Revolution GAL style now?
Plus: Here’s what happened after our writer used La Mer for a year
Double Dare Ya to read this memoir
Kathleen Hanna reflects on feminist life in ‘Rebel Girl’
In the black-and-white photo Kathleen Hanna is wearing a short plaid skirt, wailing into the microphone, and grabbing her crotch. I feel her voice emanating from the glossy page, “Hey girlfriend, I got a proposition that goes something like this, dare ya to do what you want, dare ya to be who you will…”
I was transfixed, terrified, and transformed by this image of Hanna’s band Bikini Kill in the Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock. My mother had given me the book as a belated 16th birthday present in 1997 and I treated it like a bible. I looked to the women featured like rebel saints who could guide me out of an unsure adolescence in rural Maine and into a full-blown feminist future.
Kathleen Hanna topped my teenage feminist pantheon. Feminism, especially Riot Grrrl’s bratty, furious, and fearless variety, felt nebulous. My attempts at organizing my peers, playing music, and making zines felt small, a drop in the bucket against patriarchy, and so I looked to Kathleen Hanna for an answer, a template for a feminist life.
I was surprised when I started reading Hanna’s new memoir, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk, that Hanna often felt the same contradiction. The feminism she wanted to embody often felt in contrast with her lived reality, even as she started a feminist art gallery, began playing in bands, and volunteered at a sexual assault crisis center. In the essay-like vignettes that make up the book Hanna reflects on her life spent in the feminist punk spotlight and speaks directly to the tension of being a public persona and a private person.
While Hanna has been releasing music since the early 1990s, been the subject of numerous articles and a documentary film, and has written zines over the years, at 55, this is her first book. In the prologue she declares, “I finally get to decide how my work is contextualized, what parts of my story should be told, and what needs to stay in the trash. I also get to reclaim my public identity without being physically present.”
Rebel Girl indexes heavily toward Hanna’s early years, including her time in Olympia, Washington, during the 1980s and 1990s, with the explosion of grunge and the beginning of Bikini Kill. Hanna writes with a wry humor, as well as a compassion for her younger self, and shares plenty of juicy tidbits that will engage any ’90s rock fan. She recounts her deep friendship with Kurt Cobain and how graffiti she scrawled on a drunken night may be the inspiration behind the name “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” She also captures the sweet hilarity of her and now-husband Beastie Boy Adam “Ad-Rock” Horowitz’s initial flirtation via fax machine while both of their bands were on tour.
Does La Mer really work?
Here’s what happened after I used the pricy skincare for a year
I was 40 when I began taking everyone’s advice about sunblock, water, and higher-end moisturizing products. I was also 40 when some friends started sneaking away for Botox treatments and fillers. I understand how deeply personal deciding whether or not to have Botox or any other anti-aging treatment can be. I have yet to make that choice, but one day soon, I might want to.
For now, I’ve decided to try products that promise results.
P.S. La Mer did not pay Olga to write this review. P.P.S. Got a product you’d like us to review? Contact amy@the-midst.com.
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