to this tremendous national security risk, it is that the vulnerability is, in fact, global. The effect spans
borders, races, income levels, sexual orientations, political parties, religions and all other aspects of adult
identity, demarcating a distinct microgeneration.
Members of the Spice Girls generation are the only people in history to have both grown up with the
internet and retained childhood memories that predated it. Born primarily in the mid-to-late 1980s, they are
human bridges between two eras, whose anachronistic birth years, with their faraway century, will cause
their heirs’ eyes to widen at their obituaries. Their ancestral parallels are the earliest drifters of the Lost
Generation, born in the mid-to-late 1880s – people to whom Glenn Miller seemed unbearably young.
No apologies: the group demonstrated girl
power in seemingly every situation (Rex)Tens of thousands of representatives of this cohort gushed through the back streets of residential Dublin
one evening this past May, surrounding the terraced houses like a flash flood. From behind the superficial
safety of one home’s gate, two young men gawked at the deluge, their expressions trapped between scoff
and awe. The air was thick with tipsy laughter, ebullient plan-making and those breezy apologies particular
to young women wherein the apology – often mistaken by other demographics for an expression of guilt – is
in fact an announcement that the speaker is about to say or do whatever she wants, regardless of the laws of
God or man.
“Gonna place that just there, sorry!” sang a woman, placing a glass beer bottle on the ground, where it was
quickly trampled. There wasn’t time for trash cans. It was opening night of the Spice World tour (not to be
confused with the 1998 Spiceworld tour, nor indeed, a “world tour”) and the 74,000 attendees were in a
rush.
Girl power brokers
If it surprises the reader to learn there is evidence to suggest that the No 3 best-selling album by a girl
group, ever, was released by the Spice Girls in 1997, it will confound the reader to learn that, as near as can
be measured, the No 1 best-selling album by a girl group, ever, was also quite possibly released by the Spice
Girls in 1997, nine months earlier. (In the US, at least – the international release occurred a few months
before that. The reconciling of various countries’ convoluted sales certification criteria is one of many
torturous undertakings that makes tracking past global album sales a lofty if not impossible goal.)