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American Women and Stupid Girls: Misogynistic Lyrics as Faux Social Critique

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: Spokesmen for Clean Living
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: Spokesmen for Clean Living

 

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:

 

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CassandraSays
CassandraSays
12 years ago

Maleocide! So I guess by the rules of SteeleLanguage whatever killed the dinosaurs committed paleocide?

Amused
12 years ago

@Steele:

Again – my writing has suffered due to misandry. It is in no sense my own fault.

Did you say something about taking responsibility? Like an adult? Lead by example, dude.

inurashii
inurashii
12 years ago

my writing has suffered due to misandry. It is in no sense my own fault.

I’m still a little confused about where you got this idea, hoss.

So you had, like, what? One teacher? Who picked on you because you were a boy (probably not, but let’s pretend that you’re accurately reporting for once).

And that ruined your writing forever?

Even if we believe that somehow misandry somehow — did you ever explain how? — gave you a bad experience with one teacher

that is not a plausible excuse, you whiny diaper baby.

cloudiah
12 years ago

Personally and in my opinion, one has to work to write that badly. I, in a sense, perforce and heretofore, doff my hat to you – good sir. Whereas, may a thousand jester’s fools caper for you on your daily jaunts, as you clutch a scented handkerchief to your nose to avoid being maleocided by oppressive femino-fumes.

hellkell
hellkell
12 years ago

Again – my writing has suffered due to misandry. It is in no sense my own fault.

You can suck it, and how about taking responsibility for your shit writing while you’re at it?

cloudiah
12 years ago

More pop!

Shadow
Shadow
12 years ago

I thought you’re an objectivist, pull them bootstraps boy!!

inurashii
inurashii
12 years ago

Thus and heretofore, my fellow rank-and-vile misandrist compatriadrades; I present and show to you the following resultant video from my diurnal misandric enjoyment. Here and to wit:

http://youtu.be/If5MF4wm1T8

Polliwog
12 years ago

@Polliwog – that is so cool! Do you have a favourite/favourites among the various periods or types of music? Have you recorded?

My specialty is Renaissance choral music – madrigals and motets, mostly. I almost always sing a cappella, and love it best, but one group I was in thought it’d be a fun change to do an album with added period-appropriate instrumentation, which is when I got to learn a little bit of lute, portatif, and crumhorn from the super-awesome players we worked with. (Crumhorns, for those who aren’t familiar, look kind of like a bassoon mated with a walking stick, and sound kind of like an oboe mated with a kazoo. They’re fun.) I have no actual skills at any of those instruments beyond “look, I made a noise!” but I can at least parrot what the experts taught me about them. 🙂

That instrument looks more like an oud to me. I don’t see any of the drone strings I’m used to seeing on lutes (I don’t play lutes, but I know several people who do).

I’m even less of an expert on ouds than on lutes, but the trick I learned to distinguish the two was that lutes have frets and ouds do not, and this one seems to have frets. 🙂

inurashii
inurashii
12 years ago

@Polliwog — d’you wanna link us? 🙂

cloudiah
12 years ago

Or if you don’t want to out yourself, Polliwog, can you link to something similar?

Gametime
12 years ago

Again – my writing has suffered due to misandry.

You know that even if we believed your hilariously overblown story about your awful man-hating teacher, the fact that you had a shitty teacher for one single year of your life wouldn’t explain how you are so consistently terrible, right?

Falconer
12 years ago

Personally and in my own opinion,

Because your pants won’t stay up without belt AND braces, eh?

These phrases are redundant. Use one or the other, but never both, in the same clause.

Falconer
12 years ago

Once more and again, I am late to the party and tardy to class.

Polliwog
12 years ago

I’m not up for deciding if I want to out myself today, so I’ll just link you to some musical gods of mine doing the sort of thing I do. Here they are clearly being deeply misandric, by Steele’s definition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7W0G1c8fJ0

Also, if the bizarreness that is the crumhorn is what you’re looking for, I can’t find any good examples of them accompanying madrigals offhand, but this gives you a decent idea how goofy they look and sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFWk1_XnT68 (skip to about 0:35, when they actually start playing).

pecunium
12 years ago

The major distinction I know of between Lutes (and pretty much every other plucked instrument is the presence of drone strings).

And it seems I have conflated a subtype of the Lute Family with all lutes. I am thinking of the Theorbo. Although there are a lot of lutes which have unplucked courses; which are less obvious than the Theorbos unpluckable ones.

So it’s probably a lute.

inurashii
inurashii
12 years ago

Oh my goodness Polliwog I’d heard the King’s Singers before but I’d never seen their faces while they sing before XD XD XD

Here’s a random paused frame.

Since my identity is rather unabashedly tied up with this handle, I will out myself as a gigantic nerd too. Here’s a link to me singing the beginning of Canterbury Tales to the tune of “For the Longest Time.”

pecunium
12 years ago

Mikey Butthorn: It is in no sense my own fault.

Cry of the MRA.

Again – my writing has suffered due to misandry. It is in no sense my own fault.

After all, there aren’t any other teachers in the world. There are no books to read; and emulate. No online texts.

Dude… I don’t normally commend them, because for someone who has a basic grasp of how to write they suck, but really; you could benefit from reading Strunk and White (you will like them, they are Dead White Men).

To say that being shitty at something which needs no effort but the personal to improve is some serious bullshit.

You can’t write, and you don’t care. Got it. But dude, it’s on you. Because guess what, when I was younger, I was a shitty writer too.

I worked at it. I had teachers who told me I wasn’t good at it (even female teachers). What did I do? I worked at it. When I disagreed I ignored them.

I am not good at Academic Papers. I don’t organise things that way. Guess what? I still manage to make myself understood. It means I tend to get Bs in English classes; purely on structural grounds (though I did well in my Philosophy classes, and in Logic).

Why? Because, formatting aside, my thoughts were clear, my ideas cogent and my arguments supported.

You… you refuse to do that. You refuse to provide evidence, merely asserting it’s “copius” and “everyone knows”. That’s bullshit. It’s lazy, weak-assed crap.

Imagine the scene:

INTERIOR ROOM: OBVIOUSLY A BANK, LIGHT SPILLS IN FROM THE WALL OF WINDOWS, FACING ON A BUSY URBAN STREET:

A young, up and coming member of the Entrepreneurial Class is pursiing a loan. He has a brilliant plan for a business.

The Loan Officer asks for some support for the practicality of the business model: “I’m not going to do your work for you. If you look you will see the demand is huge”.

CUT TO EXTERIOR OF THE BANK, WITH A VIEW INTO THE OFFICE. AS THE YOUNG MAN WALKS AWAY; A SPRING IN HIS STEP FROM THE SUCCESSFUL SESSION, WHERE HE CLOSED THE DEAL WITH HIS BRILLIANT RIPOSTE TO THE LOAN OFFICER’S POINTLESS QUESTION, THE LOAN OFFICER TAKES OUT A STAMP IN BRIGHT RED LETTERS STAMPS Rejected ACROSS THE APPLICATION.†

You suck at writing because you don’t give a damn, and you aren’t grown up enough to admit it. You’d rather pretend it’s a conspiracy on the part of women to “keep men down”.

And you don’t even have the will to show them up. Assuming (arguendo) that it’s true, you are being complicit in their vile oppression. You are collaborating with the Feminist Conspiracy.

†(Later in the film we find out the bank president is a woman, and it was all MISANDRY. /sarcasm)

pecunium
12 years ago

I like crumhorns, and shawms, and cornettos.

inurashii
inurashii
12 years ago

I know those are instruments but they seriously sound like British snack foods.

I’m a Hurdy Gurdy fan myself. Especially the creme-filled kind.

cloudiah
12 years ago

@Polliwog & inurashii, Very cool!

pecunium
12 years ago

Hurdy-gurdies are great, as are all the various concertinae. I am font of chanter music, as well as bagpipes and any number of esoteric Balkan woodwinds.

I just like music. Sometimes in Samisen, with singing.

thenatfantastic
thenatfantastic
12 years ago

I know those are instruments but they seriously sound like British snack foods.

They are:

(Sorry, opera fans)

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
12 years ago

Well, cornettos are traditionally associated with singing…

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
12 years ago

Curses.