Cynical Spice
“So tell me what you want, what you really, really want, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really, really, really wanna zigazig ah.”
Thus states the Spice Girls song Wannabe, which is being used in a Global Goals for Sustainable Development campaign to send a message to the United Nations about what girls really want.
For some, it is that they never have to hear that song again. The song is 20 years old now and its choice as an empowering anthem for young women makes us say, zigazig huh?
The song is used in a widely broadcasted video that shows girls from around the world dancing and lipsinking to the song while attempting to draw attention to brief messaging about anti-violence, equal rights to pay and education and putting a stop to child marriage.
The Project Everyone video is in response to a 2015 promise by world leaders to put girls and women first when they pen Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty, fix climate change and tackle inequalities, say its producers. “Girls and women are disproportionately affected by these challenges and are key to building resilient communities to withstand them. That’s why we need to ensure world leaders and the Secretary General of the United Nations listen to the voices of girls and women and put them first in policies and plans.”
With this part we couldn’t agree more but the Spice Girls are a girl band orchestrated by men in the recording industry and did more to diminish the value of women than to build equality.
For some people who remember the Spice Girls’ popularity in the 1990s, the song Wannabe makes you snap to attention. It’s a pop culture flashback that makes you ask, where am I, and what’s happening?
Still, the Spice Girls are the best selling group of all time and beloved by Millennials who grew up listening to them, especially girls. It must be acknowledged that Spice Girls are associated with a form of feminism in that women decide for themselves what it is to be feminist. The Wannabe lyrics are lacking in any substantive meaning but they do go on to say, “If you want my future, forget my past. If you wanna get with me, better make it fast.”
To have a bunch of sexualized young women and girls baring midriffs and dancing around to the song seems culturally insensitive and inappropriate.
Project Everyone urges people to post photos of themselves holding signs with a goal that they would really, really want to see happen using #WhatIReallyReallyWant as a message to world leaders. We would think whatever their message, they would want to be taken seriously.
