As a longtime fan of her music, I was bummed at the news of Loretta Lynn's death earlier this week. Not because her death was especially tragic — far from it. Her life started hard, but she died rich and successful, at age 90. She lived long enough to see music critics finally value her and other female country artists like Dolly Parton the way they long did male figures like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. She even got to record with Jack White, which seems like a great experience for any musician not named Meg White. May we all have a chance to go out like she did.
No, I was dreading The Discourse. I did not look forward to people calling her a "feminist," simply because she had a brash sound and tough-girl lyrics — or even because her songs are often about how much men suck. I did not look forward to aesthetic Stalinists shaming anyone for enjoying her music on the grounds that she was a Donald Trump supporter. I didn't want to hear the pseudo-intellectual assertion that you must "separate the art from the artist" in response, a claim rooted in half-remembered English lit classes. It makes even less sense when you look at someone like Lynn, who wove her personal life — with many warts on display — into her music, both as legitimate artistic expression and as a marketing ploy.
I like Loretta Lynn. I like country music. These are positions that are pretty easy to hold if you grew up a liberal in a coastal city and everyone knows you're appreciating the music from afar. I spent much of my childhood, however, in rural Texas. It leaves one with a fear that people think you're a dumb hick, a paranoia that is occasionally justified when people throw me a puzzled look if, say, a Reba McEntire song comes up on shuffle.
The narrative around Lynn has long been that she's "conflicted." There's a longing to see a kind of veiled feminism in her music. Allison Hussey of Pitchfork writes, "Lynn's most enduring songs are frank and ferocious, where she excoriates double standards and sexist assumptions with a smile." Tom Roland at Billboard writes about "the progressivism at the heart of her songs" that he argues portray women as "strong, self-directed adults willing and able to stand up for themselves at a time when the culture generally discouraged it." Maybe so, but let's get real: She was a Trump supporter who stuck by her crappy husband from the time she married him at age 15 until his death in the 1990s. Those are just facts.
As someone who is not a tourist in the country music world, however, I don't see Lynn as a contradiction in any way. I personally got out of the red-state lifestyle as soon as I was able, but she reminds me how the Republican women I knew growing up talked about their lives and about men, especially when men weren't around to whine about it. It's not that those women don't think sexism is real. They hate it that men look down at them and treat them like unpaid servants and emotional snot rags. They're just resigned to it, and profoundly skeptical of feminist claims that change is possible.
Lynn wasn't like Dolly Parton, who also demurs when asked whether she's a feminist — to avoid alienating conservative fans — but quietly gives money and support to progressive causes. (For all those who sneer at that, know that women in rock and R&B have had to play the same game as well.) But Loretta Lynn wasn't conflicted; she was a straight-up conservative, who openly and proudly voted for Trump.
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For outsiders, that seems hard to square with a song like the 1975 classic "The Pill," which, as the title suggests, celebratesthe liberating breakthrough of birth control medication. Or "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin'," in which the narrator protests being used for sex by her drunken husband who otherwise ignores her. Some critics have even projected feminism onto "Fist City," a song about beating up another woman who's trying to steal your man.
But none of that is feminism. Feminism is the belief that women are equal to men and that we should remake society to reflect that fact. Lynn's music is the music of resignation. Yes, she said in 2016, "I didn't write for the men; I wrote for us women." But she wasn't writing feminist anthems. Hers are songs of coping — through humor, through violence, or just through emotional venting. The theme that runs through her catalog is: "Yeah, sexism sucks, but nothing can be done about it."
At best, her songs are how-tos on surviving in a patriarchal system. From a distance, it's hilarious that "The Pill" was widely censored on country radio, because it's hardly a liberation anthem. Instead, the narrator celebrates the fact that now she can go out with her husband instead of staying at home with a baby, making it easier to block him from having sex with other women. Her famous songs about staving off romantic rivals, like "Fist City" and "You Ain't Woman Enough," are fun tough-talking tunes. But they also assume that a woman's lot in life depends on securing and keeping a man, even at the cost of throwing down with other women while he gloats in the corner. As much fun as those songs are, I like "Jolene" by Dolly Parton better. Not only does it have the greatest guitar riff in history, it's soul-rippingly honest about the stakes for a woman in this world of losing her man.
As Slate critic Carl Wilson astutely notes, the song "One's on the Way" captures this dynamic in Lynn's music well. The lyrics describe "girls in New York City, they all march for women's lib," but notes that "here in Topeka" the "floor needs a-scrubbin'" and children need to be cared for. It's not opposed to feminism, exactly. It just views the ideals of feminism as a pipe dream.
That's exactly how the women I grew up around see things. They don't love that their social status and safety runs through men, and that maintaining both of those things means placating men's often imperious demands. Get some wine into those women, and you'll often find that they share many feminist complaints about overbearing husbands and overwhelming housework. They don't want to fear rape. They hate seeing loved ones suffer domestic violence.
But at the end of the day, they also don't want to be called "man-haters," which is absolutely what's coming at you if you speak up for feminist values too forcefully. Life is hard enough for women if men like you. The idea of actively courting male disapproval, or male hatred, is frankly terrifying. So those thoughts get pushed aside. A "strong" woman is a woman like the one Loretta Lynn portrays in her music: She accepts male dominance and is proud of herself for surviving it.
You saw this mentality clearly in the days after the release of Donald Trump's infamous "Access Hollywood" tape, in which he can be heard bragging about sexually assaulting women. Republican women weren't happy about it, but they voted for him anyway, often making familiar excuses: "Well, that's just how men are." To them, male chauvinism is like the weather; it can't be changed and it does no good to challenge it.
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Of course, as an actual feminist, I disagree with all that. I think women can fight back. If we do it together — instead of having a "Fist City" with each other — we can force men to acquiesce. Men aren't the only ones who can give or withhold their approval. Men need us, and women can get concessions that bring us closer to real equality. I know this to be true: I moved to blue America (first to Austin, then to the East Coast) and found that there's a better quality of man available than the shameless sexists I grew up with.
So why do I like Loretta Lynn's music, to this day? For one thing, you're leading a mean and blinkered existence if you only engage with art that reflects your exact values back to you. Part of the joy of experiencing art and culture is the chance to see the world from someone else's viewpoint, broadening your horizons and gaining empathy for others, even if you disagree with them. For another, she's a straight-up great musician and singer. Her music is pleasing on the simple, visceral level.
But truth be told, there's still a lot I relate to in her music. Even the most strident feminists among us have to make our compromises and pick our battles, no matter how blue our environment. I've grinned and borne many a mansplainer. I spend more time on my appearance than men, even when I don't want to, because it's necessary to be taken seriously. I often find I have to flatter and placate men, because they take it as "aggressive" if you treat them like an equal, and I don't have time for every conflict over that. Lynn's music speaks to those moments in every woman's life when she has to play along. Instead of making you feel bad for it, she celebrates you for surviving. Don't mistake Lynn for a feminist — but her music was definitely for the women.
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