ranting and raving

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

/ wvfurandroot / 2 Comments

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.

The Vanilla Milkshake

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The first time I ever went to a drive-in theater with a date, I arrived home with a lifelong dislike of vanilla milkshakes.

I don’t remember his name or him asking me out or anything about the event other than his vanilla milkshake and his tongue halfway down my throat. I was repulsed in so many ways and just wanted to go home but was too young and too stupid and too fucking polite to tell him to stop. I was raised in an era and by people who believed women were put on earth to please men. To placate them. To serve them. And to diminish ourselves in the process.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

We were double dating, or it easily would have become a date rape scene. Or perhaps, had we been alone, I would have pushed him away. The women’s movement was burgeoning, but in those early days, it was about sexual liberation not me too.

At least it wasn’t chocolate. I would hate to have had that disastrous date affect my lifelong love of chocolate milkshakes (and malts.) Small mercies.

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Back in my day: a rant in which Connie wraps her shawl tightly around her shoulders and expounds on the good ol’ days

/ wvfurandroot / 5 Comments

Hoo Boy!  I’m getting old.  I’m losing hope for humanity in a number of respects, but one that just drives me up the wall and I can’t quite articulate why is the current refusal to dress up for anything.  Does that make me shallow?  Maybe. 

But in my day, we brought jeans to the forefront, but we didn’t wear them everywhere.  It just wasn’t done.  And there was a period of time when one was expected to iron their jeans so they had sharp creases down the front and back. 

Clubs and discos often, usually, had a dress code:  no jeans.  We didn’t wear jeans to church.  We certainly didn’t wear them to work.  My first demonstration was for the right to wear jeans to school.  Yes.  To school 

And when we did start wearing them to clubs and restaurants, we did so with heels, full makeup and the advent of the very expensive, very trendy Designer Jeans. 

And now?  Now, I can’t believe what people leave their houses wearing – me included.   

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Those Weenies at Coke

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I mentioned the other day I was guzzling Coke Classic.

I’m not much of a soda drinker. Coffee is my beverage of choice and I drink copious amounts daily, year round. Theoretically, Alzheimer’s Disease will never affect me nor will I develop prostate cancer.

However, several times a year I have to have a Coke. Have to. Have to, have to, have to. Like The Borg, resistance is futile.

Except for the occasional Vernor’s Ginger Ale, no other carbonated beverage holds any charm for me. If for some reason there’s a soft drink emergency and I’m faced with Pepsi and no option for Coke, water, coffee or iced tea, I cut it with Sierra Mist. Otherwise it’s like drinking liquid sugar.

I think it’s the sweetness of soft drinks I dislike. So, yes, I was one of the folks upset when Coca Cola changed the formula to try and beat Pepsi out of 1st place in the soft drink wars.

Boy was I mad. Not infuriated, but aghast that bazillagillion dollars a year in profits weren’t enough, Coke was in a pissing war with Pepsi over 1st place and Coke purists like myself were thrown under the bus.

Now I didn’t set myself on fire or switch to Pepsi or even talk about it much, but I silently wondered what was going to happen when the shakes started and I needed a Coke.

Other folks, however, got all kinds of upset. Boycotts and public cries of displeasure and yada yada. I have a relative, a serious Coke junkie, who got so mad that to this day she still drinks Pepsi in boycott.  Coke relented and for awhile we had New Coke and we had Classic Coke. Pretty soon, New Coke died a quiet death and that was that.  My Aunt is still drinking Pepsi.  Vitriol can take a long time to shake off.

If I were going to get upset about Coca Cola, I would rant and rave about the high fructose corn syrup. In Spring, it’s possible to buy kosher Coke which is made without the HFCS.

And purportedly there’s a “Mexican Brown” – Coke sold in Mexico uses cane sugar – that I’ve been on the lookout for. I love the crispness of cane sugar, but I don’t fire off a letter to Coca Cola to complain. (Perhaps, I should. Apparently they respond to consumer whining.)

This year, to bring awareness to the plight of polar bears, Classic Coke was packaged in white cans for the holiday season. I think they’re quite festive.

But legions of Coke fans have their panties twisted into origami whiny vipers. Apparently, they’re confused by the white cans and find it hard to purchase Coke if it’s not in the familiar red can. And the Coca Cola Corporation cried uncle and is ceasing production of the white cans.

Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up.

Facebook changes the user-interface every 12 seconds. Apple releases a new must-have product every few months. Betty Crocker got a face lift. Car makers change body styles nearly every year. Yet the fragile little darlings addicted to Coke can’t cope with a different colored can? For a few weeks? And Coke gave in?

Now if Coke had changed it just because Marketing Departments are expected to innovate something now and again, I might be a little more sympathetic. But the powers-that-be did it to bring white light to the problem affecting the animals that Coke has more or less adopted as its mascot.  Note the similarities and differences of the two videos.

They could have pointed out that distinguishing a white can from a red one is a hell of a lot easier than getting stranded on an ice floe.  In the former, one merely needs to pay attention.  In the latter, one is likely to die.

So if I were to write a letter to Coke, it might read like this:

Dear Coke:

You weenies.  You could have handled this better. This was a teachable moment.  You blew it.

Sincerely,

Me

P.S.  Cane sugar.  Please?

Out of sheer perversity, I bought a case of white-canned Coke. Perhaps they’ll be a collectible someday.