Women in Country Today

[Stormy]

To paraphrase Pink: Where have all the smart women gone?

I remember, when I was in college, there was a plethora of smart chick bands out there. It ran the gammit from Bikini Kill to Jewel (back in the days when she was exhorting us to "get out on the streets girls and bust your butts), Mary Chapin and Trisha, Ani Defranco--you get it, across the board there were smart women being the subject of their own stories. You also had a community of female artists bonding together and helping each other out--You had Lilith Fair where Sarah McLalchin not only introduced Emmylou Harris to a whole new group of girls but also brought along Kelly Willis and even pulled her fiddler Amy Farris out to sing a verse. You had Joan Jett showing up to play a tribute show and a tribute album for murdered grunge rocker Mia Zapata, not because they had been close friends, but because she and Mia were close but because Joan admired Mia's talent and wanted to make sure she didn't get turned into just another girl murdered on her way home from a bar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kq2wn6Bh2g
This spills across into other aspects of life where you have a self fulfilling prophecy where a singer works to be hot and then people like her becuase she is hot and so she sings songs that show off how hot she is rather than posess any real meaning and the girls who watch her think that being hot in the goal until being asked to pose naked on the internet is an accoplishment rather than an insult. When I was in college we wore combat boots and had marches to kick the butts of guys like Joe Francis and now he's barely even considered a pornographer* and that is barely considered to be a bad thing. And I think that part of the reason that women of my generation were better armed against the universe was because we had a strong set of forebearers that ranged from Joplin to Pat Benetar and Joan Jett to Tammy and Loretta to Cyndi Lauper and Madonna*. Girls today seem very locked into this one single set of music that pervades all radio and all of their entertainment media, and this does them as much a diservice as the lack of contemporary smart mainstream women.



*Pornography is not the same thing as nudity, nor are either the same thing as sexuality. There are two differences between something like Girls Gone Wild and Madonna's Sex book. The first is ownership: Madonna runs the gammit of sexuality in her book, but it is all her sexuality and it all remains firmly under her domain and tells her story. On the other side, Girls Gone Wild does as much as it can to seperate the "girls" in its series from their identities. The breasts and staged make out sessions have nothing to do with the story of these "girls" and everything to do with the story Joe Francis is trying to create about how awesome he is. The other side is the relationship between the audience and the subject. Madonna's book may well have been contraversy for the sake of contraversy because she was well in love with giving people more than she thought they could handle and seeing their reactions, but it was not explotative because Madonna was always well in cotrol of the statement she was trying to make. Half of Girls Gone Wild is the saliacious sexuality, the other half is the humiliation of Joe seeing how much he can get these girls to do because he asks them to. Towards this end he lies and creates an atmosphere that works to limit how much of a say these girls feel they can have over the story.

[Brody]

Are there any examples of women today who you think break the mold that you've outlined?

[Funk]

Wow. You seem to know a lot about Girls Gone Wild. Can you help me understand the big difference (besides money) between Girls Gone Wild and Suicide Girls? Thanks in advance.

As for smart women? I think The Dixie Chicks do exactly what they want, in the time frame they want. Right now, they seem to be comfortably focusing on family. That is their choice, like so many other "smart women" before them. As men, few of us really get that.

[Brady]

I'm not really understanding the point of this rant or why women have to fit some narrow worldview to be considered smart. Or what Joe Francis and Madonna have to do with country music.

[Stormy]

Brady: I was opening up a forum to discuss the dumbing down of women that has cropped up in teh comments from time to time.

Funk: I don't know that there is a difference between Girls Gone Wild and Suicide Girls, except that the latter runs more outside the traditional molds of beauty. Theoretically, Suicide Girls is a network for women expressing their sexuality, but there is a lot of evidence that they are basically given scripts by someone as controlling as Joe Francis.

Brody: There are quite a few I can think of outside the mainstream, but those inside the mainstream (The Dixie Chicks, for example) are quickly expelled.

[Funk]

Ok, I'll bite. Why are The Dixie Chicks off your 'smart' list?

[Stormy]

Ok, I'll bite. Why are The Dixie Chicks off your 'smart' list?

The Dixie Chicks are awesome, but they got bum rushed out of the mainstream almost from the first song they put out.

[Funk]

Ok, I understand your view but I consider million sellers and sold out concerts to be pretty mainstream. I think it is them who now choose to "drop out" of mainstream.

[Stormy]

I would agree with that if we were just talking about the post Iraq stuff. But they had to struggle their first album to get to play their instruments and then it wasn't ladylike to call an album Sin Wagon and Good Bye Earl was roundly rejected by radio until The Grammys.

[Lynn]

Stormy, I'm with you on the lack of "smart women" in music. I had just graduated from high school when Lilith Fair got started. I remember going with all of my girlfriends to see a bunch of smart, talented women. Women who wrote their own material, played their own instruments, organized their own tour and overall just kicked ass. It was empowering. A lot of mothers took their daughters to the show, and a lot of young girls were inspired and fell in love with music. That was truly a great period for women in music. A lot of it, unsurprisingly, had its roots in the folk scene, which has always had that "smart" tag. You had artists like Sheryl Crow, Fiona Apple, the Indigo Girls, Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris, Jewel, Tracy Chapman and Sarah McLachlan all on the same tour. Can you imagine? (Add the Dixie Chicks, who joined the tour in '99, and maybe Stevie Nicks and Pink and I'd pay a lot of money to see that line-up today).

I've been thoroughly uninspired by country music in recent years. The women in particular have been a painful bunch. Which is unfortunate because in most areas of music I prefer male singers, but in country I prefer female singers. I've made no secret of the fact that I'm a huge Dixie Chicks fan. The more I read about them, the more impressed I am (which is rarely true of most people). They are easily my favorite thing in country today (mainstream/not mainstream, I don't care). I could put together a long list of reasons, but the main one is that they make me proud to be a woman. They are talented, they stick up for themselves and each other, they have their priorities strait, and they aren't afraid to kick a little ass or be really vulnerable. They're always honest (whether that works for them or not) and they are always the first ones to make fun of themselves. I love real women. If you look around, you'll realize that very few exist in popular culture these days.

So...Stormy, let's hope for a resurgence of smart and talented females. If you find any, feel free to pass them along.

[Stormy]

Country there are a lot of smart women on the alt-side. Kathleen Edwards has really well rounded women and Neko Case is pretty ballsy.
On the pop side you might check out Rachel Fuller.

[Brady]

The problem I have is that it seems that women have to be feminist or anti-authority or ballsy in order to fit your definition of smart. I don't see why they can't just be themselves and why they can't define themselves by their pink purse rather than a pair of combat boots. Does someone like Emily West fit within your definition of smart?

[Stormy]

From what I have heard of Emily she is smart as she seems to place herself as the subject rather than the object of her stories.

[Funk]

Brady, of course I'm not Stormy but I think you are missing his point. Women or men, we want artists who are that. They have a point of view, they believe in what they are doing and they live it as well as sing it. Now maybe Carrie Underwood is really all about finding the right hair cut and color and the perfect dress and having someone write her a song where she sings the same dumb line over and over and over and that's just her being her. If that is her, however, that her is a little on the shallow side and shallow doesn't match well with smart.

It's not necessary to wear combat boots or camo. Pink, while usually ugly, is fine. It's what is going on inside the head that counts as well as the ability to put what's going on outside to the public. A silly song like "Don't even know my name" is fine as long as it is a part of a fuller personality that is on display. Just like a pink purse is fine or combat boots or whatever, as long as it is *part* of something bigger and more interesting.

Dumb girls are like dumb jocks. There needs to be more than one dimension.

[Stormy]

Brady, of course I'm not Stormy but I think you are missing his point. Women or men, we want artists who are that. They have a point of view, they believe in what they are doing and they live it as well as sing it. Now maybe Carrie Underwood is really all about finding the right hair cut and color and the perfect dress and having someone write her a song where she sings the same dumb line over and over and over and that's just her being her. If that is her, however, that her is a little on the shallow side and shallow doesn't match well with smart.

It's not necessary to wear combat boots or camo. Pink, while usually ugly, is fine. It's what is going on inside the head that counts as well as the ability to put what's going on outside to the public. A silly song like "Don't even know my name" is fine as long as it is a part of a fuller personality that is on display. Just like a pink purse is fine or combat boots or whatever, as long as it is *part* of something bigger and more interesting.

Dumb girls are like dumb jocks. There needs to be more than one dimension.

Last Name is the perfect example: The alcohol gets the blame, its her mama's who gets the feelings--does the protagionist of this song even exist except as a cypher to other people?

[Brady]

Funk, I understand Stormy's point to an extent, but I'm not sure I completely agree with her idea of a smart woman because so much of the original post centered on alternative ideals and seemed to suggest that none of the mainstream women could be considered smart. Pink, Madonna, grunge rock, pornography, combat boots, Joe Francis, country music what?

I wouldn't offer up Carrie Underwood as the feminist ideal, but she seems to have stayed true to herself, whether or not her music reflects that.I gave "Last Name" a thumbs down in my review of it and would agree that it's a dumb song. If you remove the novelty factor, I think Catherine Britt's "What I Did Last Night" is what "Last Name" should have been.

[Stormy]

If Carrie has stayed true to herself why is she willing to risk her health to conform to a distructive beauty ideal? Anorexichic might be popular, but its not smart. She her songs also have women existing in the world only as objects to the story, not as subjects.

Comparing her to Catherine Britt is hardly fair as I don't think Carrie has a song where both sides of a relationship get to say goodbye and she certainly doesn't have one where she tells a man, "the day you leave me for sure is when I stop asking for more."

[Brady]

I hardly think keeping in shape is a destructive beauty ideal or that she's anorexic. And I didn't compare Carrie Underwood and Catherine Britt as people or artists, just those two songs.

[Stormy]

Carrie was never out of shape. She merely went from being a healthy weight to being an unhealthy one.

[Drew]

I can't fathom how somebody could say Carrie Underwood is anorexic, or even an unhealthy weight. She has toned up and is I'm sure in great health. My only concern would be if she's getting enough iron/protein being a vegetarian and all... but you can bet enough people are worrying about that already since they have so much riding on her.