The Spice Girls

Strawberry Jam Is The Best Jam

Chapter 1 - The Spice Girls

I'll start with an anecdote. I remember being about fourteen. My youngest brother, who was about six years younger than me - that is, still young enough to be truly child-like, as opposed to my more teenage ways - had the first Spice Girls album. This was mid-90s. Peak Britpop, peak Spice Girls. When every child under the age of ten owned a copy of that album. Anyway, as we shared a bedroom, there was a period of about a month or so where that album was played to death and I heard it constantly. As I sat playing Super Nintendo games that was the endless backdrop. Accompanied by a familiar routine. He'd put it on, then I'd complain that the Spice Girls were "crap" and tell him to turn it off.

However, I remember having this mild sense of cognitive dissonance at the time, as even though I repeatedly stated that "I hated the Spice Girls," that wasn't actually quite true. In truth I didn't mind the music. Some of the songs I even quite liked. In fact, the little arguments usually ended with me saying something along the lines of, "Go on then, you can have it on, if you want it on." I'd say I hated it, then feign a tolerance for it, as I secretly enjoyed the catchiness of the songs.

And no, before you jump in, lol, I'm not gay. This isn't "I secretly liked the Spice Girls and that's how I first knew.." The point I'm making is kind of the opposite one. As a teenage boy, like all teenage boys, I intuitively understood that "pop music" was a girl thing, so liking it didn't fit with my self-image. Had I been gay I would've probably not worried quite as much about looking a bit girly in the eyes of my wider social circle, and ultimately in the eyes of the opposing sex. So that slight cognitive dissonance was a consequence of two conflicting responses. My natural response to the music was a positive one, but that didn't chime with the image I had of myself, and that I wanted to put across to the rest of the world. In this particular case self-image won out. My desire to look cool and credible (and stereotypically male) overrode any desire I had to give an honest appraisal of a Spice Girls song. So "I hate the music of the Spice Girls" was the output. Even though that wasn't the complete and actual truth.

As I wasn't fully self-aware of this at the time it just resulted in a slight niggle of guilt. On some level I understood I was being dishonest. Which got at me a little bit. It annoyed me, and I remember stopping and thinking about it momentarily as I played my video games. Fortunately, pondering on it made me confront it somewhat. "Why am I lying?" I asked. I quickly realised that it was a case of what I've just written above. That I was tailoring my opinions to fit the public image I wanted to present. Or, in some sense, to simply live up to the image others already had of me. That is, to conform to the expectations others had ..be it friends, parents or teachers. In essence, I was bothered what other people thought of me, however much I thought or claimed otherwise. I didn't quite put it in that language at the time, but I came to the realisation and understood it nevertheless. It isn't hard to understand really when you make the effort to think about it (it's true of all of us), it's just hard to admit at first.

Once I became fully self-aware of this it was something of a revelation. I realised I'd been living in a social straightjacket. That my tastes, my true self as it were, had been suppressed and overridden by a desire to conform to a spectrum of public personas. The school version of me, the home version, the self-image I presented to friends. The squirming and embarrassment I felt when those personas sometimes came into conflict. I decided I was going to be more honest. Of course, I wasn't stupid, I didn't turn up for school the next day in a Spice Girls t-shirt. It wasn't a radical overthrow of all care for social status and acceptance, but still, in my mind I had a much clearer understanding of things. I stopped lying to myself*, even though to some degree I kept lying to other people ..or at least sheltering them from my true opinions and tastes. It made me a lot freer. Like I'd developed a superpower that most other people didn't have.

*As a side note, it's worth adding that these things are never quite that cut and dried, and that although I did indeed become much more honest with myself, it wasn't quite that simple. We can never truly cast off our hypocrisies and self-delusions. In reality it's much more of a path or process. Obviously, I'm still better than everyone else, but not quite perfect.