I often joke that my mum, dad and auntie will forever be cooler than I am, even as they head into their 60s. The latest evidence of this was when I started receiving pictures of my mum and auntie, “the twins”, taken at the Tate’s landmark exhibition of feminist art, Women in Revolt!, showing them on the front cover of a radical zine called Shocking Pink.
The twins had no idea they were going to be in the exhibition, and accepted the news in typically nonchalant style. They couldn’t remember the magazine, having the picture taken, nor whether or not they did an interview for the magazine. I sighed and rolled my eyes, as I have been doing since I was a teenager. But inside, I was still pleased for them. As musicians, their legacy lives on in unexpected ways. I feel lucky to hear them on the radio every now and then, to see an old image of them in a restaurant toilet (true story), or to have a friend’s parent tell me how much they loved their band, Soho.
We visited the Women In Revolt! exhibition together last Sunday. It’s packed full of the art and activism of the women’s movement in the UK between 1970 and 1990. From a room featuring the musician and film-maker Gina Birch howling at the camera, to the punk room that housed the twins’ contribution, alongside interviews with Poly Styrene, the frontwoman of punk rock band X-Ray Spex, to a memorial to the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and pamphlets marking anti-racist protests made by the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent, there was too much to get through in one visit. It was definitely useful going with parents who had tapped into parts of those movements at the time – my dad, especially, provided enough context that I didn’t have to read all the tiny captions.
I pored over back copies of another radical feminist magazine, Spare Rib, astonished at how current-sounding many of their headlines and articles seemed (“Mothers under attack: Tories cut maternity rights,” read one). For my mum and auntie, it was nostalgic, a blast from the past that made them think of old friends, people they loved, people they perhaps hated. I spent the better part of my 20s working for what was, in some respects a radical feminist magazine, but as evidenced by Women in Revolt!, plenty were doing similar work before I was born. I have long understood the concept that we had been standing on the shoulders of giants, but seeing it in person helped it hit home; it made me realise how near we really are to the past.
My parents and auntie were happy when they saw the magazine cover. A woman named Collette persuaded them to recreate the picture; “It’ll be nice to have it as a memento,” she said. Later, with the help of the Tate, I was able to access a digitised version of the magazine online and read the interior. “Pauline and Jackie Soho are from Wolverhampton,” the short piece about them read. “Their [sic] not soul singers but pop musicians, who front the group SOHO. Their [sic] not conformists of society or the music industry,” and so on. It may have needed some subbing, but the sentiment was on point. I loved learning that Shocking Pink had been created by a collective of young women in London, that it was utterly homemade and fiercely political, protesting, for example, the introduction of the Tories’ infamous section 28 clause, which forbade the “promotion” of homosexuality.
I will never begrudge my parents for being cooler than me. It is really a beautiful thing that I have been able to trace parts of history through my family’s connection to popular culture, to learn about the battles they faced as young black women, as artists trying to make work that was politically sound. But I do hope, at least, that I’m not the only one. Surely other people out there have parents who are cooler than them?
• Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff is a freelance journalist
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