On Feminist Anger, Female Friendship, & Babes In Toyland
By Brody, @grrrls.likeus, She/Her. - This feature concerns Kat Bjelland, Babes in Toyland and the contemporary portrayal of Women in Revolt
ENTER Kat Bjelland (vocals/guitar), Lori Barbero (drums), Michelle Leon (bass). Babydoll dresses with matching bows, red lipstick, dishevelled platinum bleached hair. Overdrive, intensity, anger, poetry. Babes In Toyland’s first show- the beginnings of a new kind of punk.
Babes In Toyland are surrounded by a kind of mythology that, like a game of telephone, has circled the scene and the media, in crackling whispers, malforming with each rotation. Like many women musicians, Babes In Toyland- particularly frontwoman, Kat Bjelland- are often reduced to their ‘drama’. Their ‘catfights’ take precedence in public consciousness over their music.
Before the conception of Babes In Toyland, there existed Sugar Babydoll (later renamed Pagan Babies), formed by Kat Bjelland and Courtney Love. The mythos of Bjelland and Love tends to harp on their friendship-turned-rivalry after going their separate ways, with Bjelland fronting Babes In Toyland and Love doing the same in Hole. Love and Bjelland’s adoption of similar ‘Kinderwhore’ aesthetics, each juxtaposing seething rock with images of traditional femininity, and their head-to-head bands led to comparison, jealousy, and tense feuding.
Evidently, the narrative of Bjelland and Love’s relationship has been exploited and twisted by a great deal of misogyny. Much of the tension between the two musicians comes from society's relentless pitting of women against one another. Girls grow up constantly receiving the message that they must be ‘better’ than other girls, even (sometimes, especially) their friends, usually in the ultimate hope of gaining male validation. Women cannot thrive together, support one another, they must outdo each other. In a society where women must work twice as hard to gain respect and recognition, there can be only one winner- or so we are told. This is why Bikini Kill’s ‘Rebel Girl’, an anthem to female friendship, relationships, and connection, is one of their most transgressive songs. In a culture that worships the male rock god, female musicians are too frequently reduced to who they’re fighting or who they’re fucking (think- “didn’t Billy Corgan and Kurt Cobain write all of Hole’s music anyway??” hint- no). The former is certainly the case with Bjelland and Love. As Kat put it herself in her Rolling Stone interview, ‘it’s such a boring old topic, Hole and us.’
One of Babes In Toyland’s most beloved tracks, ‘Bruise Violet’, is often interpreted as a direct blow to Love, while many speculate about some of Hole’s discography being some form of response or resentment toward Bjelland. To research this piece, I read Charlotte Andrews’ reflection on the band for The Guardian, she writes of those that diminish the lyricism of Babes In Toyland this way- ‘they were too witless to appreciate the queer and complex power dynamics at work in such intense female relationships’. It was reading this quote that inspired me to explore the topic further, Andrews verbalises a frustration I’ve long held about the interpretation of female artists’ work- when it comes to the work of women, there seems to be a specific inability (or unwillingness) to separate biography from art. The same can be said across various mediums, another famous example (also discussed by Claire Dederer in Monsters) is 60’s confessional poet Plath, forever defined by her death, and whose poetry tends to be interpreted as strictly autobiographical accounts of her relationships with her parents, husband, and her struggles with mental health. While there is undoubtedly an autobiographical element to both Plath's poetry and the lyricism of Babes In Toyland, considering the work of women artists solely in this sense negates their ability to engage with deeply nuanced themes and emotions, and enforces the narrative that the work of women artists cannot be considered as equal to that of their male counterparts.
Take ‘Bruise Violet’ again as an example. Too easily reduced by critics unwilling to look beyond biography, to simple vitriol thrown at Love. While potentially inspired by Bjelland’s experience, it would be remiss to look no further. Female friendships are often depicted in the media as shallow, superficial. Even media depicting friendships as meaningful and showing progress in emphasising platonic, rather than simply heteroromantic connections, tends to lack a certain level of reality and rawness, ignoring the complicated nature of women’s relationships to one another in a patriarchal culture.
Bjelland is a guttural force. Admittedly, she describes her performance as ‘passion’ rather than rage but (for many of us listening) the two are inextricably intertwined. Bjelland sings unapologetically,
‘You got this thing that
Follows me around
You little bitch well
I hope your insides rot’
Accompanied by unrelenting drums and distorted, untuned, rhythm of their own- the rhythm of frustration, of something finally unleashing. Bruise Violet is not some kind of ‘diss track’, it's an insight into the ugly, bleeding elements of female relationships. The video for the song shows Kinderwhore doppelgangers, mirroring Kat, again interpreted by many as a dig at Love's derivative style, her ‘copying’ Bjelland, but again I urge for a deeper reading. A common muse, a shared experience, the struggle of unoriginality and of trying to find your own identity, of girls trying to find their identities together and clashing against each other, rough edges colliding. The feeling of hating your friends. The internalised, misogynistic drive for competition manifesting. The repressed anger exploding from Bjelland- she does not hide anymore. Crucially, she does not hide the ‘ugly’ parts-
Society hides angry women.
Beyond just the complexities of female relationships, Babes In Toyland take many ‘taboo’ topics head on. The first song of theirs I ever heard, and still among my favorites, is Bluebell. One line stands out to me, in particular. I feel chills even replaying Bjelland's scream in my mind, I imagine her mouth widened as though her words are fire, and her eyes fixed in a severe, consuming stare. Everything pouring out of her, out of some floral or silky pink dress, out of her clashing, weaponised hyper-feminine appearance. As Kat Bjelland sings this lyric, I imagine the dolls I had as a child realising their wooden domesticity and their lack of vocal cords starting a revolution. Kat sings:
‘You know who you are
You're dead meat, motherfucker
You don't try to rape a goddess’.
Babes In Toyland have an incredible ability to blend ‘vulgarity’ with poetry. Many of their pieces like ‘Ragweed’ actually incorporate spoken word, Bjelland’s poetry is beautiful and potent and feels like a kick in the gut, but it is these moments of complete confrontation that Babes In Toyland's music feels the most impactful. I think it was hearing this lyric for the first time that shattered a certain limitation for me- a limitation of euphamisms, of the word ‘rape’ being a word whispered, of having to preface every mention of a woman facing violence with an apologetic ‘I know it's not all men but…’. At the age of 15, Babes In Toyland stormed into my bedroom and showed me that I could say what I want, I could curse, I could shriek, I could be unpretty and intense and introspective all at once and none of it would make me a worse poet or a musician or an artist. Babes In Toyland taught me that rape doesn't always have to be a metaphor to be accepted. Babes In Toyland taught me to be inedible and indigestible and fucking angry and fucking passionate.
Like many emerging bands at the time, Babes In Toyland did not have musical training. Lori Barbero said, when asked what her advice was to girls who want to play the drums, ‘Don't take lessons, teach yourself…You are the artist and you do what you like.’ I think this summarises the entire philosophy of Babes In Toyland and female punk. Women were left out of artistic institutions for so long, underappreciated and relegated to bedroom practice, that the birth of female punk lies in amateurism and self-teaching. As with The Slits and The Raincoats before them, as with Bikini Kill after, as with the bands of girls all over the world, the music comes from devotion for sound and from having something to say
Babes In Toyland released three dynamic albums before splitting up in 2001, with bassist Maureen Herman replacing Leon on two of these, though Herman is not to be considered a footnote, with her unabated basslines powering the music. Kathleen Hanna cites the band as a major influence on Bikini Kill and, therefore, in the Riot Grrrl movement, though the band, understandably, does not label themselves as such. Lori Barbero importantly points out, ‘But then just because there's women in a band, they're riot grrrl. That's crazy.’ Herman, Bjelland, and Barbero reunited in 2015 and toured live together for the first time in years, allowing a new generation of girls to experience their pure, atomic presence.
I hope girls, like I did, come upon Babes In Toyland and realise that they don't need formal training, they don't need to know scales or what a diminished chord is, they need an amp, the bravery to say ‘dirty’ words, and a community, even if that community is only two other girls on a bedroom floor with a out of tune guitar, or even in an art gallery basement.
