I was reading this book about net-chicks, which are apparently an on-line version of riot-grrrls.  According to this book {title?  I'll check later}, any femme who's on-line is a net-chick, especially if they have a website.  So I guess that makes me a net-chick.  Whoop-diddy-doo {note sarcastic tone}, I have a label!

Actually, I'm not sure if I qualify.  Because if that book is anything to go by, the best net-chicks are lesbians, or at least bisexual.  Hets can get in, but it helps if they're into serial monogamy (or staggered polygamy, if that's the title you prefer).  Marriage is *so* pre-Germaine.  So maybe nice Catholic girls don't qualify.

It doesn't matter anyway, 'cos my friend Melanie says that riot-grrrls are out, at least until Hole produce another album.  But she might just be peeved because Courtney Love didn't give her a guitar at last year's Big Day Out.  Melanie might even be wrong.  I was so impervious to the whole riot-grrrl thing when it was happening that I can't even tell if it's really over.  Melinda says it died after Cosmo appropriated the term.  Lord knows I wouldn't want to keep it.

Cosmo Girl.  There's another label I don't particularly want.  Hets are more than welcome, but marriage isn't.  Unless you're into 3-somes, orgies, whatever. The clothes are okay, but who can afford them?  Not that it matters, since I can barely afford the magazine.

You know what would be cool?  A science-fiction magazine aimed at chicks.  Less glossy pics of Jeri Ryan's cleavage and more of Robert Beltran's dimples.  I guess then I could call myself a Trek-grrrl.  It would be cool, y'know, to have less pages about building your own miniature starship and more about the relationship between [insert couple of choice here].  But I guess for that to happen, we'd need a science fiction series aimed at chicks.  Buffy (yeah, fantasy/horror not SF) and Voyager come close, but 30% of any Buffy episode is cheesecake and plot-wise, Voyager is pure teenage boy's action thriller.  Just once I'd like to see Janeway sit Chakotay down for a serious talk about where their relationship is going.

Of course, we all know that women will watch a show even if it's aimed at men, while men won't watch a show if it's aimed at women.  That's gospel in Hollywood, and Hollywood execs are more conservative than Mormon underwear.

Underwear.  In the book whose title I'll look up soon, an on-line debate about feminist's underwear is published.  Do I care?  Not really -- it was a pretty dopey argument.  But it was concluded with the following message:
  What is the modern feminist wearing?
  Anything she f***ing wants to!!!
(One assumes that the well-dressed feminist was busy liberating her femme sisters during English class.)

That's all really great and everything, but it pretty much sums up fashion in general, except in the teenage market where everyone's still trying to look the same.  Except me, 'cos I look really stupid in cargo pants.  I'm sure I had a point when I started this.  Oh yeah, in other sections of the book, the women interviewed -- all feminists -- defined themselves by the way they dressed.  Or perhaps their personalities define their choice of clothing, but I do wonder if we don't have a chicken-and-egg paradox here.  I always thought that a truly liberated woman wouldn't be defined by her appearance.  Food for thought.

Thought isn't really valued highly by the author of the book (finally -- it's called "Netchick: a Smart-Girl GGuide to the Wired World" by Carla Sinclair).  In an early passage she comments that she's anti-censorship and believes that parents should supervise their children on the net.  That's cool.  But as she reviews sites, she complains about the existence of adult-content warnings.  Contradiction.

I've been thinking about these things for a while: 'modern feminist' publications which congratulate their readers for their intelligence, but which are written as though the author is a 17 year old. (See, I have an excuse for this column!)  What kind of femmes are we (what do I mean, 'we', I'm part of the target audience!) creating here?

I set out to write this with no purpose in mind, so unfortunately I have to great conclusion.  Except maybe that I won't be reading any more books with the word 'chick' in the title.

Comments, questions, chocolate -- elizabeth_barr@yahoo.com.au -- go easy on me! I didn't set out to wrrite great literature here, just to articulate some vague ideas.

Copyright © 2000 Elizabeth M Barr

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