Kathleen Hanna

     I found Kathleen Hanna to be a very powerful and motivating artist and singer. She was a feminist activist that spoke about feminism through her music. In October 1990, Kathleen Hanna and a couple other friends started a punk rock band called Bikini Kill which later sparked the riot grrrl movement. The band consisted of three girls and a male guitarist. Kathleen Hanna was the singer and songwriter, Billy Karren was the guitarist, Kathi Wilcox was the bassist, and Tobi Vail was the drummer. They went out and preformed to get what they wanted to say across, they weren’t looking for money and they didn't care if people like what they had to say or not they were going to keep preforming. People at the time would criticize the band and say that they weren’t in tune and that they didn’t know how to play their instruments, but that didn’t stop them. Kathleen said if people didn’t like their music or what they had to say they could just leave, no one was stopping them. She was a very aggressive and powerful singer especially for a women of this time period, and I think thats why she attracted so many people. Kathleen was not afraid to say what she had to say and a very powerful thing that she did was at her concerts was she asked all the men to move to the back and for the women to step forward toward the stage. This was just another way she stood up for women, made them feel safe in a crowd that wouldn’t always be safe for them, and give them privileges that in most concerts wouldn’t be even mentioned. Kathleen Hanna sung about topics that were hard and uncomfortable for most people to listen to such as rape, like in the song “white boy”. The lyrics were very upfront and she held back nothing, which might have made people uncomfortable but she was able to get her point across and the issue out there, leaving people to think about the issue she was addressing. I feel Kathleen Hanna is a very inspiring artist, even though I didn’t necessarily love her songs, I loved how confident she was and how she was able to bring up controversial and even uncomfortable topics forward in a very abrupt way, with no shame in order to stick up for what she believed and how she felt.