If you woke up this morning feeling like you wanted to shove a boy out of the moshpit and scribble the word 'SLUT' on your chest, there's a reason for that. Boston has officially declared April 9 Riot Grrrl Day in honour of Kathleen Hanna, the BAMF frontwoman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre.
Boston art councillor Joyce Linehan is set to present Hanna with the official honour in the city today, where she is due to perform and give a lecture. According to Boston Magazine, Hanna and Linehan are old friends, going back 20 years.
"Kathleen’s agent called me to see if I would introduce Kathleen, probably based on the fact that Kathleen, back in the day, used to stay at my house when bands came through town," Linehan said. "We knew each other from the indie rock world. That connection ended up evolving into the creation of Riot Grrrl Day just because we can do that sort of thing here."
The official proclamation of the special day even seems to take inspiration from Hanna's Riot Grrrl Manifesto, with the words: "The riot grrrl philosophy has never felt more relevant, with misogyny still rampant in many cultural spaces. Riot grrrls redefine the language used against them and continue to fight the newest incarnations of patriarchy."
"In doing so, they ironically confirm one ex-congressman’s accidental wisdom: ‘the female body has ways to try to shut that down.’ It sure does: women’s voices telling their stories can shut that down.”
Hanna actually isn't a local resident; in fact, she grew up in Portland, Oregon and resides in New York. So the creation of a special day from the city of Boston doesn't seem to have much reason beyond "fuck it, let's do it". What's more riot grrrl than that?
Read our DA-Zed guide to riot grrrl here.
