All the Real Girls

With a few exceptions, you’d be hard-pressed to find films about teenage girls that don’t primarily involve promiscuity, sexual abuse, suicide or just plain cattiness—one cautionary tale after the next about what tragedy awaits the adventurous young female spirit. Meanwhile, films concerning the domain of teenage boys—in all their thrill-seeking, ribald innocence—are shown with celebratory affection. But Girls Rock!, a documentary about the weeklong Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls in Oregon, explores what happens when you arm young girls with the kind of encouragement, confidence and free-spirited aplomb usually reserved for their brothers.

And guess what? Girls can tap into the same reservoir of aggression, metal snarls and goofy rock posturing as boys—only sadly, they need a bigger nudge. Under the tutelage of some of the most riotous rock chicks—Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, Beth Ditto of The Gossip—the camp gives 100 girls aged 8 to 18 five days to form a band, write a song and perform it by week’s end in front of some 700 audience members. The doc finds four girls among them who represent a cross-section of camp members. There’s Amelia, a know-it-all noise guitarist with plans to write 14 songs about her dog; Misty, a tough former gang member raised by her grandmother; Laura, an outgoing Korean death-metal fan whose bubbly demeanor disguises serious self-loathing; and Palace, a bossy 8-year-old with a fierce metal scream who pens lyrics about watching San Francisco burn.

None of them seems like they’ll be lining up for cheerleading auditions anytime soon, which begs the question: What would befall these misfits were it not for camps like this? Stories of pimply-faced boys whiling away the hours learning Led Zeppelin covers in their bedrooms at 13—boys who’d sooner pop a boner during baptism than lace up a cleat—abound. Perhaps this explains why rock ’n’ roll is such a snakepit of dude culture. But what of all the real girls—as self-deprecating, hilarious and imaginative as their male counterparts—who prefer rock ’n’ roll to Rapunzel?

“Why don’t you start your own band?” asks Laura in the film. “That’s a lot cooler than having a boyfriend in a band.” Indeed, and it’s the trajectory of that shift from passive observer to kinetic participant that makes this briskly paced work so inspiring.

But more importantly, what filmmakers (and dudes!) Shane King and Arne Johnson illuminate best about these lady-rockers-in-waiting is that simply getting girls to pick up a guitar and own the space and power of that creative projection involves addressing a lot more than just plain old beginner’s anxiety. In a princess-obsessed culture where girls as young as 8 are getting bikini waxes, getting them to feel confident enough to shed gender stereotypes is perhaps the biggest obstacle. The camp responds with everything from self-defense classes to communication and assertiveness training.

The film is also laced with heartbreaking stats, in punk rock cut-and-paste montage style, about the grotesque way our culture still values women primarily for their attractiveness. Despite decades of progress by women in political and economic realms, today’s young girls begin dieting at 8, spend some $43 billion on cosmetics annually and are still ridiculously fetishized in rock culture as arm candy. If that doesn’t make your blood boil, listening to them admit with frightening aloofness how much they hate their bodies—as though it’s simply part and parcel of femaleness—will.

Anyone who’s ever wondered why girls don’t rock as often as men may find themselves standing at the crossroads of nature vs. nurture. After all, a genre built on the twin tenets of testosterone and aggression seems innately destined to exclude the fairer sex. But as the doc shows, the Riot Grrl movement of the early ’90s finally did for women what punk rock had done for boys two decades earlier: it proved that they too could pick up an instrument and bang out a battle cry—no experience necessary.

Girls Rock! isn’t really so much about getting girls to rock as it is about unpacking all the bullshit that prevents them from rocking in the first place, and what’s striking is how long overdue this rethinking of what little girls are made of is. The Seattle Times review says to bring your daughters, but better yet—bring your sons.