A Cowboy's Kind of Girl

Imagine you're listening to a male country-western singer describing his ideal woman. Take a guess as to what he'd say.

I say "imagine" and "guess" as a concession to the 95 percent of Harvard affiliates whose only exposure to country music is the line-dancing at the Presidents' Barbecue during orientation--that is to say, the 95 percent of students who have no exposure to country music at all.

If you answered with some variation of long-suffering, not-so-intelligent, and demure, you will be happy to know that there is a generous curve.

Find that single country station you can pick up in Cambridge and you'll learn this: the most desirable women in the world are smart as a whip and not afraid to show it. They are outspoken, demanding and highly capable equals.

That's right: country music has gone feminist.

If that fact alone isn't enough to convince the women on campus to play country-western at the next Radcliffe rally, maybe this will be: it's the men of country that are leading the way.

Sure, the occasional female artist may show up feminist; that's happening in most mainstream genres. Those women got me listening again. Their men love them "just the way I am," and they are going to "make it in her daddy's world."

But that's nothing compared to the men, who, to hear them tell it, are head over heels in love with these strong women and think smart is downright sexy.

Take Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn, who have won so many awards for "Best Duo" that the Country Music Association expanded the category to include groups. (They won anyway).

Just when feminists and parents were pulling out their hair because the Mattel Barbie was reinforcing dumb-girl stereotypes right and left, moaning "math is hard," Brooks and Dunn were praising their "Little Country Girl," who got dirty looks in high school because "she got an A in math and never cracked a book."

The two songwriters don't stop at that song. The liner notes of the Brooks and Dunn greatest hits album tell the story of two cowboys on the trail, who meet up with a woman who not only shoots better than they do, she knows how to get to the next town when her companions don't. But her capability and brains don't detract one bit from her red-haired beauty.

These two are not the only men of country enamored with smart women. Another all-male group sings tribute to the "angel in the choir loft./She's got her daddy's money, her mamma's good looks," but that alone isn't enough to make her the "deadly combination" she is: she's also got a "wild imagination [and] a college education." Just to clarify, fun-loving, well-educated women are still "country as a turnip green."

But the most liberated of them all may very well be a man whose given name is Floyd Jr. but went as "Bubba" as a boy. Collin Raye's ideal woman not only demands to be the one driving on their first date, she "quoted William Faulkner and Martin Luther King"--no intellectual slouch she. However, Raye's most feminist hit to date is "I Think About You," which won awards for raising awareness of spousal abuse and address all kinds of oppression women face, from safety issues to questions of pornography. (When was the last time a male singer in another genre "raised awareness" of these issues through positive publicity?)

Take these lyrics:

"Every time I see a woman on a billboard sign/Saying drink this beer and you'll be mine," "When an actress on a movie screen/Plays Lolita in some old man's dreams/It doesn't matter who she is/I think about you. Every time I hear people say it's never gonna change/like it's some kind of joke, some kind of game/I think about you."

Not only are the country music artists beating out every other mainstream music genre on the appreciation of strong women, their fans are happily building and jumping on the bandwagon. Brooks and Dunn have numerous platinum records. Raye's album, with "I Think About You" as the title track, debuted at number six on the Billboard Charts, eventually going platinum as well.

Think about the leaps and bounds the human race would have made if every man sitting in Hooters or someplace worse looked at the waitress and thought about how he would feel if his daughter or wife was employed there. Instead of making the personal political, as 60s feminists fought to do, Raye is taking the inverse step: making the political personal.

Now, when I turn on my radio, I'm freed of the guilt I had when I was a rock listener enjoying the beat but realizing that most of the music out there, especially by male artists, stereotypes and objectifies women. (Anyone think the Barbie song was a positive portrayal of women?)Instead I hear about the glories of strong, intelligent women from singers of both genders. Just picturing millions of other country music fans enjoying songs about these women is enough to send me racing to anywhere where people do the two-step.

I stopped listening to country music in high school, telling my best friend that when I heard one--just one--feminist country music song, I would come back to country. It was a woman who produced that first song a few years ago. But it's the men who turned me from a country listener to a country fan, and it's the men who make me think I want my sons and daughters to grow up in a community of country fans.

Strong, determined, and smart is sexy... Harvard women, it's about time to go country.

Valerie J. MacMillan '98, a former Crimson executive, is a government concentrator in Adams House. She two-steps and jitterbugs.