Girl power is the spice of life

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This article was published 05/10/2017 (3283 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Twenty years ago, five cheeky British girls spiced up our lives.

The Spice Girls weren’t just a band. They were, at the time, the biggest band on the face of the Earth — a record-breaking, chart-topping global phenomenon. On the strength of two juggernaut records — 1996’s Spice and 1997’s Spiceworld — Posh, Baby, Ginger, Sporty and Scary became household icons.

Twenty years later, five girls from Toronto are keeping girl power alive with Wannabe, easily the best Spice Girls tribute act this side of the Atlantic. Suzy Wilde (Posh), Anika Johnson (Sporty), Barbara Johnston (Ginger), Catharine Merriam (Baby) and Teanne Collins (Scary), along with their live band, are bringing their Spice World 20th Anniversary Tour to the Park Theatre on Oct. 5. Tickets are $20 and the show is almost sold out.

Wilde was 10 years old when the Spice Girls first bewildered parents with the lyric I wanna zig-a-zig ah! and Spice was one of her first CDs.

“I was hooked,” says Wilde, now 31. “It’s perfect pop music. I loved the sound of their voices together. Then I started to get to know them. I remember opening up that CD case, and you get to see each one of them in the booklet. They each had their own character and so much personality that I fell in love with them immediately and felt like they were my friends. You feel like you know them. You feel like they’re in your crew.”

I can relate. I didn’t get into the Spice Girls until 1997’s Spiceworld, which came out the year I started junior high, but it wasn’t long before I had a Spice Girls poster displayed prominently on my bedroom wall. I loved the music, but I loved the girls more. Their relentlessly positive messages of girl power and everlasting female friendship struck a chord.

“That was really important to me, too,” Wilde says. “When you’re a kid and you’re listening to pop music, a lot of it is about love and sex and you don’t really understand. But a lot of their message was about girl power and friendship and camaraderie. That was something I could relate to.”

Still, it’s not like Geri Halliwell (Ginger), Victoria Beckham (Posh), Melanie Chisholm (Sporty), Melanie Brown (Scary) and Emma Bunton (Baby) were universally celebrated for being positive role models. During the height of Spice Mania, they were smeared in the British tabloids nearly every day. Many music critics dismissed them as a manufactured bubblegum marketing gimmick. Many feminists chafed, too; here was a group of hyper-sexualized women who call themselves girls, co-opting a movement in the name of capitalism and using “girl power” to sell everything from stickers to deodorant to tweens. Even their cutesy, one-dimensional nicknames — Scary, Sporty, Baby, Ginger, Posh — made them seem like collectible dolls. And then they were made into collectible dolls.

But the response to the Spice Girls was often, in itself, sexist. These women were chronically underestimated, even though they called most of the shots in their career, from songwriting to choreography. In interviews, they were funny, smart and outspoken, swiftly disabusing anyone of the notion that they were empty-headed puppets.

And for a generation of pre-teen girls that includes myself and Wilde, the Spice Girls were an important formative introduction to feminism. In fact, the first time I even heard the word “feminist” was from a Spice Girl. The idea of “girl power” was accessible, and it planted the seed.

“All of the girls in (Wannabe) identify as feminists and we really think that message of girl power is important today,” Wilde says. “Being able to reinvent girl power for the 21st century is something really special for us.”

Wilde hadn’t planned on committing herself to a life of spice. Wannabe formed in earnest five years ago for a Halloween show, and the momentum snowballed. Now, Wannabe performs everywhere from festivals to theatres.

“This is now the thing that helps us fund our other projects,” she says.

The members of Wannabe take what they do seriously, meticulously crafting everything from choreography to costumes to musical charts. Getting fully into character is also important; becoming Posh came with a learning curve for Wilde. “When I first started doing shows, I hadn’t really walked in heels very much and I’m also very smiley onstage, so having to put on really high heels and frown a lot took some getting used to.”

The response to Wannabe has been overwhelming. “People just go crazy when they see us,” Wilde says. “It’s like we’re actually them. We have the most emotional responses. We’ve seen girls cry. We’ve had girls claw their way to the stage. We’ve had gay guys approach us after the show and talk about how they weren’t able to admit how much they loved the Spice Girls when they were in the closet, but now that they’re out they can just celebrate the music.”

And it’s not just the 25- to 35-year-old set that loves Wannabe. After a recent show in New York City, “we opened the door to our green room and there was, like, a sea of five- and six-year-old girls screaming,” Wilde recalls. “There was one little girl who had all of the dolls in a little purse. She took them out one at a time, and she gave us each a doll and got us to pose for a picture. And that’s when I really felt like a Spice Girl. That’s what it would have been like for them.”

Of course, nostalgia for all things ’90s has created a demand for Wannabe, but Spice Girls nostalgia is for more than just the songs. It’s also for a time when you could truly believe that “friendship never ends.” (For many people, childhood innocence dies the day you find out the true identity of Santa Claus. For Spice Girls fans of a certain age, it died the day in 1998 when Ginger acrimoniously left the band.)

“I think we’re feeling like we’re grown-ups now, and we’re feeling nostalgic for our youth,” Wilde says. “We all want to go back there sometimes.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @JenZoratt