Grrrls and Dolls: Appropriated Images of Girlhood in the Works of Hans Bellmer and Riot Grrrl Bands

Abstract

Images of girlhood and doll figures, especially, occupy central positions within social, cultural, and even political thought. While unlikely parallels, Surrealist photographer Hans Bellmer and Riot Grrrls bands each utilized images of little girls and representations of doll bodies as political tools; through these reappropriated images and refashioned figures, they each leveled counter-hegemonic resistance against their respective patriarchal social orders. Bellmer and Riot Grrrl artists perversely reimagined girls and dolls, especially through acts of violent sexualization and subversive fragmentation, and in doing so found a similar voice through such appropriated bodies. While Bellmer and feminist Riot Grrrls are chronologically separated by decades, contextually divided by national borders, and have been interpreted along disparate scholarly planes, they are nevertheless provocatively united in their subversive redeployment of girlhood imagery. This article analyzes the ways in which images of girlhood and dolls have been reappropriated and re-presented within select works from Bellmer’s oeuvre and Riot Grrrl music/art production. It launches an investigation into how Bellmer and Riot Grrrls have similarly utilized girlhood and doll bodies as political mouthpieces. It aims to present a new reconsideration and re-reading of Bellmer’s work in relation to the similar manipulations of girlhood and doll bodies as they were later re-presented within the Riot Grrrl movement.