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:
Enh. I heard “You Belong To Me” first, and even when I was TWELVE, that gave me the skeeves. (I spent a sad amount of my youth trying to rationalize shit like that.)
Frankly,I’m kinda shocked Steele didn’t go for the obvious and hit up “Dead Men Don’t Rape.” Since that song IS really fucking vicious. (I feel conflicted since the sheer rage in it was helpful to me at one point. And fuck, I still listen to a lot of old songs that pretty much boil down to “Eat The Rich.”)
Oh please, Steele? It’s “common knowledge” that modern music is misandric? I can count on one hand all the people I personally know who even know what misandry is.
Hey hey hey hey hey.
I don’t want this to be the hill I die on here, there’s a lot of shittiness lurking in some of her lyrics, I don’t subscribe to the perfect-role-model thing she gets (though she’s not necessarily terrible), I think there’s a lot of *ist reasons for her being as big as she is, and I realise this is terribly uncool, but Taylor’s music is pretty cool sometimes.
“Back to December” is a Big-Star-worthy ballad, and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” is one of the best pop moments (and videos) of 2012, “Our Song” is an interpretation of modern-country-rock that takes the best rather than the worst from each form, and…
I don’t know, I just developed this odd Taylor obsession that doesn’t make any sense with the rest of my musical taste. Most dudes my age seem to get this because they think she’s really hot, or feel they have to say that or something, but she’s not really my type (incredibly well-behaved hair, though). I can’t help but feel an amount of affection towards most things Taylor, like when you love a cat and recognise how wonderful it is even though when you add it up it’s mostly just an inconvenient creature to have around.
How do I end up spending so much time here discussing bad hair metal and pop country? I do listen to super-cool underground stuff too, I promise.
I mostly just find her very bland.
@clairedammit
“Bitching” in the lyrics add nicely to the dog thing. G N’ R Lies is a bit of a throwaway album, and “Used To Love Her” is the band’s jokey take on The Rolling Stones’ “Dead Flowers” as far as I can tell.
I don’t really care about her either. But then again, I’m a guy who likes classical and power metal.
Says, there are two options here:
One – My misandrist teacher destroyed my reading comprehension; thereby demonstrating that misandry does exist – and yourself and Boobzland are idiots and hatemongers.
Two – My Comprehension is just fine – and you are merely a poor written communicator.
So which is is, Says?
It’s definitely the first part of option one.
Nice to see that your writing hasn’t improved either.
(I wonder if he understands sarcasm? Probably not.)
@CassandraSays
She is, she is. I don’t expect anyone to share my odd Taylor thing, just didn’t want this to turn into the Taylor-Swift-is-the-devil thing that shows up in progressive spaces a lot.
People get very angry that Taylor’s held up as being this perfect role model when it seems ti them that is should be obvious her safeness and whiteness were very responsible for getting her where she is/she embodies some very problematic ideas and overreact a bit, I find. Led Zep or whatever can come up and there might be some eye-rolling at their (extreme) sexism, but Taylor, who had a big white-dress thing and wrote one homophobic and one “friendzone”-type song at the age of 16, gets mentioned and suddenly everyone’s all “hasn’t anyone noticed how horrible Taylor is?!?!” and it annoys me.
That was long and didn’t make much sense, I know.
Thats a false dichotomy Steele
Steele, Steele, am I vile enough to get an odd nickname?
@cassandra I don’t think its a question of recognizing sarcasm as much as it is pretending obvious sarcasm is genuine
Says, again, if you concede that my misandrist teacher destroyed my reading comprehension – and thus it is I at fault in this particular case – that gets you off the hook, but this means you are implicitly conceding the existence of misandry; and in such quantities as to be harmful. This violates a fundamental premise of Man Boobz itself.
Says, you’re not impressing me.
The thing with Taylor Swift is that even if you recognize that it’s because she’s white and blonde and unchallenging that she’s been so successful, that still doesn’t make her the devil. It’s not her fault that society is set up the way it is – she’s a symptom, not the cause. Her questionable lyrics are more her fault, but even then, eh, most people are idiots at that age. If she’s still writing songs like that at 26 then I’ll come down on her as an individual a lot harder.
*thus it is me
Thanks for demonstrating that lack of reading comprehension again, Steele!
@CassandraSays
Exactly! That’s all my embarrassing T-Swift defending done, then.
@ lowquacks
He has a particular hate-on for me, hellkell, and a few others for some reason (hmm, wonder what it is?). As a man you will have to try a bit harder to earn your nickname.
PERNICIOUS NONSENSE
@CassandraSays
You seem to get that a LOT from trolls here.
“Says, again, if you concede that my misandrist teacher destroyed my reading comprehension – and thus it is I at fault in this particular case – that gets you off the hook, but this means you are implicitly conceding the existence of misandry; and in such quantities as to be harmful. This violates a fundamental premise of Man Boobz itself.
Says, you’re not impressing me.”
I’ll say it again, since you seem to have missed it. Those two options you presented earlier are not the only possible options out there. That’s a false dichotomy. The most likely option that you conveniently left out is that you’re deluded and willfully playing dumb
Cassandra, I’ve noticed that the trolls and the troll-types seem to get attached to a particular person. I was hoping mine would be NWO, but alas. You do seem to have more than your fair share, though!
My brother’s big example of a misandrist song: The Macarena