But what do they mean?

Apr 10th 1997|

Over-hyped pop stars are two a penny. But the Spice Girls—a five-girl chart-topping group whose flaunt-yourself advice book, “Girl Power” (Zone/Chameleon; £7.99. Carol; $14.95), is coming out in more than a dozen languages—have caught the eye of the sort of people whose main contact with pop music is asking for Walkmans to be turned down. What, the serious press is asking, do the Spice Girls mean? To the right-wing Spectator they are Eurosceptics whose heroine, Margaret Thatcher, was the “first Spice Girl”. For the centre-left Guardian they sum up “late 20th-century Britain: an economy increasingly dominated by women, the growth of the service sector and a homogeneous global culture”. See for yourself.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “But what do they mean?”