When the Spice Girls released their Spiceworld LP in November 1997, it came at an auspicious time for the group. The quintet’s debut LP, Spice, had come out just a year before, and songs like "Wannabe," "Say You’ll Be There," and "2 Become 1" had turned millions of people into Girl Power fanatics.
In the UK in particular, Spicemania was in full effect, with the group dominating magazine covers, radio airwaves, and even Pepsi commercials. The big-screen Spice World — a Hard Day’s Night-like movie inspired by the band’s aesthetic and meteoric rise to fame — was still about a month out, so Spiceworld offered fans a glimpse at what was to come in the upcoming film.
For admirers, the five members of the Spice Girls seemed like paragons of self-confidence and universal acceptance. While they most famously preached the gospel of girl power, they were also advocates for universal love, friendship, and just having a good time. Any fan or observer of the group could look at Scary, Sporty, Ginger, Baby, and Posh Spice and recognize that they loved everyone unconditionally and they were proud of who they were, perky plasticity and all. At a time when bands like Limp Bizkit and Korn were projecting messages of rage, isolation, and darkness, the Spice Girls feminine enthusiasm and sass seemed like a gleeful ray of female sunshine in an otherwise dark and mostly masculine world.
Twenty-five years ago, I was 16 years old and living in Cleveland with my parents. I was heavily into Britpop, having fallen head over heels in love with Oasis a couple of years earlier. I spent all my free time watching MTV and all my spare money at the mall record shop buying import singles and concert tickets.
Of course, to get that money, I had to babysit. Typically, it was for the two boys who lived next door. They were 6 and 8, and they weren’t all that much trouble, really. In fact, what I remember most about them was how much the younger son adored the Spice Girls. At the time, he seemed like an anomaly: A kid less interested in video games or TV than he was in dancing around and singing "Wannabe" with a towel on his head. He’d frequently strike "girl power" poses, peace signs out and all, all to the chagrin of his older brother. It was cute, I thought, and I liked the Spice Girls well enough. I’d bring my copy of Spice with us when we went to the zoo and the pool in the summer, and we practically wore that thing out.
That family moved away a year or so later, and I went away to college. I lost track of what they were up to until one curious night when I looked them up on Facebook and discovered that the younger son — the one who lived and breathed all things Spice — was now an out gay man living proudly in New York City. I friended him, and we joked about his Spice-loving past being a subtle indicator of who he’d later become.
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that theory; more than a few contestants on "RuPaul’s Drag Race" (both the U.S. and UK versions) have discussed their deep, longtime love of the group. One queen, DRUK’s Just May, even landed in the competition in part because of her reputation as the world’s foremost Geri Haliwell impersonator.
The relationship between queerness and drag and the Spice Girls has always seemed like a natural one because the personas the women embodied were, in some sense, drag-like archetypes. The Spice Girls were big and brassy, with larger than life looks and cheeky attitudes.
That’s the kind of attitude that drew in Just May, who was just 7 when Spiceworld was released. She remembers first seeing the Spice Girls performing on a British morning show called "GMTV" in 1996: "Geri was wearing this blue and green tie-dye outfit and I just thought, wow, she is incredible," Just May recalls. "Later, when she really started to play into the Ginger Spice thing with the red hair and big boots, that was when I really thought, Okay, this is what I want to be when I grow up."
For "Drag Race UK"vet Kitty Scott-Claus, Baby Spice had the most draw and resonance. "She was the blonde cutesy one and that's how I always was on the playground," she says. "As a little gay boy, I was always friends with girls, and I was always Baby Spice when we played or talked about Spice Girls. I had the Baby doll, and pretty much any piece of merch with Baby on it. I was absolutely obsessed with her." That love paid off years later when Scott-Claus actually met Baby Spice on DRUK, a moment she has called "the best day of her life."
DRUK vet Copper Topp says she grew up admiring Mel C. "I got sporty trousers with buttons down the side, and I'd wrap a towel around my head and stick a headband in and have my Sporty Spice hair," she says. "I loved that the Spice Girls were misfits opposed to the patriarchy, and they weren't the same as other bands. That kind of misfit vibe really mirrored my life. [As a queer tween,] I felt like a misfit, and I didn't feel like I quite fit in."
"I remember thinking at the time, I know they're talking about girl power, but there was something in that that resonated with me," Scott-Claus says. "I remember thinking, it doesn't matter that I'm not a girl and I'm a little boy. I knew I was different. I'm one of six children. I've got four brothers and one sister and I'm nothing like any of them. They were all very stereotypical little boys and girls, and I didn't really fit into the mold. Instead, I resonated with the Spice Girls. I resonated with these strong, powerful women."
Elsewhere in the UK, Just May was thinking the same thing. "Because the five of them are all so different but come together as one, it was saying to me as a kid, ‘you can be any of these things and it's still fine,’" she explains. That inclusivity is also what taught her that, "Spiceworld is for everyone. It doesn't matter what race, gender, or sexuality you are. Everyone is accepted into Spiceworld." There are even parallels to more modern, famously inclusive fan bases to be found, with Just May quipping, "The Spice Girls walked so Lady Gaga could run."
When Spiceworld was released, it was viewed by many critics as a quick cash grab or a bit of prefab manufactured pop fluff. Entertainment Weekly’s review of the record called it "superficiality incarnate," while NME dismissed Spiceworld as "tragic," decrying the group as being "in it for the money." Reviews for Spice World, the movie, weren’t much better. USA Today gave it 1.5 stars, while the Chicago Reader wrote that it was, "a promotional tool that establishes its superfluousness simply by existing."
What those critics didn’t realize, though, was that the record was reaching an underserved, unheralded population of queer youth who began to see and accept themselves through their love of songs like "Spice Up Your Life" and "Viva Forever." Copper Topp says even when she was young and unsure of who she was, she could use the Spice Girls to find people with a shared view of humanity.
"You’d go to other boys houses and guess if they might be queer depending on whether the Spice Girls cassette was on their shelf," she explains. "If you saw Spiceworld or Billie Piper or Lauryn Hill, you’d think, okay, this could be somebody in my tribe."
The Spice Girls themselves seem to agree with that statement. In the years since Spiceworld, Scary Spice Mel B has come out as bisexual, telling Piers Morgan that she had a romantic thing going with fellow band member Geri "Ginger Spice" Horner during the height of their’ popularity. (Some conspiracy-loving fans speculate their breakup is why Horner left the group in May 1998, but that’s never been confirmed.)
The group’s 2019 Spice World reunion tour welcomed fans with a poster that said the group and its fans, "welcome all ages, all races, all gender identities, all countries of origin, all sexual orientations, all religions and beliefs, all abilities." The show itself featured a pair of male dancers performing a passionate tango each night before the group performed "Viva Forever."
More recently, Sporty Spice Mel C accepted the "honorary gay" award from queer UK publication Attitude, telling the crowd at the ceremony, "The Spice Girls were about embracing individuality. Everybody was invited into our gang. It wasn’t just girl power, it was gay power."
Copper Topp, who was at that ceremony, says Mel C talked about how the group aspires to keep educating themselves in order to become better allies, as well. "I think that’s all you can ask for, really," says Copper Topp. "When you’re in the queer community, all you want is good allies and the Spice Girls are pretty good allies to have on your side."
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