Lorrie Millington
Artist, Model, Dancer, Writer
It's vital to remember those whom we have loved: and to love those whom we remember.
So I am grateful to the curators of the God Save the Queens exhibition currently showing at the Museum of Youth Culture for affording me the opportunity to include the above photograph of Lorrie Millington taken in a time that is now long ago, but not quite lost.
Displayed in the company of many other young women that the Up Yours! Collective insist on calling she-punks [1], I hope she feels she is among friends.
Some of these women are famous, some anonymous; some dead, some still alive and kicking. But all are beautiful in the eyes of their friends and family who remember them.
Notes
[1] The term she-punk was coined by Helen Reddington and later popularised by Vivien Goldman as an alternative to punkette and is presumably meant to sound a bit more spiky and savage, although it does make me think of Jennifer Walters and we might question this rejection of the feminine diminutive form; does it mark a victory for women or might it not be seen as an unintended reinforcement of the masculine?
[2] The link is to the single by the Slits of that title, released from their debut album Cut (Island Records, 1979).
