Mel C claims the Spice Girls were never sexually harassed because they “petrified” men
Frank Hoensch/RedfernsOne of the biggest girl groups of the 90s was undoubtedly the Spice Girls. However, the ladies weren’t just a force in the music entertainment industry, they were a forced to be reckoned with.Mel C aka Sporty Spice ope…
By ABC Audio on August 27, 2020
Frank Hoensch/RedfernsOne of the biggest girl groups of the 90s was undoubtedly the Spice Girls. However, the ladies weren’t just a force in the music entertainment industry, they were a forced to be reckoned with.
Mel C aka Sporty Spice opened up about the power her band possessed on the Table Manners with Jessie Ware podcast on Tuesday, saying it was enough to force seedy men to keep their hands to themselves.
“I get asked quite a lot about the #MeToo movement within the music industry and if I ever experienced anything,” Mel, full name Melanie Chisholm, explained. “And I’m like ‘Are you kidding me?’ No one would come near the Spice Girls because they were petrified of us.”
As for why the group seemed to scare off any would-be predator, the 46-year-old singer says it was because they had strength in numbers.
“You knew if you messed with one of them you’d have to deal with the other four,” Mel smiled, calling her fellow bandmates her “backup.”
However, the singer admitted that while the group of five kept each other safe, they collectively dealt with sexism as a whole — especially when they were trying to find a label.
Mel says they habitually lost out to male groups with executives giving them the reason “girl bands don’t sell records, you can’t be on the front cover of magazines because girls buy records by boys.”
“We were like: ‘Seriously, don’t say that to the Spice Girls.’ That’s a red rag to a bull,” Mel reminisced, which led to them creating one of the biggest slogans in pop culture.
“We started talking about ‘Girl Power’ because we experienced sexism in the industry,” she explained. “We knew we actually had a really important point to prove.”
By Megan Stone
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