Courtney Love, the feminist.
The unbridled force of nature we know as Courtney Love has often been a controversial figure in popular culture. Love’s career as a musician, songwriter, and actress has spanned four decades. She is a fashion icon, a mother, a recovering drug addict, and the widow of the legendary Kurt Cobain, who died from suicide in 1994, just as Love and her band Hole were on the brink of superstardom. Nevertheless, despite an onslaught of criticism, Love refused to live in the shadow of tragedy. At the height of Hole’s popularity, Love’s aesthetic and attitude--certainly an extension of her music--both reclaimed and defied traditional feminine constructs. It was an unprecedented time of liberation for women. But even for the 90s, Love went to the extreme, at times even challenging the feminism of the era. She was loud, messy, slutty, angry, and entirely unapologetic. You did not sing along with Courtney Love, you screamed along with Courtney Love. Confrontational yet cathartic, Love and her music embodied the utter frustration and fury felt by all of womankind.
Though superficially subversive and socially unacceptable, Love’s lyrics revealed her to be analytical and complex. Nevertheless, compounded by the contrasting nature of Hole’s post-punk power-pop genre, to those unwilling to scratch beneath the surface, Love’s beautifully abysmal approach to exposing the cultural contradictions women must wade through was easily misunderstood. “A cacophony,” is how Elizabeth Wurtzel of The New Yorker described Hole’s album, Pretty on the Inside, “—full of such grating, abrasive, and unpleasant sludges of noise—that very few people are likely to get through it once, let alone give it the repeated listening it needs for you to discover that it’s probably the most compelling album to have been released in 1991.”[1] For those receptive to Love’s abrasive delivery, however, her energy and lyrics channeled the long-stifled rage of the objectified, the oppressed, and the exploited.
Offering clues to how she views the world and herself, in a 1995 Spin Magazine interview, Love revealed that she was diagnosed with probable autism at a very young age and that her mother insisted on having a gender-free household. “No dresses, no patent leather shoes, no canopy beds, nothing.” She was often shuffled around and put in the care of family friends, got in many fights, was expelled from school after school, enjoyed shoplifting, and had difficulty making friends. She says that, growing up, kids hated her and that the only people who did like her were men, male teachers, principals, and therapists. Love also talked about her relationship with her body, saying that she resented puberty because, although it came late, when it did, it took away her beauty.[2] To regain the beauty she felt was stripped from her, Love has undergone a series of cosmetic procedures, beginning with rhinoplasty surgery at age twenty, something she has been candid about in interviews throughout the years and says she absolutely does not regret.[3]
Having made her living as an exotic dancer before breaking into the music scene, Love understood that the key to commercial success was her sex appeal. In a 1991 interview with London newspaper, The Guardian, Love remarked that her songwriting connects to her sexuality and that her time working as a dancer made her realize “what people use.”[4] Nevertheless, as a performer and songwriter, her goal was not to cater to misogyny but, rather, confront it. Arming herself with brazen lyrics, babydoll dresses, smeared lipstick, and tousled hair, it was all about the visceral juxtaposition. Laing describes Love as an incarnation of the “woman-child,” whose aesthetic “flouted the innocence-knowledge binary,” fusing girlishness and vamp, like a wolf in lamb’s clothing.[5]
Courtney Love photographed by Alan Levenson,1992
This statement crosses over into Love’s lyrics in “Doll Parts,” which infantilize femininity and deconstruct the feminine form. “I am doll eyes, doll mouth, doll legs;” she becomes mere fragments of herself. Nevertheless, she confesses, “I want to be the girl with the most cake.” Love acknowledges a desire to fully express herself, despite society’s tendency to objectify women. Though her line, “I fake it so real, I am beyond fake,” reveals that, nevertheless, she retains her power and has only to offer a performance—a parodic femininity that subverts the construct from within. As if by objectifying herself, Love deconstructs the misogynistic gaze.
Likewise, the virgin-whore trope could not confine her. In defiance of traditional gender norms, Love did not set aside her sexuality upon entering motherhood. By refusing to acknowledge the dichotomy, Laing explains, Love blurred the line between “ideal” and “deviant” femininity, exaggerating the contradictory demands.[6] Nevertheless, at a time when women were striving for independence and autonomy, her expressed desire to be a wife and a mother also challenged the feminism of the 90s.
Regardless of her ability to dismiss societal expectations, however, Love has not always been able to escape the demands. Presumably written about losing custody of her daughter, Love’s anguish can be heard in the lyrics of “I Think I Would Die.” Seeming to reiterate those questioning her ability as a mother, Love wails, “Where is my baby? There is no milk!” Likewise, in the depth of her despair, she seems to grapple with the constraints of defining who she is as a woman in the lines, “She lost all her innocence, gave it to an abscess. She lost all her innocence. She said, ‘I’m not a feminist.’”
Despite our collective struggle to define who and what we are, to ourselves and in society, Love reminds us that we all have a part to play—the depravity is sometimes, more often than not, give and take. With its lyrics, “I’m the girl you know, can’t look you in the eye,” Love’s song “Miss World” speaks of the exchange between the exploited celebrity and her audience. Likewise, the lines, “I’m Miss World, somebody kill me…no one cares, my friends,” perhaps expose the disposability of women entertainers and musicians. As a performer herself, Love reveals the other side of the coin, as if questioning the performativity of those who claim to be her fans but do not actually know who she is as a person. For the industry’s part, Love’s song “Awful” calls attention to the methods used to market female musicians. “They rob the souls of the girls like you,” she warns. “Like candy, he’s so beautiful. He’s so deep, like dirty water…They sell out girls like you, to incorporate girls like you;” Love’s lyrics seem to caution other young women aspiring to become musicians, who might be drawn in by what they can only see on the surface.
In contrast, however, Love has made it clear that, to her, “selling out” means everyone bought a ticket.[7] Indeed, it was this stance that set Love apart from the adjacent grunge and riot grrrl subcultures from which she emerged. Still considering herself a feminist, Love has stated that she never identified with either movement; she has always been an outsider, she explains, even among outsiders.[8] Love’s song “She Walks on Me” expands on her feeling of being ostracized, particularly by other women. Its lyrics seem to indicate that, perhaps, Love may have had a longing for female companionship. “Kitty, kitty, please come here, but don’t you touch me, don’t you dare. We look the same, we talk the same, we are the same, we are the same.”
Love’s image and sound, sometimes self-deprecating lyrics, and unwillingness to defuse her rage are what made her everything we needed. She exposed us to her trauma but never portrayed the victim. She was a survivor, and she was pissed off for all of us. And she gave us permission to be pissed off too. Oozing with hyper-feminine sexuality, in the man’s world of rock and roll music, Love was the wolf, provocative and violent, yet masquerading as something saccharine. She did not subscribe to anyone else’s idea of what it meant to be feminine or what it meant to be a feminist. On the contrary, in many ways, Love taught us what it meant to be a girl and a woman.
Diane Irby 2021
All Rights Reserved
Bibliography
“Courtney Love on Her Nose Job.” Jimmy Kimmel Live. YouTube. November 19, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mJGpdo4ol8.
“Courtney Love’s ‘Strange Brand of Feminism.’” Sirius XM Alt Nation. YouTube, May 5, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czdsT4nxaNI.
Evans, Liz. “Calling the Tune.” The Guardian. December 11, 1991. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22821312/the-guardian/.
Laing, Morna. “Essay: Meadham Kirchhoff.” SHOWstudio. November 3, 2014. https://www.showstudio.com/projects/girly/essay_meadham_kirchhoff.
Marks, Craig. “Courtney Love: Confessions of a Diva.” SPIN Magazine. February 1995.
Stephens, Britt. “22 Candid Quotes That Might Make You Love Courtney Love.” POPSUGAR Celebrity UK. July 10, 2014. https://www.popsugar.co.uk/celebrity/22-Candid-Quotes-Might-Make-You-Love-Courtney-Love-35207462.
Wurtzel, Elizabeth. “Girl Trouble.” The New Yorker, June 22, 1992. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/06/29/girl-trouble.
[1] Elizabeth Wurtzel, “Girl Trouble,” The New Yorker, June 22, 1992. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/06/29/girl-trouble.
[2] Craig Marks, “Courtney Love: Confessions of a Diva,” SPIN Magazine, February (1995): 47.
[3] Jimmy Kimmel Live, “Courtney Love on Her Nose Job,” YouTube, November 19, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mJGpdo4ol8.
[4] Liz Evans, “Calling the Tune,” The Guardian ( December 11, 1991): 18.
[5] Morna Laing, “Essay: Meadham Kirchhoff,” SHOWstudio, November 3, 2014. https://www.showstudio.com/projects/girly/essay_meadham_kirchhoff.
[6] Laing, “Essay: Meadham Kirchhoff.”
[7] Britt Stephens, “22 Candid Quotes That Might Make You Love Courtney Love,” POPSUGAR Celebrity UK, July 10, 2014. https://www.popsugar.co.uk/celebrity/22-Candid-Quotes-Might-Make-You-Love-Courtney-Love-35207462.
[8] “Courtney Love's ‘Strange Brand of Feminism,’” Sirius XM Alt Nation, YouTube, May 5, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czdsT4nxaNI.