Celebrating: Feminist Country Songs!

Feminist country songs are not exactly a dime a dozen. Everybody is familiar with the likes of “Stand by your man”, and “Jolene” (about a hot woman who may or may not steal your husband). Not very empowering for women, as it were.

But do many people know Dolly Parton’s first album, “Just because I’m a Woman”? In the title track Dolly sings about the injustices of the double standard applied to men and women who act promiscuously. Apparently Dolly wrote this song in response to a controversial conversation she had with her husband Carl.

Now a man will take a good girl And he’ll ruin her reputation

But when he wants to marry Well, that’s a different situation

He’ll just walk off and leave her To do the best she can

While he looks for an angel To wear his wedding band

Now I know that I’m no angel If that’s what you thought you’d found

I was just the victim of A man that let me down

Yes, I’ve made my mistakes But listen and understand

My mistakes are no worse than yours Just because I’m a woman

Admittedly she becomes a hapless victim in the scheme of things, but at least she’s calling the scene for the bullshit that it is. The song was recorded in 1967. Pretty daring for that time. Pretty bold to call out that old double standard back then. In country music especially – hardly a progressive culture.

The following clip is pretty damn cute, someone has edited shots and information commemorating famous women through-out history to go along with the song. CUTE.

Another song that is feminist in its refusal to romanticise the traditional woman’s role as wife and mother is “Single girl”, a very old trad folk song, that I know from the lovely Kossoy Sisters. Other versions vary and have been sung by many. Apparently some version of the song dates back to 1850:

Single girl, single girl, Always dressed so fine

Oh, she’s always dressed so fine.

Married girl, married girl, She wears just any kind

Oh, she wears just any kind.

Single girl, single girl, Going where she please

Oh she’s going where she please.

Married girl, married girl, A baby on her knee Oh, a baby on her knee.

Single girl, Single girl, She goes to the store and buys

Oh, she goes to the store and buys.

Married girl, married girl, She rocks the cradle and cries

Oh she rocks the cradle and cries.

It’s not often you hear the life of a single woman being celebrated over the family life that all women are supposed to dream of. In that time it must have been quite irreverent to paint a miserable picture of a married girl, tied down to a life of hardship and woe, and the single girl as having all the good times. The baby represents not parental joy, but bondage to a life of giving and living for others. It is the married woman who is jealous of her single counterpart, and not the other way round. Radical perspective. Even for today, you might say, when popular culture stigmatises single women.

Ironically, there is another song of the same name by another country singer called Sandy Posey sung in 1966 that features quite the opposite sentiment, one much more typical in country music:

“Someday I’ll have a sweet loving man to lean on The single girl needs a sweet loving man to lean on”

In 1952 a country singer called Hank Thompson sang a song called “The wild side of life” where he bemoans that his love has left him, or as wiki describes it, “the story of a woman shedding her role as domestic provider to follow the night life”. This song spent many weeks at number one on the country charts in 1952:

The Wild Side of Life

You wouldn’t read my letter if I wrote you

You asked me not to call you on the phone

But there’s something I’m wanting to tell you

So I wrote it in the words of this song

I didn’t know God made honky tonk angels

I might have known you’d never make a wife

You gave up the only one that ever loved you

And went back to the wild side of life

The glamor of the gay night life has lured you

To the places where the wine and liquor flows

Where you wait to be anybody’s baby

And forget the truest love you’ll ever know

As it says on Wiki, “the song appealed to people who thought the world was going to hell and that faithless women deserved a good deal of the blame.”

That was released in March 1952, and the following song, an indignant response, a big “F YOU!” sung by a woman (albeit written by a man, though I sort of love that it was a man who got indignant about it), was released three months later in June ’52, also reached number 1 and became the first #1 hit for a woman on the country charts.

As I sit here tonight, the jukebox playing

The tune about the wild side of life

As I listen to the words you are saying

It brings mem’ries when I was a trustful wife

It wasn’t God who made honky tonk angels

As you said in the words of your song

Too many times married men think they’re still single

That has caused many a good girl to go wrong

It’s a shame that all the blame is on us women

It’s not true that only you men feel the same

From the start most every heart that’s ever broken

Was because there always was a man to blame

I love this. Here is a version of Waylon Jennings doing a duet with Jessi Colter where he sings the old version and she sings the response, with the verses mixed up. It’s pretty GREAT.

Another old song worth mentioning is one called “Don’t put her down, you helped put her there”, by Hazel dickens and Alice Gerrard. This song is basically reprimanding men for speaking ill of a “slutty” woman that they have “enjoyed”. Just reiterating the old bind of being a slut if you do and a prude if you don’t. You can’t win.

You pull the string, she’s your plaything

You can make her or break her, it’s true You abuse her, accuse her, turn around and use her

Then forsake her any time it suits you

Well, there’s more to her than powder and paint

Than her peroxided, bleached out hair

Well, if she acts that way, it’s cause you had your day

Don’t put her down, you helped put her there

She hangs around playing the clown

While her soul is aching inside

She’s heartbreak’s child cause she just lives for your smile

To build her up in a world made by men

At the house down the way, you sneak and you pay For the love, her body, her shame

Then you call yourself a man, you say you just don’t understand

How a woman could turn out that way

I really like that a woman is standing up for another slutty* woman in this song. A common theme in popular music is for woman to sing mean songs about each other, especially in regard to sexual promiscuity. It’s nice how this woman sings in the other woman’s defense, and tells the men to piss off with their bullshit.

These are just a few country songs by some rebellious women who dared not to sing about desires of men. There are probably more out there that I’m not aware of. The world of country music is conservative and male dominated and although it’s not much I love that these old songs exist. A little voice of feminist dissent from the past.

*I use the term slutty in the most sex-positive manner.