Oh, pop music. How I miss writing about you on a thrice-weekly basis. You were INSANE, pop music! I had no idea what was going on with you most of the time! Commenters had to step in and be like, “pardon me, I believe you do not know what you are talking about, allow me to explain to you the nature of this insanity.” Like Taylor Swiftgate ’09, which will no doubt follow me to my grave. Literally everyone in the world disagreed with me about Taylor Swift. EVERYONE! And now every time I look at the TV, her beautiful golden face is there, beaming death rays in my direction. TaylAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGH.
But here is a venerable genre of song I did not get a chance to touch upon: the Ladies Hating Ladies Song! All too often, it is aligned with the You Slept With My Boyfriend song; in a new and exciting twist, an increasing number of these songs are now taking the form of the Your Boyfriend Shall Soon Be My Boyfriend song. Which, you know: fair enough! We’ve all had those feelings! But we seem to be handling them… differently? Yes, DIFFERENTLY than the dudes.
MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT: An uplifting tale of man-on-divorce-on-secretary action. Or, as I like to call it, “The Roger Sterling National Anthem.”
At any rate, it is time to DISCUSS! With the highly pop-literate Amanda Hess of The Sexist, and also me! Enjoy.
SADY: let’s talk about ladies who don’t like other ladies! through the universal language of SONG! (the ladies who hate other ladies. not me, or, i would imagine you. let us conduct this discussion instead through the universal language of Gchat.)
AMANDA: agreed!
SADY: first of all, i think we need to separate the lady-disliking-lady song from the you-cheated-on-me-song (as sung by a lady). because both are venerable pop conventions. but one is pretty specifically about disliking a lady, and the other is more about being upset with somebody who cheated on you and referring to the co-cheater as a “tramp” or whatever.
AMANDA: so, you’re saying there is a difference between your unnecessary “I Hate That Bitch” song and your Jolene rip-off?
SADY: i would argue, yes! although… maybe not? (BEHOLD, as i introduce and then disagree with my own points!) because, like, in “before he cheats,” by carrie underwood, she mentions that there is “probably” a “bleached-blond tramp” in this dude’s life before introducing some truly epic automotive destruction on the possible-tramp-liker.
AMANDA: oh … “probably.” see, this is where it gets interesting. because doesn’t carrie underwood appear to have bleached blond hair?
SADY: haha, and the hypothetical tramp sings “fake Shania karaoke” at one point. PROJECTION!
AMANDA: and isn’t it innocent-glasses TAYLOR SWIFT HERSELF, ladies and gentleman of the jury, and not bitchy-brunette Taylor Swift, that is the “other woman” in “You Belong With Me”?
SADY: RIGHT! or in “girlfriend,” by avril lavigne, which is basically the same song: “hey hey you you i don’t like your girlfriend hey hey you you i could be your girlfriend why can’t you see you belong with me?” they sort of blur together into an identical message point in my head. also that “don’t you wish your girlfriend were the pussycat dolls” song. there are a LOT of these songs!
AMANDA: practically the same song, except avril subs in “punky arm-warmers” for glasses. But let’s go back to Jolene for a moment, shall we?
SADY: let’s!
AMANDA: so, instead of trashy bleached-blond hair (or trashy brunette-died hair, depending on the version), jolene has got a smile like a breath of spring, or whatever.
SADY: right. there’s a lot of lavishly detailed jolene-sexiness, which makes the song weirdly kind of ladyrotic, all about the power of another woman’s sexuality.
AMANDA: right … and it raises an interesting point about how these “other women” are romanticized and demonized in song. the “other woman” song is an interesting thing to talk about from a feminist perspective I think. for example, when Dolly Parton is begging Jolene not to take “her man,” she exerts ownership over another human being and even attempts to control another human (jolene) in order to keep that ownership. instead of being like, “fuck it,” which maybe would not have made for a very compelling song, i guess. and so, perhaps you could give a feminist reading to “Girlfriend” and “You Belong With Me” in that these are women reminding other humans that they aren’t property.
SADY: welllllll… possibly? i think both are actually ABOUT competition over territory (territory = actual human dude). in one case you are trying to lure a dude away, and in another, you are trying to keep hold of him. but, weirdly, i don’t think that is so feminist? because what a lot of these songs do is sort of make the dudes not responsible for who they cheat on you with / who they date, in order to transfer all of the animus onto another woman. women are always sort of the villains, even if it’s a dude who is making the choices you disagree with. compare this to one of my favorite dude-finds-out-his-lady-cheated songs, “take a letter, maria,” in which a dude rolls into the office, tells his secretary his wife’s been sleeping with another dude. then, asks her to draft a divorce letter. then, tells her she’s his girlfriend now. like, the dude just kind of keeps rolling on. the lady is STILL the villain, even in songs about cheating ladies sung from dudes’ perspectives. not the guy his wife slept with.
AMANDA: so … does any dude actually choose his girlfriend based on who writes the best song about why he should be their girlfriend?
SADY: i kind of wish they did!
AMANDA: i dont! i suck at that shit!
SADY: well, i think the vast majority of dudes would get a case of The Creeps if we were all under their windows performing dance-offs about them. which DOES kind of make the whole “you belong to me” genre weirdly feminist: it’s women being suitors, not desired objects. granted, it’s in some kind of wacky “i could totally fulfill all your needs better than she can” way, but WHATEVS.
AMANDA: right, and weirdly enough, the guys are hardly humanized.
SADY: exactly. like, it’s not about how dreamy they are or whatever. they’re not singing the dude’s praises. they’re just like, “WANT DUDE! DUDE MINE!”
AMANDA: it’s possible that these “empowering” other-woman songs are just co-opting the worst aspects of traditional male courting behavior. one of the things that irks me about both You Belong with Me and Girlfriend is the assumption that, well, the guy belongs with them.
SADY: yeah! exactly! like, Dude can’t choose who he wants to date? MAYBE THE FACT THAT YOU ARE ALWAYS IN THE WINDOW MAKING MOONEYES AT HIM HAS CREEPED HIM OUT, Taylor Glasses!
AMANDA: it’s the same old shit where a dude feels entitled to harass a woman because that’s what is supposed to happen when you like a girl, no matter what she says about you—like, “no thanks,” or “just friends”
SADY: yeah, exactly. like, the whole “Nice Guy (TM)” bit of jargon we’ve coined to describe dudes who whine about how they’re so awesome and girls STILL won’t go out with them and the fact is that they’re just kind of chasing the wrong girls around? that seems, weirdly, to be present in some gender-flipped form in “You Belong With Me.” Taylor Swift is a Nice Girl (TM) and it is freaking me out a little.
AMANDA: or pretending to be friends when they’re really trying to get a boner. full disclosure, I find that song catchy and I listen to it whenever it’s on the radio, which is all the time, which is why I know enough about this song to have this weird reservation about one of the lyrics. you pointed this out, as well, but when Swift says that evil bitchy girlfriend “doesn’t get his humor” and freaks out when he says certain things, it always seems obvious to me that the guy is saying something so monumentally douchey, and Taylor Swift is just lining up to be like, “I won’t call you out on being a douche.”
SADY: yeah, exactly. like, i have seen girls do this. the whole “i get boys” thing, that in practice always seems to be about siding with boys when girls call them out on being sexist and/or douches. and i don’t know what it is – being known as a “guy’s girl” can give you some power, or an illusion of power, in certain circles – but to me I always get post-traumatic Tucker Max flashbacks to when he’s like, “but some of my FRIENDS are women! some of my FANS!” and, yeah, but maybe those girls are just biting the bullet and/or deluded enough to think that your douchiness will never affect them if they laugh along. basically, i think “You Belong With Me” is a song about how Taylor Swift wants to date Seth McFarlane. that is what i think it is. i will never apologize.
AMANDA: maybe they would be cute!
SADY: he could talk to her in the voice of a mean-spirited british baby and/or laconic dog.
AMANDA: that other bitch just doesn’t GET that like she does.
SADY: EXACTLY. you know, though, i have been forced to come to the conclusion that everyone in the whole entire world likes taylor swift a little bit more than i do. like, my over-the-top dislike of taylor swift may in fact be wrongheaded and the result of being hit in the head with a skipper doll as a small child or something. people in general don’t dislike taylor swift as much as i do, so there is maybe something wrong with me. and i would like to apologize to taylor swift, for whatever i have written about her in the past, using a girl-hating-(i think?)-another-girl-song lyric. from destiny’s child. it reads: “you know i’m not gonna diss you on the internet / cause my mama told me better than that.”
AMANDA: i heard that song on the radio the other day. taylor swift has, essentially, said the opposite about her career: she’s said that all her songs are about dissing people who have wronged her in some way.
SADY: OH GOD. SHOULD I BE WORRIED?
AMANDA: (Yes). But i can’t help but thinking that—with all her deliberate high-school-band-geek-goofy-glasses image—taylor swift maybe has underestimated how much people were going to Totally Fall In Love With Her. she’s the most successful artist right now, and smoking hot, and she’s writing a bunch of diss songs, which probably won’t play for very long. just a bit of career advice. because i know a lot about the music business. so … you’re doing her a favor, is what i’m saying, and i can’t wait to see what wig taylor swift wears in order to play you in her upcoming single, “I Didn’t Know He Had A Nazi Shirt On, You Bitch.”
21 Comments
This is some great analysis (as usual!). Also, FWIW, I am in complete agreement with you about Taylor Swift! Which is not worth much against THE ENTIRE WORLD, but it is something, right?!
Thank you for talking about this because it is an issue that causes me much irritation. Specifically, I really like the band Paramore. And their most popular song is a ditty called “Misery Business”, which is exactly the sort of ladyhating song you describe here! Basically, it is singer Hayley Williams mocking some Other Woman because she is such a slut but HAHA, her tricks didn’t work, Coveted Dude is with Hayley now so eff off! So that’s upsetting, but the video makes it even WORSE. Because at the end Hayley confronts the Other Woman and reaches into her dress and pulls out the little jelly push-up things in her bra. I’m pretty sure that reaching into someone’s underwear without their consent is considered a form of sexual assault. Arrrggghhhhhhh.
I would like very much to get all Swift-y fan angry outraged with you here, because I am a big, big, big DP fan and am also reasonably fond of this song. Sadly, however, I pretty much agree. Eh, life disappoints.
Alanis Morisette is another person I’d throw in here- I know she was presented as a feminist icon by someone somewhere in the comments of your Bitch blog series. But, c’mon, “Is she perverted like me…does she go down on you in a theater?” Not so very grrl power-y. And well into virgin, mother, whore standoff territory.
Well, now, how about Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy is Mine”? How does this fit in? Yes, you again have girl vs. girl tussling over an invisible boy, but this time both women’s voices are present and accounted for. And you don’t want to side with either one, because each lady’s argument is breathtakingly inane, and the dude sounds kind of needy anyway.
I’m gonna go way back for an iconic (and highly non-confrontational) Your Boyfriend Shall Soon Be My Boyfriend song: Joni Mitchell’s “Conversation.”
There’s no “you,” just “I,” “he,” and “she.” And the “she” is not the subject of the song; in fact, the obstacle-lady isn’t even mentioned until over a minute in.
It’s interesting, because while the girlfriend is demonized, it’s gentle, in the guise of a concerned friend: “He says she keeps him guessing / But I know she keeps him down,” and the guy is definitely humanized: he finds “comfort and consultation” with Joni’s narrator, he asks her why he can’t leave what is presented as a very unhealthy relationship (“She removes him like a ring … She only brings him out to show her friends”).
It builds sympathy for both the narrator and the man she’s entered into an emotional affair with in a very powerful way. Although it’s called “second-hand” and “love” there’s no expressed desire to have or take him, just to “free” him from his relationship.
I can’t say I dislike Taylor Swift because I’m only vaguely familiar with one of her songs, which I find meh, and I have no particular interest in hearing any more of her songs. They say indifference is even worse than hate.
I’m trying to think of male versions of these songs. Your-girlfriend-will-soon-be-my-girlfriend songs. The only one I can think of right now is “Jessie’s Girl,” by Rick Springfield, and all he really does is pine and moon – and brood handsomely. He just wishes he had Jessie’s girl. He doesn’t plot to overthrow Jessie. Though IRL, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen at least as many guys attempt to sabotage their friends’ relationships to get a shot at their girlfriends as I’ve seen girls/women do this.
Thank you, Amanda, for pointing out that early lyric in Swift’s song as particularly troubling. Every time my boyfriend does something sexist or douchey and I call him out on it, I have a moment where I think, “Maybe Taylor Swift is in the unit across from ours and is writing him secret messages about how she’ll just laugh every time he calls someone a ‘pussy.'”
I wonder if Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” falls under the same paradigm as “Jesse’s Girl.”
You know, the thing about Jessie’s Girl is that the narrator dude does let the woman choose. But then he ends up coming across as kind of pathetic. Which is a problem. Like, Narrator Dude doesn’t seem to think of the girl as his ‘property’ or Jessie’s property for that matter. Well, I mean, I guess he says he wants to ‘make her mine’ but there isn’t the same sense of one person belonging to another and the whole ‘well I need to hook up with him/her so that he/she can be with his/her RIGHTFUL OWNER’ thing as there is in the other songs mentioned.
There is a verse in Jessie’s Girl somewhere, as someone above said, where Narrator Dude is just pining after the girl and listing all the things he’s done to try and impress her, like being funny and cool and stuff. I guess you could maybe see that as propagating generally accepted concepts of What Girls Expect From Guys / How a Real Guy Should Be, or something, but I think the bottom line is that he’s like ‘well you know what, I’ve done all I can, and she’s still not into me. That sucks.’ but he realizes that being cool and funny is about all he can do, and if she decides she likes Narrator Dude better and wants to ditch Jessie then she will, but by her own volition.
BUT the thing I notice in that song is Narrator Dude really comes across as pathetic. I guess that has something to do with how he keeps thinking about them having sex. Which he should probably stop doing. But I’ve always sensed a big discrepancy between the Narrator Dude, as a character, and the dude singing the song, as Rick Springfield, in that Singing Dude seems to be playing up the weakness of Narrator Dude. So that the weakness is noticeable. So maybe I am just reading that all wrong, but I think it’s the kind of song that would make guys think, ‘dude, don’t be a pussy, grow some balls and go slam that chick’, or whatever. But maybe not. I would read it as a bummer situation, but one that Narrator Dude is handling in the right (non-possessive) way, whereas I think other people would see that as pathetic, given that Narrator Dude is a guy and should probably be making a more proactive and manly effort to Tap That.
So, in conclusion, I don’t really know.
(THIS WAS REALLY LONG I AM SORRY.)
I’m sorry, I am completely distracted by the Dolly Parton video. The lavender jumpsuit! The matching eyeshadow! The flouncy sleeves! Oh, the ’70s.
Odette, I think your analysis is actually really good for all its length!
Part of the problem is a problem with the love lyric as a genre–it’s usually really about the poet/singer showing off his/her rhetorical chops and not about communicating with a loved one. I don’t think Petrarch gave nearly as much of a crap about Laura as he did about what his Renaissance dudebros thought about his use of meter. It inverts the gender expectations to have the showing off done in a female voice, but there’s a difference between Christina Aguilera’s “Ain’t No Other Man” song where the man’s sexuality becomes a vehicle for celebrating the desire of the singer (which I see as feminist), and Avril Lavigne’s song, where the male love object disappears entirely. Oh look! Triangulated desire! What makes the guy desirable? The other woman’s desire for him. It’s a little different from one of Eve Sedgwick’s lovely homoerotic triangles though. Whereas rivalry over a female love object seems to solidify bonds between men (they fight it out with their swords, one is injured, they are reconciled by their respect for each other’s fighting abilities), rivalry between two women over a male love object seems to fracture bonds between them.
Or to put it more clearly, Avril Lavrigne really does like his girlfiend, but she can’t have her, so she’s going to use him to make her jealous.
I can’t completely hate “You Belong With Me” because if you just listen to the chorus it sounds like the geek girl is crushing on the cheerleader and now I reverse the genders in the verses and have this whole narrative in my head about geeky girl wooing the cheerleader away from her douchey boyfriend.
What’s up with Avril and and “I hate that bitch” songs? There’s “Girlfriend” and then there’s “Sk8 Boi”. I think “Girlfriend” is better than “Sk8 Boi” because at least in “Girlfriend” the girl being hated on is currently dating the boy. In Sk8 Boi, she is hating on some girl the boy had a crush on five years ago and they didn’t even date. WTF?
Also, the song “Don’t Cha” by the Pussycat Dolls get’s a bad rep. I think it’s because people concentrate on the chorus instead of the verses. Ok, the chorus is ‘Yes I am much hotter than your current girlfriend’ and the 1st verse is ‘I know you think I’m hot’ but in the last two verses the singer explains why nothing is going to happen between them because the dude shouldn’t break up with someone he loves for hot sex and his girlfriend is not into polyamory. So I don’t see it as qualifying as an i hate that girl song.
I know you like me (I know you like me)
I know you do (I know you do)
Thats why whenever I come around shes all over you
And I know you want it (I know you want it)
It’s easy to see (it’s easy to see)
And in the back of your mind
I know you should be home with me
Fight the feeling (fight the feeling)
Leave it alone (leave it alone)
Cause if it aint love
It just aint enough to leave a happy home
Let’s keep it friendly (let’s keep it friendly)
You have to play fair (you have to play fair)
See, I dont care
But I know she aint gon’ wanna share
See, I know she loves you (I know she loves you)
I understand (I understand)
I’d probably be just as crazy about you
If you were my own man
Maybe next lifetime (maybe next lifetime)
Possibly (possibly)
Until then, Oh friend your secret is safe with me
The boy is mine isn’t that just a female version of Michael Jackson and Paul McCartneys The girl is mine?
Oh and also, I was ready to fight about Jolene to. A song I like and really wouldn’t put in the “Ladies Hating Ladies Song”-category since there isn’t any hating going on at all. She just asking Jolene nicely, from one woman to another, not to take “her man”. Letting Jolene know the circumstances so that if she was thinking of doing it just because she could she might reconsider, as a personal favor to the narrator.
But then you didn’t even mention lady hating and it was about ownership and I agree completely.
@Canomia – yeah, and I think it’s also the suggestion that if Dude does decide to cheat, he is somehow not accountable. Jolene is. Because she’s sexy. And a woman. And the thing about female sexuality is that it is actually an Evil Man-Ensnaring Device designed to LURE MEN AWAY from their partners. And if you are, like Jolene, particularly sexy, then you can’t blame a man for getting distracted + temporarily forgetting what ‘faithful’ means.
But you can blame the woman. For being sexy.
It’s interesting that Jolene doesn’t seem to be doing much to ‘take’ the man in question, other than having pretty eyes, skin and hair.
I always see it as the power play – the man is unimportant, it’s all about showing some other woman that you are so powerful, you can take their man any time you want (I know a girl like this. The fact that she is spectacularly unsuccessful at it does not make her any less irritating).
It’s a battle to the death between ladypersons; the man is simply the trophy to be won, then shoved in the back of the closet as soon as another competition hoves into view. The fact that I only know one woman who actually does this seems to indicate that this is not a standard tactic of women, but I think the men would like it to be (except for the shoving into the back of the closet thing).
BTW, I always amuse myself by pretending Springfield is singing “I wish I WAS Jessie’s girl”. It makes the song much more nuanced.
You know, I have also dealt with a lady who was into the power play I-can-take-your-man thing, and the funny thing was that she was also spectacularly unsuccessful about it, and at having any sort of committed relationship at all because she treated them like conquests and then was sad when they didn’t magically want to love her forever after she treated them like Mount Everest instead of a human being, and it was irritating, yes, but moreso it was really really depressing, and this is a really bad run-on sentence but what I am trying to say is that I think the ‘I’m gonna take your man’ trope is really unhealthy for the person enacting it and will pretty much never lead to fulfillment or contentment of any kind. Because if you think men are objects to be taken, you cannot calm down and trust a man because you view him as… an object that can be taken. Instead of a person that makes their own choices and can choose to be with you.
I mostly only see that sort of behavior from ladies (and men, actually) who think that they are not what anyone would ever choose to have, and so perhaps it is some sort of compensation or cover for that? To dehumanize the object of your affection and think you can take them and THEN they will want you, because you took them and you own them, not because you are worth wanting? It’s a really stalkertastic line of thinking, and really sad, but being sad doesn’t make it any less A Bad Thing That You Should Not Do.
And, yeah, The Boy Is Mine is a genderflipped version of The Girl Is Mine, which is a pretty song but is intensely creepy since it is basically two dudes arguing that a girl belongs to one or the other of them because of what she says to them or how she treats them, when it is obvious from how they are talking about her that she very much likes both of them and has no intent to ‘belong’ to anyone, but maybe that is kind of the point? And if it is, is that feminist, or just polyamorist, or … ? Sadly it seems rather unlikely that that is the intent of the songwriter; the distinct lack of the woman’s actual voice in the song and instead all of her actions and supposed feelings being presented as points and counterpoints in an argument between two dudes seems to be pretty obviously about ladies as property, not ladies as free-thinking, wide-swinging radical man-lovers who love more than one man.
RAMBLE RAMBLE RAMBLE eh wot *monocle*
Did anyone else notice the ever-so-subtle use of color symbolism in bitch-slut-Taylor’s and innocent-glasses-Taylor’s dresses in that end scene? So clever! So nuanced! The skank is in red, the virginal angel is in white. GEDDIT? WOW!
Rikibeth – “Is She Really Going Out With Him” is a good example that hadn’t occurred to me. It’s probably a better example actually since “Jessie’s Girl” not really bitter toward Jessie – or his girl.
Oh Canomia came up with a good one too. “The Girl Is Mine” is totally a “your-girlfriend-will-soon-be-my-girlfriend” song, except it doesn’t sound liike she’s anybody’s girlfriend, just a free agent whose attentions both Jackson and McCartney are competing for.
“Jolene” is of a slightly different era, though, isn’t it? I’ve always thought that part of the reason for the narrator’s possessiveness of her husband is that she’s living in a time when having your man run off with another woman really would screw with your financial stability and position in society as well as your fragile heart.
Of course, the other thing I always thought about the song is that it IS, as you said, very ladyrotic, so maybe part of the problem is that the narrator understands ONLY TOO WELL how Jolene could take that man, what with her auburn hair and white skin and green eyes and everything. People were talking about “Jesse’s Girl” above, and … well, it’s sort of the same thing, no? The narrator there seems to be spending *cough* an awful lot of time picturing Jesse and his girl getting it on, and notice that Jesse is the one who gets a name, here. But really, whenever I listen to “Jolene” I picture the narrator sharing a glass of sweet tea with an increasingly discomfited Jolene, while talking so, so very earnestly about how gorgeous she, Jolene, is – oh, it’s just too much for the narrator to bear!
…Maybe I’ve just spent too long in fandom.
I think you may be my new favorite blog. You made me literally laugh out loud.