In 1994, Marcia Tucker and Marcia Tanner independently organized two exhibitions dubbed “Bad Girls” and “Bad Girls West.” The exhibitions, located at the New Museum in New York and UCLA’s Wright Gallery (now the Hammer) in Los Angeles, showcased young and emerging feminist artists who reveled in their good humor, bad taste and general lack of “ladylike decorum.” Artists ranged from Carrie Mae Weems and the Janine Antoni to Margaret Curtis and Portia Munson, representing a vast assortment of what it meant to be a “feminist.”
 
“Three days after my high school graduation I ‘came out’ loud and strong, cutting my straightened permed hair into a Mr. T Mohawk, wearing combat boots and ripped thrift store clothing, and of course, the single earlobe filled with many anarchist, lesbian, and feminist symbols of rebellion — a bad girl,” Cheryl Dunye wrote in an essay accompanying the NY exhibition. “And you know what? I loved it. I loved being part of a group… who wanted to smash the state, end patriarchy, and love one another openly… For me a bad girl meant being different, different from who I was or was supposed to become.” Read More