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Wednesday, November 19, 2008
If They Were Boys
What's up with all these girls singing hypothetical songs about being guys? It's not that I'm opposed to the gender-bending, but these songs tend to forget all the wonderful things about being boys, or the wonderful things they'd lose about being girls, and instead focus on- what else?- their menfolk cheating and being playas. I'm all for feminist anthems and calling the boys out and pointing out double standards, but I'd like to see us get past this a little bit. With Dar Williams' song being the only exception, the others paint guys as callous cheating jerks, and little more. It's rather insulting, really. Beyonce's new song is being played everywhere, getting stuck in my head (which I hate doubly because CIARA did it first!), and thus this post was born.* Ciara's "Like A Boy", which gets major props from Ciara's actually butching it up (if the whole superstar thing falls through, she could make a great drag king!) in the video (unfortunately not here, since they all disabled embedding):
* Beyonce's "If I Were A Boy", which is actually a cover of BC Jean's original. Once again, it's essentially man-bashing (not that it isn't true, though), and Jenton Lee calls it out with its female equivalent, If I Were A Girl.
* Fefe Dobson's "If I Was A Guy" (more of the guys sexin' and then being jerks):
* Dar Williams' "When I Was A Boy", which actually manages to be quite sweet and deep.
What do you guys think? Legitimate songs, or boring shit trying to pass for revolutionary feminist calling out of double standards?
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1 comment:
Cool post. And the "When I was a boy" song was awesome!
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