Consider the teenage witch. At least, consider the teenage witch as she existed in popular culture at the time I, personally, was a teenager: from 1993 to 1999. The ’90s, in retrospect, was a very particular decade to be a teenage girl. Alanis was on the radio. We had Juliana Hatfield, the Cranberries, Missy Elliott, Shirley Manson, Lauryn Hill, Kim Deal and the Breeders—voices that told their own stories, who joked and cried and soared and screamed and roared. Riot Grrrls. Lilith Fair. Tori freaking Amos. These women formed a coven of sound, a shared promise that what we had to say had value, what we felt was real.
But let’s turn now to the scripted witches.
