Amy Taylor, Margot Robbie and Barkaa are among the Australian pop cultural figures helping to reclaim the sheila archetype
“Security, will you let me in your pub?” pleads Amy Taylor in the opening lines of the song Security. “I’m not looking for trouble, I’m looking for love.” The request is made in her signature Aussie drawl, something that musicians attempting to break into the international market would attempt to disguise in decades previous. Yet for the Amyl and the Sniffers frontwoman, everything from her peroxide mullet to proudly “bogan” background has become an important hallmark.
And she’s not the only one. Although Taylor is singular in her tendency to chuck a squat in promotional art or declare that “the dole’s going up and every pub gets a million dollars” in Aria acceptance speeches, she’s just one of a wave of Australian pop cultural figures helping to reclaim the sheila archetype. Think world champion surfer Molly Picklum, the queen of stoke, who drops f-bombs as frequently as she drops into the gnarliest waves on the planet. Or groundbreaking Indigenous rapper Barkaa, whose line “I ain’t cryin’ over budoo unless that budoo makes me money” from King Brown is now shouted like a battle cry at her sold-out shows.