Feminist Fred

Tammy Wynette is one of the best country singers ever. Something about her voice, which she typically starts out real low and subtle and which eventually climbs to a power and glory that make my heart almost pop from the beauty. Country music is as full of sexism as Rock, most of it tied to the glorification of a woman’s subordinate place serving a man, rather than outright sexual objectification.

But this song has it both ways, and almost questions the status quo in a way that a man can hardly argue with, which it has to, in order to avoid tripping any all-too-sensitive male kneejerk reactions to the slightest threats to their hegemony.

I’ve never seen the inside of a bar room
Or listened to a jukebox all night long
But I see these are the things that bring you pleasure
So I’m gonna make some changes in our home

I’ve heard it said: “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”
So if that’s the way you’ve wanted me to be
I’ll change if it takes that to make you happy
From now on you’re gonna see a different me.

Because your good girl’s gonna go bad
I’m gonna be the swingin’est swinger you’ve ever had
If you like ‘em painted up powdered up
Then you oughta be glad
‘Cause your good girl’s gonna go bad.

I’ll even learn to like the taste of whiskey
In fact, you’ll hardly recognize your wife
I’ll buy some brand new clothes and dress up fancy
For my journey to the wilder side of life.

Because your good girl’s gonna go bad
I’m gonna be the swingin’est swinger you’ve ever had
If you like ‘em painted up powdered up
Then you oughta be glad
‘Cause your good girl’s gonna go bad.

Oh Yeah Your good girl’s gonna go bad.

Because it dares to create a possibility of questioning why a woman’s role can be both reviled and glorified for close to the same reasons, I’d call this song almost feminist.

Here’s a uniquely evil song that charted in the sixties. It turns out there’s a whole genre of songs about being forced into prostitution by your own mother. This fits into my theory about the 1960s in America being the most misogynist culture ever.

I was lucky enough to get a comment about heavy metal songs being misogynist, too. I have to admit that if we start looking into hard rock and rock music in general the shit will get to be so thick that it is almost limitless.

“Well, I remember it all very well lookin’ back
It was the summer that I turned eighteen.
We lived in a one-room, run down shack
on the outskirts of New Orleans.

We didn’t have money for food or rent
to say the least we was hard-pressed
when Momma spent every last penny we had
to buy me a dancin’ dress.

Well, Momma washed and combed and curled my hair,
then she painted my eyes and lips.
Then I stepped into the satin dancin’ dress.
It had a split in the side clean up to my hips.

It was red, velvet-trimmed, and it fit me good
and standin’ back from the lookin’ glass
was a woman
where a half grown kid had stood.

She said, “Here’s your last chance, Fancy, don’t let me down!
Here’s your last chance, Fancy, don’t let me down.
God forgive me for what I do,
but if you want out girl it’s up to you.
Now get on out, you better start sleepin’ uptown.”

Momma dabbed a little bit of perfume
on my neck and she kissed my cheek
Then I saw the tears welling up
in her troubled eyes as she started to speak

She looked at our pitiful shack and then
she looked at me and took a ragged breath
She said, Your Pa’s runned off, and I’m real sick
and the baby’s gonna starve to death.

She handed me a heart-shaped locket that said
“To thine own self be true”
and I shivered as I watched a roach crawl across
the toe of my high-healed shoe

It sounded like somebody else was talkin’
askin’, “Momma what do I do?”
She said, “Just be nice to the gentlemen, Fancy.
They’ll be nice to you.”

She said, “Here’s your last chance, Fancy, don’t let me down!
Here’s your last chance, Fancy, don’t let me down.
God forgive me for what I do,
But if you want out girl it’s up to you
Now don’t let me down,
now get on out, you better start sleepin’ uptown.”

That was the last time I saw my momma
when I left that rickety shack
The welfare people came and took the baby.
Momma died and I ain’t been back.

But the wheels of fate had started to turn
and for me there was no other way out.
It wasn’t very long after that I knew exactly
what my momma was talkin’ ’bout.

I knew what I had to do.
Then I made myself this solemn vow:
I’s gonna to be a lady someday
though I didn’t know when or how.

But I couldn’t see spendin’ the rest of my life
with my head hung down in shame.
You know I mighta been born just plain white trash.
but Fancy was my name.

She said, “Here’s your last chance, Fancy, don’t let me down!
Here’s your last chance, Fancy, don’t let me down.
God forgive me for what I do,
but if you want out girl it’s up to you.
Now get on out, you better start sleepin’ uptown.”

Wasn’t long after that a benevolent man
took me in off the streets
One week later I was pourin’ his tea
in a five roomed penthouse suite.

Since then I’ve charmed a king, a congressman
and an occasional aristocrat
and I got me an elegant Georgia mansion
and a New York townhouse flat.

Now I ain’t done bad

Now in this world there’s a lot of self-righteous
hypocrites who call me bad.
They criticize Momma for turning me out
No matter how little we had.

But I haven’t had to worry ’bout nothin’
now for nigh on fifteen years
But I can still hear the desperation
in my poor mommas voice ringin’ in my ears.

“Here’s your last chance, Fancy, don’t let me down!
Oh, here’s your last chance, Fancy, don’t let me down.
God forgive me for what I do,
but if you want out girl it’s up to you.
Now get on out, you better start sleepin’ uptown.”

Like Wives & Lovers, there’s a strong theme of resignation and surrender in this song. How normal it was for women to feel this way is what I find the most horrible part about these lyrics. The one way out – capitulation to male desires – is all about becoming fully invested in being a member of the sex class. The uselessness of women unless they are objects of desire.

Even as women become more conscious of being worth more than just being used by men, the rise in porn culture attacks from the secret places that men hide their midnight desires, trying to undermine men’s ability to realize the obvious humanity of the women all around them.

It’s the image of patriarchy-pleasing handed down from mother to daughter that creeps me out the most about this song. An obvious male fantasy, yet one that makes twisted sense if you accept your fate as an oppressed and poverty-stricken person in a world of money and men. A simple update to becoming an empowered stripper would make this song as relevant today as it was then.

I have male parts dangling down there somewhere, so I try, I really try! not to comment on the enormous struggle women suffer to liberate themselves from oppression. Especially the struggle with femininity, which the radical feminist will decry and denounce from time to time.

Since I have no first hand experience with being female and suffering the oppression of male dominance, I prefer to let the women talk to the women about these issues, since they know best what feels right and should be able to understand better than I how to communicate helpfully to women who struggle with the desire to dress feminine in a world that rewards femininity and punishes the rejection of it, sometimes brutally, sometimes subtly.

In my last post I referenced the excellent blog I Blame The Patriarchy, where I started my studies of gender under the tender, witty tutelage of Twisty Faster, perhaps the most amusing and creative feminist writer who has ever lived. With scorn, sarcasm, wordplay and insight, she changed me, single handedly, from a normal pornsick dude who aspired to being a nice guy to an outraged person who aspires to a state of humanity devoid as possible of the turgid trappings of masculinity that never fit me anyway. Thanks to her I started to read the classics of radical feminist thought and found myself rethinking everything.

In this same post, Twisty’s commentariat, who have collectively taught me even more than Twisty, came back once again to the knotty and deep problem of women rejecting femininity. Twisty had made an off-hand comment asking women to at least reject some small bit of feminine baggage to show some feeling for the plight of women being killed the world over for the sake of the same system that condones killing our sisters.

There’s not much to be said about men killing women outright out of pure hatred for women. But asking women to reject femininity is harder to swallow, and leads to some real problems in the home, in the workplace, on the street. One commentator threw up her hands at the idea because a woman will be raped just as readily in rags as in stilettos. The feeling of helplessness was palpable.

Short hair, short nails, jeans and t-shirts, hairy legs, hairy pits, no make up, getting up, showering and ready. It’s so easy. Maybe you need to shave the legs – nobody wants to be stared at. The rest of it is below the radar, nobody really notices. Depending on the body shape, people can still tell you’re a woman.

I’m not saying to do it. But rejecting femininity is rejecting a lot of crap you have to buy and things you have to do. It’s not difficult, because it is verifiably easier. You find your comfort spot along the continuum from girly girl to unadorned human and that’s it.

The argument that you’re just as liable to be raped dressed up as dressed down doesn’t make sense to me. The real crime is that men, in their insufferable dominance, have staked out the unadorned human look for themselves and women comply with this ownership by continuing to regard this look as not feminine enough or even masculine.