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Live performance 1978 

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Newspaper review of The Slits performance in 1980, As John Rockwell states above, “Women have always played a part in popular music but usually they have served to reinforce conventional stereotypes of vulnerability and passivity; this has been true of the widely touted surge of women singers from Los Angeles in the last decade as well as earlier pop artifacts of the 1950s and 70s. There were tough women, too, but they also fit into that stereotype, that of the hard-as-nails, but soft-underneath women who could strut and yell as aggressively as men...” He goes on to state The Slits were “neither vulnerable nor macho, but simply making music.”

The Slits refused to conform to conventional ideologies of how female artists should sound, look, or act and refused to be complicit in enforcing stereotypical ideologies of femininity because it would be “doing a disservice to girls” everywhere (Albertein 2017: 162). They initially bonding over the fact that they all hated double standards, false people, and didn't want to merely entertain people through their music. From their perspective, it was viewed as a vehicle to penetrate the narrow-minded culture and transform how society views women. Steering away from capitalizing off their sex appeal to gain a following, The Slits wanted people to take them seriously. In, Typical Girls?: Fuck Off, You Wanker! Reevaluating The Slits and Gender Relations In Early British Punk and Post-Punk, Cogan references Jon Savage that explains The Slits live performance as a  “Theatre of female power” and “were much more likely to offend the audience than male bands” (Cogan 2012; 123).  To illustrate, The Slits were unpredictable on stage and weren’t afraid of hiding their emotions nor attitude from their audience.  If they were in an awful mood, it was apparent, and they showed it. As Viv explains, they didn't want people to forget their problems,“We’d rather people confront their anger and dissatisfaction and do something about it”  then pretend everything is fine (Albertein 2014: 162). As simple as it sounds conveying authentic emotions on stage was revolutionary. Their live performances were often raw, and Ari would stomp around the stage, dance in innovative ways, leap off the stage and move through the crowd. On one account, Ari peed on stage halfway through the set because she couldn't hold it any longer (Albertein 2014: 164). In short, “during a time when girls were so uptight and secretive about their bodies and desperately trying to be ‘feminine, ’ through their performance and sound, The Slits brought the female body into plain view and reclaimed  their agency by revealing to the audience the bodily functions of the female body (ibid).  

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Ari undressing at a public Bank

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Being attacked, spat at, sworn at, and laughed at were common occurrences for the members of The Slits (Albertein 2014:164). It was not easy for them to dress the way they did, it was immensely tough and often resulted in violence. Paul Rutherford, member one of the first punk bands, The Spitfire Boys, remembers the animosity The Slits received just by walking on stage,  “One time we supported them at this mad club in Bristol. All these beer boys just went nuts when The Slits came on and they started throwing beer glasses at them” (Howe 2006: 62). Similarly, Don Letts, The Slit's first manager explains, “They used to take a lot of shit, people would attack them on the streets and hurl abuse at them, they were the witches of West London. They didn't fit into that stereotype of what women should be — but that was their strength. They looked at what was offered for girls in those days and said ‘No thank you.’ We’ll decide what we want to do, we’ll decide how we want to be and how we want to look” (Howe 2006: 62). Receiving by far the most extreme measures of abuse, Ari got stabbed twice. Once when The Slits were leaving their rehearsal space, and another time a guy came up behind them while they were walking down the street and screeched ‘Take that, Slit’ and knifed Ari in the bum (Albertein 2014:165). In an attempt to combat the subversive acts The Slits initiated, their peers attempted to regulate their behavior in informal methods (Weeks 2002:8). By provoking violence towards the members, their peers were seeking to police the girls into acting in ways that were deemed socially acceptable. However, this tactic did not alter The Slits' attitude.  

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The Slits formed out of a “culture of resistance”, that questioned moral codes, the establishment, and challenged heteronormativity (Weeks 2002). Using their body and dress to fully embody ‘the personal as political,’ The Slits subversive style eradicated gender norms and challenged hegemonic notions of femininity. The Slits managed to not only liberate themselves from stereotypical ideologies of what beauty means, they also avoided traditional gender roles and what was expected from women in the social world. They refused to be quiet, submissive, and align their sex appeal with what men found attractive — what most women were doing at that time The Slits wanted, and did the exact opposite, to quote Viv Albertine’s now-famous quote, “Men look at me and they are confused, they don’t know whether they want to fuck me or kill me. This sartorial ensemble really messes with their heads. Good” (Albertein 2017: 112). Often confusing their peers by their appearance, The Slits crossed gender boundaries through their style by incorporating traditional masculine and feminine clothes, with BDS leather attributes, and adolescent clothing. In, Cut, Layer, Break, Fold:Fashioning Gender Difference, 1970s to the Present, Shehnaz Suterwalla, points out, in the early punk scene women would often hypersexualize their bodies to defy notions of femininity and confront the male gaze ( Suterwalla 2013: 271). Through this act, women would cut holes in their clothes, substitute pants with stockings, or wear revealing clothing, as a way to draw attention to the body (ibid). To put their bodies on display in a society that has conducted the female body as absent, uncontrollable, or meant to be hidden was the ultimate expression of resistance.     To illuminate the typical dress of The Slits, Howe explains, “Tessa often were androgynous outfits, a shirt, tie and leather jacket, skinny trousers, and biker boots” (Howe 2006: 61). Her eyes smudged with heavy black eyeliner, and her black messy hair was typically worn in ponytails and secured with a rag. Viv wore “girls frogs, ribbons, rags, even socks trailing from her“ matted wild bleached blonde hair (ibid). Little girls’ party dresses, tutu skirts, and finished it off with fishnets or rubber stockings and sneakers on her feet (Albertein 2014: 111). Ari mostly wore her underwear over her trousers, putting them on full display, or mini skirts so tiny they hardly covered her bum, with fishnets, or dresses with boots. Her hair was so matted and untamed, it sat high with natural volume and would eventually turn into dreads. Palmolive styled her own tops by ripping and cutting slashes through the fabric to create her own innovated style, she accompanied this look with lace gloves and silver Doc Martens (Howe 2006: 61). Her hair was worn slick back and stayed in placed with the help of grease, and every chance she got she showed off her unshaved armpits (ibid).   The Slits wanted to “shock” people with their appearance because they believed it could clear “the brain of preconceptions for a moment, and in that moment” their appearance would give others a “chance to cut through all the habits and learnt behaviour of the viewer and make a fresh impact, before all the conditioning crowds in” (Albertein 2014:112). By dressing outside of traditional ‘feminine’ clothes, they believed it would give space for individuals to reflect, or question their own preconceived ideologies of gender. If they upset or enraged others based on their appearance, they would often question why, and what individuals were reacting to. By drawing on questions, such as why were women only allowed to dress a specific way, or why does gender dictate an individual’s life, The Slits were working to deconstruct societal power structures that police individuals into specific roles based on their gender. As Susan Stryker would say, The Slits were desubjugating knowledge, the dismantling of hierarchical discourse of knowledges, that seeks to reevaluate, as well as question the epistemology of gender and minority views (Stryker 2006: 13). By pushing against dominant ideologies of their time and challenging it, The Slits were deconstructing power structures that regulate individuals to behave in specific ways. The Slits were questioning the gender politics of their time and urging others to do so as well.

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 Sex, or better known as ‘The Shop,’ lived on King’s Road in London from 1976-1977, and was where Viv would shop when she had enough money saved. It was run by Vivienne Westwood and specialized in leather, BDSM, and other clothing involved in the punk movement. 

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The all-female punk band, The Slits initially formed in 1976 by Palmolive (Paloma Romero), and then 14-year-old Ari Up (Ariane Forster) along with two other members, but were soon replaced by guitarist Viv Albertine and Bassist Tessa Pollitt. Though the band submerged from the new wave British punk scene, the Slits incorporated elements of Afro-jazz, Jamaican dub, funk, and free jazz, transcending beyond the borders of punk music, and creating a unique sound unlike ever before. Revolting against the intense patriarchal and misogynistic climate of their time, The Slits utilized their music as an instrument to take ownership of their bodies, and sexuality, liberating them from heteropatriarchal ideologies.

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   Before the capital economy, individuals relied heavily on the production and ties of the nuclear family for survival. The household represented a workplace where each member of the family depended on the cooperation of one another to succeed in self-sustainability. More than often, the husband and sons cultivated and tended the land, while the mother and daughters cooked, cleaned, and made clothes, soap, candles, amongst other products necessary for the family (D’emilio 1993: 469).  However, the transition from household production to industrial manufacturing altered the dynamic of the family and the definition of work. Men began to enter the public sphere to sell their labor in exchange for a wage and women were reduced to a full-time unpaid occupation in the household. In this process, women’s work was viewed as invisible and devalued because value and respectability of work was tied exclusively to labor performed in exchange for a wage (Roberts 1997: 50). Thus, confining women to the home and becoming economically dependent on men.    Well into the 1970s (and still happens today) the gender division of labor was still very prevalent, and the role of women was fixed: get married, have children, and become a housewife (Howe 2009: 3). In addition, the seventies was a pivotal time in society, the world was drastically moving more right on the political spectrum as Regan and Thatcher were coming into power (Jaffe 2015). Unions were crumbling,  racial backlash political were rising and social conservatism was on rise (Jaffe 2015). In the documentary, Here to Be Heard: The Story Of The Slits, the members of the Slits explain, they were coming from a gray population, that was overwhelmingly bleak, with few opportunities for women (Badgley & Vennis, 2017). Tessa remembers thinking, “what is there for us out there?” (ibid).  Viv Albertine explains, “men ruled the world. It was a very sexist, very male, very class-ridden society where we were invisible really” (ibid). She goes on to explain, “there were no role models female wise, there were no girls who played the electric guitar so, I actually never made the mental leap that it was something I could actually do until I saw Johnny Rotten (of the Sex Pistols) on stage. (British Library, 2016 6 min).