“Do you guys perform better on your periods?”

Yeah. That’s a real comment I got on a video I posted of my all-girl band covering Breed by Nirvana.

I started my band The Final Girls in July 2021, but I had been dreaming of being a part of an all-girl group for a while. I wanted to start something new, something that hadn’t been brought to the New Jersey music scene, and I wanted to show that girls could rock too. At the time, there was only one girl band in the area, but they strictly played riot-grrl, a sub-genre of 90s punk with grunge elements that highlight the ideas of feminism and getting girls into the scene. Unfortunately, as cool as that was, the whole riot-grrrl thing kind of backfired because that scene isn’t really around anymore, and of course, Jersey wasn’t receptive to it at all.

We blew up on Tiktok immediately upon our first video being posted. And so did the next video. And the next. With our videos totaling over 200,000 likes combined, we felt like maybe The Final Girls did have a chance. People from Spain and Hong Kong and Connecticut were commenting on how they “love riot-grrrl” even though we posted a cover of 7 Words by Deftones, a nu-metal band formed in the early 90s. And wow, that just goes to show, there’s lots of work to be done in the scene. What, girls can’t play metal? Is everything we do always going to be classified as “riot-grrrl” just because we are composed solely of female musicians?

It is really discouraging going out to watch your friends in gigs and seeing not one girl in any of the performing bands, and barely any in the crowd.  Being in a band should be one of the most freeing feelings ever and in some ways it totally is. But, there’s always going to be those people that will find anything to pick apart about your music – whether it be the vocals, the drumming, or simply not being loud enough. Sometimes, my bass is too loud, and I’m “stealing the spotlight.” Other times, I’m a “scared girl who is too afraid to crank up her instrument” (yep, another real comment). I’ve also had so many instances at shows where I’ve been put in an uncomfortable situation by someone way older than me, and there’s always gonna be that creep you make awkward eye contact with every couple of minutes across the stage.

But who says we can’t show them we rock, just as hard as they do? The term “Final Girl” comes from the classic horror-film trope for the one girl who outlives everyone else and survives the killer. Just maybe there is more to us than you think. I’m hopeful for the future of Final Girls, and I hope that we inspire more girls to join the scene. That’s what music is supposed to be all about, right?