), while overlooking the possibility of femme being a chosen political identity, embodiment, and expression (McCann, 2018b; McCann and Killen, 2019). Femme scholars articulate patriarchal femininity as naturalizing intersectional gender norms and reinforcing the gender binary (Hoskin and Taylor, 2019). Similarly, femme scholars define rigid femininities as feminist ideologies that reinforce the gender binary (McCann, 2020).

Spice Girls are a prime example of women who have, avowedly and intentionally, embodied femme-ness, used femme personas to draw strength from each other, and demonstrated the fortitude of femininity. Yet, what distinguishes them as drag personas rather than solely femme embodiments, is the fact that they are characters with nicknames. Thus, at the same time as they draw on femme strategies of resistance to undermine patriarchal femininity, the Spice Girls underline femininity as a playful choice.

“Power girl in a nineties world”

The Spice Girls used various performative methods to establish the personas through which they criticize gender norms. In this section, I describe the spices’ attributes by focusing on each persona as they manifest in their music videos. Such an analysis highlights the performative elements of each cited persona at the moment in which the act of citation is intentionally disrupted. While I refer to various videos that were released by the band in 1997, I focus on Too Much, Who Do You Think You Are, and Mama (Spice Girls, 2009), as these videos exemplify the band’s relationship to their personas, and are precisely what underscores the Spice Girls as drag. I refer to this relationship using three terms: citation is used to explain occasions where the spice personas are presented with close proximity to their ideal form, drawing on Butler (1997); undermining is used to explain occasions where the spice personas are being challenged, by reiterating their prime attributes while charging them with different meaning than expected; and undressing is used to explain occasions where the spice personas’ attributes are forsaken, drawing on Halberstam (2012).

Baby spice

Bunton as Baby Spice represents the sweet and innocent child, reiterating girlishness as a prerequisite for social desirability under the patriarchy (McCann, 2018b; McRobbie, 2009). Her blonde hair is kept in pigtails and her makeup is subtle. Her costumes consist of short dresses that reveal her arms and legs, mostly in pastel shades of white, pink, and light blue. Despite her childish character, Baby uses the Wonderbra—a clothing article that parodies female bodies by creating an artificial and exaggerated shape to women’s breasts; signifying at once childlikeness, while emphasizing adulthood using Bunton’s physique. Completing her outfits are Mary-Jane high-heel shoes, and boots in pastel colors. Baby is a vibrant and vivid character, who moves freely, occupying space in playful restlessness. She is portrayed as delicate, polite, happy, and energetic, traits that suit Bunton’s sweet voice, non-tattooed body, young age, and middle-class background. Against these traits, Baby’s whiteness is salient, representing purity and a nod to Western aesthetics (Shohat, 2010). Despite her use of the Wonderbra, Baby’s sexuality is implicit, demonstrated in her postures and facial expressions. She appears spontaneous and informal, but simultaneously avoids explicit displays of her body. Her most recognized gesture is a gentle tilt of her head while smiling coyly.

Baby Spice’s primary attributes are cited in Too Much (Spice Girls, 2009); a music video comprised of clips from the band’s movie, Spice World, and of different sets for each spice. Even as her hair is loose, thus diverting from her usual pigtails’ hairdo, Baby’s scene is set in a girl’s bedroom surrounded by dolls. She is wearing a white nightgown and very little makeup, and her gestures are relatively tamed.

Baby’s persona, however, is easily undermined. One prominent example is Who Do You Think You Are (Spice Girls, 2009), which depicts the band in separate locations, some of which reinforce the spices’ personas while others dismantle them. In the chorus, the band is shown performing together on a stage. Throughout the video, Baby’s hair is kept loose. Whether her hair is straightened in her solos or curled for the group appearances, that it is kept loose throughout the entire video indicates a different kind of femme embodiment, one that is explicitly sexual and mature. Furthermore, she is wearing an asymmetrical black mini dress for her solos and a pink corset and white miniskirt in the group appearances, stressing her flamboyance. Using her hairdos and wardrobe, Baby undermines her persona by expressing her sexuality explicitly. Nonetheless, she references her persona in colors, thus revealing that Baby is present in this representation. This is significant, as this act of undermining the persona also undermines the imagined coherence of identity and behavior expected from this persona. It can be read as an example of the spices’ undermining of the notion of fixed identities—a notion I discuss further along. The undermining of her persona is further articulated by Baby’s separate location: she performs in a narrow space covered in mattresses, where her limited motion emphasizes a flirtatious interaction with the viewers rather than a reiteration of child-like gestures. Indeed, in most videos, Baby repudiates her persona completely. For example, in the video Spice Up Your Life (Spice Girls, 2009), a necklace with the word Baby is the only feature left to indicate her being Baby spice.

To understand Baby’s repudiation, I draw on Halberstam’s (2012) notion of undressing gender, arguing that Baby and her bandmates undress their personas; and, thus frame their personas as avowed gendered performances rather than naturalized identities. For example, the video Mama (Spice Girls, 2009), features a live performance of the song in a TV-studio with shots of a crowd of girls and women—among them the bandmates’ mothers—combined with pictures and home-movies of the Spice Girls as children and of their fans. Mama walks the thin line between renunciation and reiteration of the spices. On the one hand, it includes explicit references to the spices, both in the scrapbook the band looks at, as well as in a segment that depicts fans of the band taking on the spice roles. Additionally, to a certain extent, the members’ appearances reiterate their spices, mostly in colors and hairdos. On the other hand, the video depicts an intimate situation as the members’ mothers are present on set, which seems to influence the members to behave differently than when they are dressed as spices. Their behavior is more restrained and reticent, providing an additional layer of texture to the bandmates’ postures, gestures, and facial expressions. In this video, Bunton uses the color palette identified with Baby, but the dressing style is that of an adult woman: Her hair is kept loose, and she is wearing a scarf at the expense of her Baby necklace.

What is evident in all of Baby’s depictions is the attribution of childish characteristics to an adult woman. I argue that through this paradox of infantilized adulthood, Baby establishes a female-to-femme drag persona that exposes patriarchal eroticization of girlhood and innocence.

Scary spice

Opposite to Baby is Brown’s Scary Spice, who is signified as a wild, anti-establishment character. Scary’s sexuality and power derive from her willingness to break social norms. Moreover, Scary is the only Black member of the group. Her hair is kept natural, and her makeup colorful and loud. Her outfits often reveal her abdomen, legs, arms, and Wonderbra-supported cleavage, and her cloths are mostly made up of leopard-prints, completed with black and leopard-print high-platform shoes or boots. Scary is a loud and blunt character, playfully occupying space. Her gestures vary between feminine self-assured movement and masculine flirt that distinguish her from the rest of the group. Judging from her outfits and makeup alone, Scary arguably perpetuates a long history of racist misogynistic hyper-sexualization (hooks, 1992). Nevertheless, her outfits, revealing as they are, are not accompanied by gestures or expressions that reinforce seductiveness. Indeed, Scary’s outfits reveal Brown’s tattoos and pierced tongue, both attributes that are considered markers of an anti-establishment aesthetics, rather than sexual ones (Dibben, 1999; Lemish, 2003). The original signification of Brown as Scary by Top of The Pops editors is the result of racial prejudice; however, Brown’s embodiment of Scary negotiates and challenges racist societal terms.

In Who Do You Think You Are (Spice Girls, 2009), Scary’s citation is twofold. The video depicts Scary on a leopard-print rug, wearing a brown corset with a leopard-print maxi skirt. In footage of the band together, she is wearing a leopard-print miniskirt and tank top. In both instances, her afro is kept loose. While Scary’s aesthetic cites the character’s attributes rather accurately, the video disrupts the persona’s citation as her location restricts her motion, thus creating an image of a caged animal. While in group appearances, the setting is less restrictive, Scary nonetheless maintains a rather restrained motion.

In Too Much (Spice Girls, 2009), Scary is depicted in a way that further undermines her persona. Her separate narrative shows her on a military base, wearing a black bra and cargo pants, a chain of bullets on her shoulder and spikes around her neck. On her pants, attached to her belt, lay underwear made of bullets. In all her separate depictions she is seen riding or dancing on a tank. Her movie excerpts reinforce the undermining of the persona’s style while stressing her liberated behavior.

The undressing (Halberstam, 2012) of Scary’s persona is carried out in the video for Mama. Brown wears glasses and short blue dungarees, revealing only her legs and arms. Her afro is kept loose and her makeup and body language are demure. This depiction challenges the reductive signification of the only Black member of the band as wild, untamed, and masculine, thus revealing Scary as a drag persona that draws on—and resists—the racist cultural imagery of Black women. Another example appears in Stop (Spice Girls, 2009), where Brown is wearing a gold Wonderbra and shorts but is covered with a long light-brown coat, her hair braided and tucked in a bun, and her gestures, while mischievous, are subtle. Too Much, Stop, Who Do You Think You Are and Mama (Spice Girls, 2009) demonstrate Scary’s negotiation with her archetype, in that two of the videos perpetuate racist representations of what is imagined to be Black femininity, while the other two deconstruct every element of these representations, undermining the racist cultural imagery of Black femininity. While scholars such as Dibben (1999) and Lemish (2003) concluded that Scary is a racist representation, I hesitate to conclude that Scary’s representation is, in fact, racist. Rather, Scary’s inconsistency and lack of cohesion complicate her performance in a way that breaches the perpetuation of racist femininities.

I argue that Scary’s multidimensionality highlights the performative character of her spice. It is not who she is, but yet another artificial stereotypic persona Black women are reduced to and have to negotiate. The racial negotiation conducted in her representations reflects an avowed and deliberate process of maintaining a falsehood. Furthermore, while compared to those of Baby, Scary’s attributes are even more visible, and both emerge as negotiations of patriarchal femininity and the agency to disrupt them through non-normative citation.

Ginger spice

Scary’s white counterpart is Halliwell’s Ginger Spice, a working-class woman with puffed-up hair dyed red, blond, and orange. Her makeup is loud and colorful. Her outfits vary in color and shape, exposing her arms, legs and especially her Wonderbra-supported cleavage. She wears colorful high-heel shoes, high-platform shoes, or boots. Ginger’s exhibitionism and crudeness signify her low-class status, as does her accentuated sexuality. Thus, she runs and jumps playfully, but the display of her body signifies sexual seductiveness. These gestures are accompanied by flirtatious facial expressions, the most prominent of which is her imitation of a kiss. Ginger is also the spice that is most identified with the slogan “Girl Power,” linking sexuality to power. The voluptuous physique of Halliwell adds another layer to this link, contrasting sexuality against the gaunt ideal feminine body type of the 1990s.

Ginger’s representation in Too Much (Spice Girls, 2009) cites the persona’s attributes while referring to two icons: Marylin Monroe and Jessica Rabbit. In images from the movie, Ginger’s cleavage and legs are prominent in most outfits, and she maintains an air of mischief, leadership, and confidence.

A somewhat undermining depiction of Ginger can be found in Who Do You Think You Are (Spice Girls, 2009). Here, too, Ginger is portrayed as sexy and playful: in group appearances, she wears a short red strapless dungaree made of latex which highlights her spice by accentuating her seductiveness. Yet, simultaneously, her motion is restrained and her solo set consists of kiss-patterned walls and a statue of a red high-heel shoe. Moreover, in this set, she wears a revealing wedding dress and a tiara; an outfit that, combined with her set, references and ridicules the divisive stereotype of wife-whore. Another critical undermining of Ginger’s persona can be found in Spice Up Your Life (Spice Girls, 2009), where she is dressed as a sexy goth version of the Statue of Liberty. Depicting Ginger as the Statue of Liberty expands the meaning her persona bears, signifying a working-class and an overtly sexual woman as the bearer of freedom, a signification that can be understood as a feminist statement.

Halliwell’s undressing of Ginger appears in Mama (Spice Girls, 2009). There, Halliwell wears a green vest and long black latex pants, a long pearl necklace, and subtle makeup, with her hair not puffed. Although Halliwell’s performance once again emphasizes her cleavage, tattoos, and bellybutton-piercing, she focuses on communicating with others, stressing the strong connections she has with her bandmates, her mother, and fans.

Although not part of the Spice Girls’ corpus, further evidence of Ginger’s persona can be seen in Halliwell’s first solo single, Look at Me (Halliwell, 2011). In the video, Halliwell explores who Geri Halliwell is and clarifies that the answer is not Ginger spice. Therefore, the video includes a funeral ceremony in which the name “Ginger” is written on a hearse. Moreover, footage from inside the hearse reveals Halliwell with orange stripes in her hair, lying awake, and laughing. In addition to exploring identity through its avowed creation, this video also reveals Ginger as a persona rather than an essence. The act of burying Ginger signifies Halliwell’s departure from the band and her spice persona. Yet, both the relinquishment of the persona and the various depictions of Ginger emphasize the performative qualities of it as a playful persona. In both instances, Ginger joins Baby and Scary in the exposure of yet another caricature of patriarchal femininities.

Sporty spice

Chisholm’s Sporty represents the far end of the feminine archetypes. Sporty is not a typically feminine character; rather, she exemplifies the “tomboy” (Davies, 1999). She is a fit white woman, conforming to ideal conventions of fitness, her straight brown hair is kept in a ponytail, and her makeup is minimal. Her outfits consist of sweatpants, sports bras, and sneakers. Sporty is the only spice who never wears a Wonderbra, which consequently contributes to her tomboyishness. These outfits enable Sporty to move freely and demonstrate her athleticism in the videos. Sporty is also presented as a working-class woman, which is evident by her appearance, tattoos, language, and accent (Dibben, 1999).

Sporty’s persona draws on gestures as much as on appearance. While she is depicted similarly in most videos, her outfits and hairdos divert from the idealized spice form. For example, in Too Much (Spice Girls, 2009), Sporty is depicted in a martial arts battle, wearing a red crop-top with golden dragon embroidery, most of her ponytail painted red. When she is depicted partaking in a battle, she demonstrates athletic abilities. This is a racially charged depiction, as her rivals are all of Asian descent and her outfit is meant to reiterate the Asian background of Martial Arts, resulting in an appropriating representation. Even so, this depiction cites Sporty’s persona along its familiar lines. Sporty’s tomboy character is also prominent in the excerpts from the movie, where Sporty does not appear with her trademark ponytail or sports suits but wears casual clothes with her hair loose.

An example that undresses Sporty’s persona is in Who Do You Think You Are (Spice Girls, 2009). In her solo, Sporty is wearing a colorful minidress and high-heels, her hair is kept loose, and her makeup is heavy. The space around her is decorated with a statue of a horse, restricting her athletic gesticulation. In group appearances, Sporty’s hair is in a casual updo, and she is wearing a black crop-top and see-through black pants. This undressing is especially significant due to the way in which Sporty’s sexuality is usually depicted as less overt.

Nonetheless, the depiction of Sporty as feminine, sexual, and confident broadens this feminine archetype, furthering anti-essentialist messages regarding the diversity of femininity. Sporty’s presence in the band, alongside patriarchal feminine archetypes such as Baby, Scary, and Ginger, can be understood as a political statement, pointing to the array of feminine choices that are available to emulate. As such, Sporty, like her bandmates, stands out as a female-to-femme drag persona that reiterates femme fortitude.

Posh spice

Adams’ ¹ Posh spice is the only Spice Girl that ultimately fails to negotiate her persona, partly due to her middle-class background which serves as a backbone to her embodiment of patriarchal femininity that is perceived as natural. Being a thin white woman, Posh is considered heteronormatively attractive. This attribute is not parodied in other aspects of her persona: her dark hair is straight and kept at shoulder-length, and her outfits usually black, white, and silver minidresses and catsuits. Her prime attribute is her taste and interest in fashion. Her makeup stresses her upturned nose, which compounds her snobbish appeal. This look is usually completed with black high-heel shoes. Reinforcing this interpretation, Posh’s trademark is a catwalk pose paired with an emotionless facial expression and a commanding finger pointing to the horizon. Posh is depicted as the least vivid member of the group, as she occupies space with motionless presence, in contrast to her animated bandmates. Furthermore, Posh rarely wears the Wonderbra, a choice that reinforces her reading as a feminine character, rather than embodying political femme-ness (McCann and Killen, 2019) because she avoids caricaturing her silhouette.

Posh’s ambivalent commitment to a drag persona is further grounded by an open letter Adams wrote to her young self, published in Vogue magazine (Beckham, 2017). In the letter, she nostalgically describes her performance as ridiculous, however, likeable. When referring to her appearance, she jokingly states that she resembled a drag queen, a reference that bears the question whether these performances were intentional. The letter posits Posh as an example of patriarchal femininity, as she does not question the characteristics attributed to her persona, and unlike Halliwell, who buried Ginger in her first solo video, Adams embraced Posh by becoming an elite fashion designer.

Posh is a strict and limiting persona that Adams, as a cisgender woman, failed to thoroughly question in her performance. That is why most disruptions to the Posh persona are insinuated rather than celebrated. For instance, in Too Much, Posh is depicted standing in a black bodysuit and cat ears in a nuclear facility. All the footage of her depicts her sealed expression and pointing finger. Only a single gesture, intertwined with the video from the movie, suggests that Posh understands the playfulness of her persona, as she is shown winking at the end of the video. Posh’s most accurate citation is in 2 Become 1 (Spice Girls, 2009), where she and her bandmates are undressed and depicted as ordinary young women. In this video, Posh enjoys an urban narrative that allows for her depiction of the idealized middle-class stylish woman. Yet, alongside her citation of patriarchal femininity, in Who Do You Think You Are (Spice Girls, 2009), Posh undermines her persona by gesturing through relatively vivid dance moves and facial expressions. As she represents idealized femininity, the tension between the expectations to be observed and desired but not observant and desiring is most evident in Posh.

Notwithstanding Posh’s embodiment of patriarchal femininity, I contend that she nevertheless constitutes part of the feminine archetypes highlighted by the band and is thus part of the denaturalization of femininity they have offered. Moreover, drawing on Posh’s ambivalence, I suggest that it is precisely the plurality and diverse nature of the Spice Girls’ subversion of their spice personas that enable the dismantling of notions of femininity as a monolith.

Ambiguous and subversive

The spice personas maintain ambiguity by consistently failing to uphold their attributes. These failures (i.e., inconsistencies between personas and videos) symbolize a lack of commitment to both subversion of, or compliance with, patriarchal femininity. At the expense of this commitment, the band playfully challenges the idea of femininity as a monolith, as their personas dress, disrupt, and undress without logical recourse. This notion reiterates Leach’s (2001) musicological analysis of the band, where she argues that the band invokes a feeling of authenticity, only to renounce it as a playful joke. This playfulness emphasizes the band’s plurality which is a key component of their subversiveness. Further, the plurality contextualizes each persona, establishes their interdependency, and invokes various disruptions to patriarchal femininity. For example, this plurality is evident in the way the spices occupy space, raising the question of femininity and space while also exposing how taking up space is typically attributed to masculinity (Ware, Bryant & Zannettino, 2011). In this way, the disruption of the spices creates multidimensional characters through various aspects of their performance. The multidimensionality is in part the failures to consistently perform attributes of the characters, thus challenging them; in Who Do You Think You Are (Spice Girls, 2009), Ginger, Sporty, and Scary’s typically exuberant movement is restricted, Baby and Sporty’s characteristic modesty is repackaged as accentuated sexuality, and Posh’s typical stoicism is turned expressive. This multidimensionality via failure expands each of the spices, thus reinforcing their female-to-femme drag.

What constitutes the spices as femme drag personas is their autonomous existence, one that can be separated from the women inhabiting the respective roles in the band, as well as the ability to imitate them. That is not to say that femme cannot be or is usually not drag, but it is only to highlight the Spice Girls’ relationship to their femme-ness through drag personas. In the video narrative of Mama (Spice Girls, 2009), the autonomous existence of the personas derives from their expansive, abstract, and open qualities, leaving space for anyone to fill with their interpretation, allowing for the repetition of these archetypes while constantly disrupting and redefining them.

These qualities are also evident in Who Do You Think You Are (Spice Girls, 2009) and Too Much (Spice Girls, 2009). Although the videos depict numerous failures in citing the spices, they uphold the personas by reiterating what the spices are perceived as without the bandmates performing the attributes that stimulate this imagery; thus, drawing on the playful ability to dress, disrupt, and undress the personas. The personas’ failure and flexibility constitute a form of female-to-femme drag that uses femme strategies of resistance to undermine gender perception as neutral and natural (McCann and Killen, 2019).

Music videos in order of their release

• Spice Girls (2009) Wannabe [Online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJLIiF15wjQ (accessed 17 March 2022).