One of the cruelest tricks played on the North American women’s movement is the way the caricatures, over time, have edged out reality: the ritualized bra burnings (never happened), the batik hemp dresses (not since the 1970s), the strictly enforced misandry (only on holidays). With regard to Lilith Fair, the late-’90s touring festival of female artists co-founded by Sarah McLachlan, so many jokes were made about “bi-level” haircuts and juice tents and “Lesbopalooza” that the purpose and power of Lilith have largely been relegated to the archives. “I just recently discovered there was an all-female music festival from 1997 to 1999, and I am shook to my core,” a young woman exclaimed on TikTok two years ago, prompting consternation from Millennial and Gen X elders at the loss of some of our crucial cultural herstory.
All of which makes Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery, a new Hulu documentary from the director and writer Ally Pankiw, particularly relevant—both as a corrective to the mocking mythology of Lilith, and as a distillation of what women have lost in the decades since. As a 14-year-old in 1997 who stayed up late to tape Paula Cole and Shawn Colvin songs off the one British radio show that sometimes played them, I was probably fated to cry all the way through Lilith Fair, and indeed I did.
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