BIKINI KILL IS
from Jigsaw # 5 1/2

BIKINI KILL IS A BAND MADE UP OF FOUR INDIVIDUALS: kathi, tobi, billy and kathleen...
We have been written about a lot by big magazines who have never talked to us or seen our shows. They write about us authoritatively, as if they understand us better than we understand our own ideas, tactics and significance. They largely miss the point of everything about us because they have no idea what our context is/has been. Their idea of punk rock is not based on anything they have ever experienced directly or even sought an understanding of by talking to those who have, yet they continue to write about it as if their stereotypical surface level view of it is all it is. A lot of times we have been asked why we don’t do interviews very often if we are so concerned with being misrepresented. To us this seems obvious... it is mostly based on our experiences. As a rule we don’t do interviews with maninstream newspapers or magazines. In the few cases where we did do them we fell like we were totally fucked over by the way our words were framed to back up ideas that weren’t our own. Quotes were taken out of context, we were made to look like we were dissing other women in bands when that wasn’t our intention and in worst casae scenarios our confidence was totally violated by having stuff we told the individual writers NOT to focus on exploitattively (abuse histories, where we work/have worked, etc.) turned into the the main focus of the article. We have constantly told writers to leave out personal infformation about us (our last names, who we go out with/used to date) out of articles and they always are sure to include it if we tell them not to. We always try to include perspectives of different band members but often times the writer only puts in quotes by kathleen our singer. When she has done interviews by herself as an individual it is often seen as an interview with the whole band even tho she continually says she is only speaking as an individual member of bikini kill whose opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the whole band. When we have granted these sources interviews it made us look like everything they said about us was done with our cooperation. The times when we have asked to see articles or edit them before they come out it has never really worked out. One time in particular we were told by N.M.E. in the U.K. that we could write our own articles and they would not in anyway comment on or edit it. When the articles came out Kathi’s was not included, but was rather taken out of context and cited to back up their ideas about us in the introduction they wrote to my article (something that to our understanding they weren’t going to do). They laid it out in a way that included catty remarks bigger than our own words and put in a bunch of dumb pictures we didn’t send them. This was the last time we ever tried to cooperate with a big magazine but they have continued to write stuff about us. This is really frustrating but what is even more frustrating is when people who should know better, other punks for instance, believe these takes on who we are as being based on reality rather than on conjecture and in most cases on ill intentions of the writer/mag (when you refuse to grant interviews people get realy insulted and make a point of dissing you usually to the point of spreading deliberate lies about you and are usually sure to say really naive sexist things intended to piss you off)...all these things make it really fucking hard to be in this band. Sure, fuck what people think and all that but when people area constantly going out of their way to maliciously write about you it just starts to suck. So these kinds of experiences have led us to not feeling much like talking about our ideas at all. Sometimes not even to each other. But fuck that you know and we are making a new fanzine about this whole weird media phenomenon that we have been associated with and so you should look forward to that. But in the meantime we ask you to think about what you know about us and how you got that information cuz in most cases it probably isn’t too accurate...

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