Parenting & Family Quote by Joan Jett

Joan Jett frames reunion culture the way a lifer in rock would: with affection, ownership, and a hard boundary. Calling The Runaways "my baby" isn’t cutesy nostalgia; it’s a claim to emotional labor and authorship. That matters in a band whose history is routinely packaged through other people’s lenses - as teenage spectacle, cautionary tale, or feminist origin myth. Jett’s line quietly refuses all of that. She’s not interested in being wheeled out as an exhibit of “women in rock” progress, or as a legacy brand doing a commemorative lap.

The key move is the phrase "no reason... except to totally have fun". That "except" is a gatekeeping mechanism. It’s also a critique of the reunion-industrial complex where bands reassemble to monetize catalog, repair public narratives, or satisfy fan entitlement. Jett doesn’t moralize; she makes pleasure the only legitimate currency. If fun isn’t the goal, she implies, the rest is compromise: forced chemistry, contractual obligation, the weird theater of pretending time didn’t happen.

There’s subtext about control, too. The Runaways were famously managed, shaped, and sold in ways that often minimized the members’ agency. Jett’s refusal to do it without joy reads like a retrospective correction: you don’t get to exploit the story again, not even under the flattering banner of “celebration.” It’s rock pragmatism with a punk spine - authenticity defined not by suffering, but by consent.