Girl, Poisoned

Destroyx and Z00g of Angelspit

When thinking of what would be a good topic to start off my first ‘real’ blog post, I spent ages sifting through ideas. I could think of several things that would make good posts, but nothing that was suitable as a starting point. I eventually settled on an article about the song ‘Girl Poison’ by the industrial band Angelspit, and how young girls are preyed on by the consumerist industry and the media.

Angelspit are a great inspiration to me: through their individual image, their music, and their general ethos. I would seriously recommend people listen to some of their music. They have a great punk-esque DIY ethic, are super-skilled in music and lyric composition, and have a passion for creativity. A great starting point would be to read their manifesto.

Many of their lyrics are worth discussing, as they are filled with (often ironic) social commentary, mostly with a cyberpunk slant - and the subject matter of ‘Girl Poison’ is, in many ways, typical of their general lyrical concerns.
You can find the lyrics to ‘Girl Poison’ .here

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So, what is girl poison?

Well, a straightforward dictionary definition of a poison is ‘any substance that causes injury or illness or death of a living organism’. In this case, it is a substance that specifically affects girls. Angelspit cite several individual poisons within the lyrics: the girl is ‘full of Ritalin and Codeine’, injected with Silicon, and ‘pumped full of image, sweet as saccharine’. These words are clearly in the medical lexical field: drugs that act as stimulants, analgesics (that relieve pain), and artificial enhancers: image-enhancing (the silicon) and thus enhancing the attractiveness (saccharine is an artificial sweetener) of the girl.

But although all these substances are individual poisons to the girl, it is the umbrella ‘cause’ for the use of these drugs that is the real toxin: a consumerist industry that pressurises girls to meet the fixed criteria for perfection, encouraging artificial modification to achieve a prescribed state of ‘beauty’, and thus worth.

Each process of superficial alteration, whether it be silicon injections, buying set fashions (‘pocket money spent on hot pants’), or simply shaving, gets the girl one step closer to becoming the ‘ideal female’ – in this song represented by the fairytale character Sleeping Beauty. This literary allusion not only places this ideal figure in the realms of fantasy – showing how such perfection is dream-like and unachievable in reality – but the specific choice of Sleeping Beauty, poisoned by a spinning wheel and rendered to a state of comatose for a hundred years, hints at the zombie-like compliance fashion-victim girls are forced into (the girl is kept ‘hammered with girl poison’).

However, although these processes of modification may seem to be making the girl more ‘beautiful’, in reality they are harming the girl – just like poison. The girl is ‘slash[ed] away’ at, ‘publicly degrad[ed]’, weakened with an ‘insect diet’ and has her ‘innocence stolen’. She is reduced from a ‘princess’ or a ‘duchess’ (a girl with power, authority [even if just over herself], and thus true worth) to a ‘sexy little decoration’, an object of sex-appeal to be possessed by someone greater (male), only complementary to the bigger picture; or a ‘pedi-sinister girl next door’, confined to a twisted version of a pop-culture-generated, two-dimensional stereotype. And although the process of image modification had the aim of increasing the ‘worth’ of the girl, through enhancing her beauty artificially, it in fact has the opposite effect: the ‘princess’ (a girl of noble/royal blood – i.e. someone of inner-worth) is corrupted, and becomes ‘meat’ for ‘the dogs’ – vulnerable to male predators and the sex industry.

The girl is weakened both physically, by her increasing dependence on artificial methods of sustaining her image (likened to a drug addiction), and emotionally, as her self-confidence is torn apart. From this fragile state she is exploited again and again by the media and the fashion-industry, as shown by the lyric ‘self doubt is an industry’. The line ‘self harm is a best seller’ relates to how, by targeting girls with beauty products and fashionable clothing that are ‘crucial’ to maintaining their ‘perfect image’, girls are forced to finance their own suffering and degradation.

But can girls be saved? Sleeping Beauty was rescued from her sleep by the kiss of her handsome prince, but it seems that no such fairytale happy ending is in store for the girl in the song. ‘Handsome Princey’ is declared to be as ‘artificial’ as her image, and actually compliant in ‘keeping her hammered with girl poison’. This relates to the pressures girls feel relating to their image with regards to men. Teen magazines constantly tell girls how to dress, wear their make-up, talk, act, etc. to impress guys, to the extent that girls feel they must maintain their superficial image of perfection so that any prospective boyfriend will like them. And, similarly, through the images in lads’ mags, music videos and advertisements of photoshopped models, boys are shown what they should expect from a girl. Because teens are shown this one route to happiness – artificial perfection – they feel they must comply and confine themselves to a stereotype society deems attractive and acceptable.

The reality is human beings crave acceptance in social circles. Because of the way modern society is founded on image and general consensus of ‘fashion’ – what is ‘cool’ and what is not – people are increasingly bound in conforming with these social rules to ensure they are not outcasted. And, as the western world becomes ever more based around corporate lifestyles and twisted media conceptions of uniform ‘beauty’, it becomes increasingly difficult for girls to resist the pressures of the fashion industry, and overcome girl poison.

So, the antidote? Girls should have feelings of self-worth and confidence fostered in them for who they are, not who the fashion industry feels they should be. ‘Beauty’ should once again become a concept that is ‘in the eye of the beholder’, and not just some reproduced corporate image of superficial perfection. And expressions of individuality that are currently repressed by the restrictive climate of our capitalist society should be encouraged to blossom, allowing girls to escape demeaning stereotypes and bloom as their real, beautiful, selves. Impossible? No, but resistance of what Bikini Kill dubbed ‘psychic death’ from the media requires understanding and perseverance on behalf of all grrrl-kind to succeed.