Posh Spice just gave the perfect definition of “Girl Power”
In case you had any doubts, girl power is very much alive and well — and Posh Spice herself is here to prove it.
Last week, mother, wife, fashion designer, and all around badass Victoria Beckham spoke with fashion industry leader Fern Mallis for a Q&A event at New York City’s 92nd St. Y. The talk covered everything from Beckham’s childhood to her fallback career as a tap dance teacher. Perhaps most excitingly, Beckham also dropped some surprising facts about the early days of the Spice Girls, including the audition process she went through and how the group and its members got their Spice names. She also gifted us with her personal definition of “girl power.”
“There were thousands of girls that turned up to audition for the group. There were queues around the studio,” Beckham said recalling the process of forming the band. “Everybody sang a pop song. I sang ‘Mein Herr’ from [the Broadway musical] Cabaret, which was really not the right thing to do, but it was very dramatic.”
Her odd choice clearly paid off (great musical, FYI), and we’re so very glad it did. Part of the appeal of the Spice Girls was always that the girls were each unique in their own way. It’s nice to know that the individuality goes way back to their roots — and this also applies to how the Spice Girls got their names.
“In the beginning, we were going to be the Spicy Girls, but then we realized there was a porn site called the Spicy Girls. That wouldn’t have been good!” she said.
“Posh was given to us by a British teen magazine, but we were already acting like our names,” she continued. “Mel B really did dress scary, always in leopard print. Emma really was Baby; she always wore pigtails and those bloody awful platform shoes!”
Of course, it’s impossible to reduce any of these larger-than-life ladies to a single adjective; but the names still resonated. Every ’90s girl had a favorite member of the group (aka, whichever one she identified with the most and/or aspired to be), in part because they were each so distinctly relatable. The Spice Girls reinforced the philosophy that we should own who we are and that all of us are awesome in our own way. Both their names and their music reflected this.
“I’m still very close to all of those girls. I’m really proud of what I achieved with them,” Beckham said. “We were just five girls who weren’t all that great individually, but together, we were pretty great. That’s real ‘girl power’: Be who you are, do what you like and be friends with other girls.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
