When my older brother played Rebel Girl for me as a girl just barely entering my tweenage years and told me “maybe you should wait to listen to the rest of this album until you’re a little older,” he pretty much sealed the deal that I would become obsessed with Bikini Kill overnight.
Naturally, I was ready to eat this movie up. I was surprised by what a revealing portrait it ended up being and by how little I really knew about the woman whose music and activism shaped my teen years. The home movie footage of Kathleen and Adam Horowitz was especially revealing, showing what a tender, supportive relationship they have. I might be a little in love with Adrock after this.
I knew that they were married, but I had no idea that their relationship went so far back and that they were involved when Kathleen was still in Bikini Kill. It was so entertaining and charming to see their goofy home movies from that period, especially considering how mismatched their public personas seemed to so many people. It’s also jarring to see Kathleen Hanna in such a vulnerable light, especially when the film delves into her illness, given how all of the press she’s received throughout her career has created an image of her as this vicious, unstoppable force of nature.
I have a really vivid memory of being at a sleepover with some girl friends in middle school, flipping channels and landing on MTV just long enough to see Diana Ross jiggle Lil Kim’s mermaid boob, because that makes an indelible mark on your memory. We must have changed the channel as soon as they announced the who won, though, because the rest of that clip was completely new to me. Seeing that footage in the film was a really strange connection for me, since looking back now I realize I had no idea who Kathleen Hanna was in 1999, but the next year I would adopt her as a personal savior. The fact that she was present in this absurd pop cultural moment and I never realized it until now was a little surreal.
What I found most interesting about the film was the way it presented Kathleen as a musician who thinks deeply about her craft, and not just as the mouthpiece of a movement. Bikini Kill was definitely more about the political message of a group of young women barging into a hostile scene than it was about whether or not those women were trained to play their instruments, but since then Kathleen Hanna has grown tremendously as a musician. Bikini Kill’s message was so impactful that it shot Kathleen to feminist icon status, but it’s rare to read or see something that discusses her as an artist and not purely as an activist. Seeing Kathleen talk about herself as a singer and describe the way she visualizes her voice as a bullet was almost more of an intimate portrait than the home movies of her and Adam. I thought it was a smart choice to take the title of the film from a Julie Ruin song, since that was the album that Kathleen asserted herself as an artist foremost and came into her own as a musician.
“Other people can think whatever they want, but… they should have to stay out of my way.”
– Kathleen Hanna