music

Jolene: The Hillbilly Diva Asks Why We Keep Infantilizing Men and Blaming Women for Their Bad Behavior

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Listen up Dolly, Miley, and Beyoncé – I’m talking to you.

Jolene is perhaps Dolly Parton’s most iconic song. It is a peach. I’m no musician, but even I recognize there is something special about the architecture of this piece and how the lyrics fuse with the melody to create something mesmerizing. After all in 2021, Rolling Stone included it at No. 63 on its revised list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. It had been at No. 217 when the original list was released in 2004.

Everybody has covered this song. One of the more recent covers that garnered a lot of attention was Beyoncé’s on her Cowboy Carter album.

The original lyrics are of a woman pleading with Jolene not to steal her man. The lyrics list the specifics of Jolene’s beauty and how Jolene holds the key to the singer’s happiness.

Dolly Parton has said the lyrics are based on a true story – a bank teller was flirting with her husband. Miley Cyrus’s ups and downs with her ex-husband Liam, and the rumors of his philandering haunt her version. There are persistent rumors that Jay-Z is or has been unfaithful.

Now personally, I adore Miley Cyrus’s cover of the song. She is faithful to the original lyrics, and her distinctive voice carries the lyrics well.

And so, Beyoncé comes along with her cover of the song. She changes the lyrics to threaten Jolene should she even think about trying to come between the singer and her man.

So, all three of these powerful women are either pleading with or threatening the very beautiful Jolene to leave their man alone.

Dolly goes so far as to say that her happiness depends on Jolene’s behavior.

So, um, if I were to write my own lyrics to this song, I would be telling the very beautiful Jolene that if she can take my man, she’s welcome to him. I might also tell her that if he cheated on me with her, he will cheat on her with someone else.  If I were to address Jolene at all, I would ask her why she would want such a man. What does she hope to gain?

In other words, quit blaming women for the bad behavior of men. If the commitment they have made to you can be trashed with the toss of red hair and the glint of green eyes, it wasn’t worth much to begin with.

Not only does putting the responsibility on Jolene reek of woman-on-woman misogyny, it also infantilizes men.

Further infantilizes men – we have centuries of tolerating and even rewarding the childish behavior of men. [I will not mention the boy-child currently dismantling the country I love.]

The man in these lyrics is stripped of any responsibility to honor his vows. He is presented as helpless to resist Jolene’s beauty. So, he has no responsibility and is a slave to sexual desire. To add further insult, it suggests a woman’s worth is dependent on her physical appearance. A lifetime together is no match for ivory skin and a stunning smile.

I get riled up anytime I hear someone disparage the “other woman” as if she is the problem. She is not the problem. She is the symptom of an existing problem.

The Girl Code specifically prohibits friends from dating one’s ex or current crush without explicit permission.

Oh please. Again, the problem isn’t the woman. It’s the guy.

Damn it, it’s the guy!

Say it with me: “It’s the guy!”

Put the blame where it belongs and quit enabling men to behave badly. Thus sayeth The Hillbilly Diva.

Hillbilly Diva: The Reincarnation of Florence Foster Jenkins

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

I have longed for decades to have the ability to sing on key.  I don’t mean an excess of talent or star power.  I don’t want to be Taylor Swift or Barbra Streisand.  I just want to be able to join in on sing-alongs.  I’d like to throw in some song to my spoken-word stuff. 

I would like to not be embarrassed by my voice.

My 7th-grade chorus teacher pulled me aside on the last day of school to tell me not to sign up for 8th-grade chorus.  I knew I didn’t have a great voice, but I hadn’t realized until then that I was hopeless. Did you see Meryl Streep in the movie Florence Foster Jenkins?

That would be me. 

Really. I once sang Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to my son when he was a toddler.  He put his tiny hand over my lips and said, “Mama, no.”

I’ve always said you can tell life is not a performance because no one breaks into song at the grocery store.  Well.  If I could carry a tune, I would dance and sing my way through the Kroger and everywhere else.  Every once in a great while, I will break into Onward Christian Soldiers at the office on a particularly frenzied day, but I’ve worked there for 20 years.  They’ve seen me vomit into my wastebasket.  There, I have no shame, though perhaps I should. 

My last best friend, the one who suddenly died exactly six months after my dad, attended Ohio University on a voice scholarship.  She very seldom sang – she said she had ruined her voice with cigarettes and nonpractice. I wanted to throttle her. 

Susan maintained that everyone could be taught to sing on key.  And I told her, “No, you don’t understand.”  But she insisted. 

So, we sat on the steps of her wonderful porch one beautiful day – I think it was about this time of year – and Susan tried.  She’d sing a note and tell me to listen and then match it.

I laughed. “Susan, if I could do that, we wouldn’t be here.”

But she insisted.

After about 20 minutes, she shook her head and lit a cigarette.  I could tell she was trying to find the right words.  Finally, she said, “The problem is you hear everything.”

I said, “Well, yeah.  What is your point?”

She said, “You can’t seem to separate the notes.  You use them all at once with a few extras thrown in.  I’ve never seen this before.”

I just laughed. I felt vindicated. But I also felt like a freak of nature.  

But I do hear everything. I am not a visual learner.  I am auditory.  Give me a good speech or lecture.  Forget the PowerPoint.  I can listen to you, or I can read the PowerPoint slides, but I cannot do both at the same time.

I do not use music as background noise. I may not be able to carry a tune, but I have a good ear, and that just adds insult to injury. When I listen to music, I sit and I listen fully lost in the sound.  I do not listen to music in the car unless it’s a long road trip with little traffic; otherwise, I would be a menace on the road.  Well, even more so than I am. 

[An aside, I do not confuse the sounds I dance to with the music I listen to.]

I would also like to play an instrument or two or three.  But that desire pales in comparison to the singing thing. 

Yes. I would be a one-woman show everywhere I went if only I could carry a tune. 

Scoot

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Photo by Omar Ramadan on Unsplash

The kids were so excited to come home from school to find Scoot sitting on the porch.  His backpack was on the floor, and he was practicing the chords for Folsom Prison Blues. Marianne managed to tear herself away long enough to let me know with the required after-school phone call to check in.

“Mom, guess what!  Uncle Scoot is here! “

At that news, I wrapped the coiled cord of the business’s landline around my neck and pulled. I often did this as a joke to amuse my colleagues, but today?  Today I did want to strangle myself. 

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The Girl in Black

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Photo by Gioele Fazzeri on Unsplash

Dear Diary,

They think I don’t hear them.  They think I’m oblivious and lost in a haze of weed.  They think I’m a retro Goth.  

I don’t care what my senior class thinks.  I quit caring about sixth grade when the cliques got serious.  I really stopped caring when my great-grandfather died. I wore black to his funeral and have worn black ever since.

They all have no idea, and I like it that way.  I’m not just an introvert, I’m very private.  I don’t even talk to the therapist my social worker has been making me see for two years.  The one my state insurance pays for because we don’t have any money.

I don’t care what my family thinks.  I was a mistreated child that nobody could be bothered to rescue.  My summers with Great-Grandfather are the only reason I’m not a real mess.

I don’t care what anyone thinks.

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