Please! I am begging. I am. We are writers. Our words are or should be chosen with precision.
Stop for just a moment and consider the term dumpster fire. Define it.
Dumpster: large metal container used to hold garbage.
Fire: combustion or burning producing heat, light and smoke.
In other words: a dumpster fire is the burning of garbage within a metal container that may or may not produce noxious or poisonous smoke. They are generally easy to put out and not likely to spread.
Dumpster fire is in no way a metaphor for the current events the term is often applied to.
What is burning is not garbage. The fire is not easily put out. The harm is not minimal.
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 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.
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.
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.
W. Va. Fur and Root 