Women’s History Month Special Report: Part II

Female voices debunk stereotypes in music and discuss gender

The band name confusion

Vivian Girls. Morning After Girls. Theoretical Girls. Parenthetical Girls. Brazilian Girls. U.S. Girls. Shiragirl. GIRLS. WOMEN. Screaming Females.

Blogger Abbey Braden on Psychopedia.com pointed out that there are lots of new bands with a reference to ‘girl’ in their name, but does this mean more females in music? Maybe. But three of these 10 bands don’t have a female in the band.

Morning After Girls, Screaming Females, Vivian Girls, and Shiragirl explain their band name.

“People are very hasty to label something, and they really do believe everything they read,” Morning After Girls said on Psychopedia.Com. “I've always been interested in human beings’ tendency to take for granted ‘a priori’ meanings and definitions of words or a group of words. So, yes, many people do indeed do a double take [trying to find a female in the band]. But c'mon people, you can do better than that.”

Marissa Paternoster of New Brunswick, New Jersey’s Screaming Females said that her band’s name doesn’t mean anything in particular.

“We named our band after a random line in a book of poetry,” she said. Phonetically it sounds cool, it’s simple. It didn't have any kind of weird connotation that made us uncomfortable. To me Screaming Females means a rock ‘n roll band. I guess the first time you hear it you take it literally, as I am a screaming female or it’s an awkward name because I scream. I don't think I screamed ever, when the band first started, but at the time I was still female,” she said with a laugh. “People misinterpret it as a literal translation of what we are, when there’s one screaming female, and I definitely don't want all the attention on me because of a weird coincidence.”

Vivian Girls named their band after Henry Darger's Vivian Girls, the band notes on Braden’s blog entry, who “were actually girls with penises, so us naming our band after them is a pretty similar thing to male bands naming themselves Women or Girls.”
Shiragirl originally came from lead singer Shira’s name. Her name means “song” in Hebrew and also refers to “princess of power,” from the 1985 television series, She-Ra.

“A lot of people find it to be an empowering name,” she said. “I wanted a website and that’s one of the websites that was available. People started calling me Shiragirl, so it started organically, then I got into an all girl band and we stayed with the name. It’s telling of who we are. I was into riot grrrl, so it fits with that. I think that the word ‘girl’ doesn’t have to mean cheesy or weak, I think it can be an empowering thing.”