Listening to the Rolling Stones’ “Mother’s Little Helper” the other day, I was struck by how much the lyrics resembled a misogynistic MRA rant. Ostensibly a song pointing out the hypocrisy of suburban squares attacking the drug culture whilst themselves popping prescription pills, the song extends its “critique” to cover such subjects as the evil of women making cakes from mixes instead of from scratch. (See below for videos of all the songs mentioned in this post.)
So you go from this bit of, ahem, social criticism:
“Things are different today,”
I hear ev’ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she’s not really ill
There’s a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of her mother’s little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day.
To this:
“Things are different today,”
I hear ev’ry mother say
Cooking fresh food for a husband’s just a drag
So she buys an instant cake and she buys a frozen steak
And goes running for the shelter etc etc
Yep, that’s right. Mick’s as bothered by the frozen steak as he is by the dangers of tranquilizer abuse. By the end of the song, the hypothetical freezer-and-cake-mix-using mother has died of an overdose. Told you so!
Misogynistic rock songs aren’t exactly a rarity – hell, “Mother’s Little Helper” isn’t even the worst offender in the Rolling Stones’ disography.
But unlike more straightforward outbursts of misogynistic nastiness like, say, “Under My Thumb,” “Mother’s Little Helper” pretends to be something nobler: a social critique.
The blogger behind the wonderfully arch I Hate the New York Times blog pointed out to me in a tweet that a surprising number of old rock lyrics play this little trick. Taking the form of a “critique of today’s inauthentic & hedonistic society” they are in fact “directed at [a] specific shallow hussy.”
Along with Mother’s Little Helper, IHateNYT suggested I take another look at the lyrics to Paul Revere and the Raiders’ “Kicks.” And, yep, it’s basically the same thing: a critique of drug use in the form of a patronizing lecture to a young woman in search of “kicks,” starting out with this little bit of I-told-you-so, delivered with a sneer:
Girl, you thought you found the answer on that magic carpet ride last night
But when you wake up in the mornin’ the world still gets you uptight
It turns out that the song, written by the songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, was inspired by the drug use of a male friend of theirs – though somehow in the song this specific man became a hypothetical “girl.”
And then of course there is the Guess Who’s American Woman, a sort-of critique of America’s “war machines” and “ghetto scenes” in the form of a long, sneering diatribe against a hypothetical woman:
Now woman, I said stay away
American woman, listen what I say
American woman, get away from me
American woman, mama let me be
Don’t come knockin’ around my door
Don’t wanna see your shadow no more
And on and on and on for a very long five minutes and nine seconds.
One of the reasons these songs sound so much like MRA rants is that MRAs like to play the same little game, dressing up their misogynistic sentiments in the form of “social critique.” Thus Paul Elam’s faux-environmentalist attack on female consumers, and all that talk about how single mothers and/or “picky women” are going to bring about the end of civilization. Heck, some manosphere fat-gal-bashers even pretend they fat-bash out of concern for the well-being of the women they’re ridiculing.
It might be entertaining to transform some of these old woman-hating songs into critiques of woman-haters. “Stupid Girl” by the Rolling Stones might be a good place to start. I mean, seriously?
Like a lady in waiting to a virgin queen
Look at that stupid girl
She bitches ’bout things that she’s never seen
Look at that stupid girl
Those are real Rolling Stone lyrics, not a comment from NWOslave. Have at it.
Here are videos of all the songs I mention above:
@ nat
Yeah, that’s exactly what I think happened. They were aimed for social consciousness, but it was a bit of a fail. In particular I think they might even have been aiming for “ooh isn’t it terrible what the medical industry is doing to women?”, but their innate assholery still shines through.
teratomatastic – those are excellent lyrics! And yes, the MRAs would totally miss the sarcasm even though it’s as clear as a neon sign even in print.
“What they are doing to women is terrible! They can’t even cook properly any more, the poor dears! However will they cope when they can’t please their families, their only reason to exist on this earth, hmmmm???”
I’ve been meaning to listen to Emilie Autumn for ages, I’ve heard lots of good stuff about her. That will be my job for tomorrow.
This is pretty much spot-on.
As far as musical tastes, mine are…not really easily sortable by genre. There are some genres I am more likely to enjoy (folk, most things that fall under the “rock” umbrella, classical) and some that I am less likely to enjoy (country, rap, the sort of metal where people scream everything instead of singing) but there’s a good number of exceptions on both sides. (Well, except for the screamy metal – I can’t honestly think of an exception there. I just don’t like screaming very much.) Mostly I like music with some combination of (a) strong vocalists, (b) interesting melodies, (c) good use of vocal harmony, (d) creative or just well-made instrument choices, (e) non-stupid lyrics, and (f) a rhythm that is either interesting or just fun to shake my butt to. If it has most or all of those things, I don’t care what genre it’s in, I’ll probably like it; if it has none of them, I probably won’t.
Re: the Nickelback thing, I did that with everclear, who is even more transparent about it. I developed a habit whenever an everclear song came on of singing a different everclear song overtop of it.
RE That Emilie Autumn song, particularly the bit about people thinking she’s a Suicide Girl…can I just say that my personal pet peeve with the whole Suicide Girls phenomenon is the fact that after that took off a lot of non-alterna guys decided that it meant that every alterna-looking woman they saw was must be a sex worker? GTFO my subculture, mainstream guys.
This is actually one of the main reasons that I toned down my own look. Got tired of fending off “so are you, like, a Suicide Girl?” approaches on the train, in the coffee shop, etc. I’d love to dye my hair wine red again and amp up the eye makeup, but it’s just not worth the hassle that you get some random dudes.
@Polliwog, what if the screaming and metal are in support of teaching you to make vegan pad thai?
I love metal but I have a hard time not pointing and laughing when people start doing Cookie Monster vocals.
More misandry! The Carter Family – Single Girl, Married Girl
HER HUSBAND HAD IT WORSE!
So much this. Nickelback proves that you CAN be offensively bland.
And the Suicide Girl thing, Jesus H. I would love to go back to the look too, but like you said, not worth the hassle. It was bad enough in Seattle, I can’t imagine what it would be like in Texas.
Thing about EA is that all of her eras sound COMPLETELY different, so Google her discography and make sure you pick up tracks from each album. You may love Enchant but hate Opheliac. (Both have some wickedly vicious songs.)
>Tom Waits
Haha, me and my friends, we discovered Tom Waits when we were twelve. Must’ve been hilarious to have a group of twelve year olds trying to sing songs from “Frank’s Wild Years”.
Another band we discovered back then was Element of Crime. A nice band, but what makes them are their hilariously depressing and fairly poetical lyrics
“Tramway of Death”, which is… basically an extremly neutrotic love song.
Or this one, “Hands off my Paranoia”, about a guy suffering from a persecution complex.
This music has no lyrics, so I won’t even pretend it’s relevant to the thread – I just wanted to share. This is the music that got me to start playing the piano again. The solo arrangement of this piece was the first thing I memorized since I started playing again.
@teratomatastic
Hell, if you’re going to mention Emilie Autumn, try “Gentlemen aren’t nice”, which is entirely tongue-in-cheek about the very woman MRAs think all women are like, sung to a catchy-as-hell jazzy tune:
Yeah, “Nickelback are awful” is a cliche but I’ll have to agree there.
@ostara
Fry & Laurie had a good take on this.
I think I would put up with the hassle (for a while at least) if I was capable of pulling off the look. I love the look but I feel like an imposter when I try it.
I used to do the Goth look (Suicide Girls probably didn’t exist then, this was the mid-90s) and carry it off okay – the Gary Oldman Dracula specs helped – to the point where it sort of showed even when I was in my horrible electric blue and stripey work uniform. Couldn’t really do it now, though. I’m a bit past the age where ultra-black hair goes with my skin, and on top of that, all the shops that used to sell the clothes seem to have disappeared. Alas for Mortisha’s …
… and I confess I like colours now. 🙂
I’ve toned down the hair and makeup, but I have more ink now.
Kittehs, you’re never too old! I was at the grocery store the other night (looking like hell, but whateves), and saw an older, 60ish woman walk in having white hair with purple tips, and she was even rocking a sequin top/black everything else rocker look. Gave me hope, bless her.
White and purple hair! Gorgeous! I should do that when I finally end up going grey. (I mean, I’m almost all grey now but at 49 I’m not letting it through yet.)
The ‘too old’ bit is more about how the inky black hair looks against my skin. Used to be able to do it when I was younger – I’m fair-skinned – but as the skin gets a bit coarser and the dreaded rosacea cheeks more obvious, it just looks too harsh. It’s still dark, but a violet-based deep brown instead of black.
<a href="This is a recent PhotoStudio pastiche of Mr K and me. It shows my hair colour pretty accurately.
Blast, just saw the html error after hitting send! Try again:
My hair colour
That’s a very pretty color.
Thank you! 🙂
Carly Simon once wrote a song about me.