Rock legend, 55, has barely aged 34 years after forming pioneering female punk group
IT has been 34 year since Kathleen Hanna formed her feminist rock band, Bikini Kill as an antidote to the male-dominated punk scene.
Now aged 55, the US singer and guitarist has hardly aged a day, as she appeared on social media recently promoting her new book.
The bespeckled star showed off her unlined skin on a face that has hardly changed since her early 90s punk rebel heyday.
With her trademark wit and humour she wrote: “I turned a dastardly thought into a memoir about my life, Rebel Girl out now.”
After forming Bikini Kill in 1990, Hanna became a spokeswoman for third wave feminism and the Riot Gurrl movement that combined feminism with punk in the US.
The first two Bikini Kill Eps were released on CD as The CD Version of the First two Records in 1993.
The band then released two more full-length albums, Pussy Whipped in 1994 and Reject All American in 1996.
Then in 1998 they released Bikini Kill the Singles, a collection of their seven inch compilation tracks.
After the band disbanded in 1998, Hanna started work on a solo project called Julie Ruin, which was inspired by the work of feminist theorist Julia Kristeva.
She then moved to New York and teamed up with the film maker Sadie Benning, starting another band called Le Tigre, based on a more electronic style of music.
She later told a magazine that she was so broke she lived off oatmeal during that time.
A firm fixture on the US punk scene, Kathleen is credited with coming up with the name for legendary band Nirvana’s 1991 breakthrough single, Smells Like Teen Spirit, by writing “Kurt Smells like teen spirit on Kurt Cobain’s wall.”
In 2014 she contracted lyme disease which forced her to cancel a number of live performances and gigs when she underwent a course of treatment for 3 months. By the following year she was finally declared to be free of the disease.
Having married Adam Horovitz of The Beastie Boys in 2006, the couple live in California with their ten-year-old son.
