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I learned about Brooks' New Lone Ranger column from Pandagon. I went and read the whole thing in interest of seeing how blown out of proportion it was and well...it's not. It's blatant anti-feminism from an old wrinkled fart.
Brooks says of three current pop songs by Avril Lavigne, Pink, and Carrie Underwood:
Okay, you know what, I could even be persuaded to let this crap pass if in the same article, or the immediate next day, Brooks addressed the misogyny and degradation of women in rap, among other genres of music. Where's the outrage over the lyrics of those songs and the portrayal of men seeking to escape the women they married to young or just can't get rid of?
There isn't any. Instead we get the delusions of an old man that if these women would just get married, barefoot and pregnant, they'd be happy. Or at least they'd be too busy and post-partumly depressed to get on the radio and sing. And you know what, right now we have a living answer to that pathetic argument: Britney Spears.
You know what, Mr. Brooks, if you don't like the songs on the radio, go buy a cd player for your car instead whining about it in your column of how all these hot young women are being mean to men.
As a side note, I find it distasteful that he puts the Avril Lavigne song Girlfriend in the same class as Underwood's and Pink's, both of which do actually have feminist messages. Girlfriend was actually written by a man and gives the fantasy of the seductress women stealing a man away from a girlfriend (as explained on Pandagon).
Brooks says of three current pop songs by Avril Lavigne, Pink, and Carrie Underwood:
If you put the songs together, you see they’re about the same sort of character: a character who would have been socially unacceptable in a megahit pop song 10, let alone 30 years ago.
This character is hard-boiled, foul-mouthed, fed up, emotionally self-sufficient and unforgiving. She’s like one of those battle-hardened combat vets, who’s had the sentimentality beaten out of her and who no longer has time for romance or etiquette. She’s disgusted by male idiots and contemptuous of the feminine flirts who cater to them. She’s also, at least in some of the songs, about 16.
...
When Americans face something that’s psychologically traumatic, they invent an autonomous Lone Ranger fantasy hero who can deal with it. The closing of the frontier brought us the hard-drinking cowboy loner.Urbanization brought us the hard-drinking detective loner.
Now young people face a social frontier of their own. They hit puberty around 13 and many don’t get married until they’re past 30. That’s two decades of coupling, uncoupling, hooking up, relationships and shopping around. This period isn’t a transition anymore. It’s a sprawling lifestage, and nobody knows the rules.
...
In America we have a little problem with self and society. We imagine we can overcome the anxieties of society by posing romantic lonewolves. The angry young women on the radio these days are not the first pop stars to romanticize independence for audiences desperate for companionship.
Okay, you know what, I could even be persuaded to let this crap pass if in the same article, or the immediate next day, Brooks addressed the misogyny and degradation of women in rap, among other genres of music. Where's the outrage over the lyrics of those songs and the portrayal of men seeking to escape the women they married to young or just can't get rid of?
There isn't any. Instead we get the delusions of an old man that if these women would just get married, barefoot and pregnant, they'd be happy. Or at least they'd be too busy and post-partumly depressed to get on the radio and sing. And you know what, right now we have a living answer to that pathetic argument: Britney Spears.
You know what, Mr. Brooks, if you don't like the songs on the radio, go buy a cd player for your car instead whining about it in your column of how all these hot young women are being mean to men.
As a side note, I find it distasteful that he puts the Avril Lavigne song Girlfriend in the same class as Underwood's and Pink's, both of which do actually have feminist messages. Girlfriend was actually written by a man and gives the fantasy of the seductress women stealing a man away from a girlfriend (as explained on Pandagon).