Lets talk about the song, A Guy is a Guy by Doris Day…
I am pretty sure my Mum had a Doris Day album in her now long gone record collection. I can actually easily picture her happily enjoying this catchy little number by Day. It would be right up her street. None of that new-fangled ‘noise’ that people call music nowadays.
It is indeed a catchy tune. I only listened to it once and I couldn’t get the damn thing out of my head. In the end I was saved by songs from the musical Six which managed to banish this hell from playing over and over in my brain but just looking at the lyrics today and I can hear the boopy little tones of Doris are still in there somewhere. Which is very annoying because I absolutely hate this song with a passion.
I did think about just ignoring the prompt. After all I am a big believer in if you don’t have something nice to say then say nothing at all but it just irritated me so much I knew it was something I had to share. I don’t have a beef with Day, although she was a fairly flawed character who had some pretty obnoxious conservative views when it came to sex and marriage but she was also, a bit like the girl in this song, a victim of misogyny and a patriarchal society which led her to being abused both physically, emotional and financial by various men in her life. She went to great length to portray the sexy virgin persona is both in her movies but also in her life in general, but the truth was of her life was far darker than that. That false narrative she held onto does not endear her to me but I try to remember that she was a product of her time and of the men in her life but this is not really about the Doris this is about the song.
I know what you are thinking, I can hear you saying. But Molly, this song is a product of it’s time, why be angry about it now? And you are right, it is a product of it’s time but the reason to be angry about is that society at large really still believes lots of bullshit. Rape culture is all around us all the friggin time.
In this song the young man’s behaviour is basically excused because ‘he’s just a guy’ and that attitude is still ripe in our society. It is that idea which results in young men who rape women behind a dumpster get little or no jail time because ‘it will damage his swimming career’ or ‘he was young and made a mistake‘. Where men who are accused of assaulting women and clearly have a drink problem are made Supreme Court Justices and men who deny how many children they have Fathered and have been fired from previous political roles are all set to be made Prime Minister. Men’s behaviour is constantly fucking excused in a way that women’s never is. I don’t like Teresa May but can you imagine her being elected by the Conservative Party to be Prime Minister if she had a child with her lover and possible have at least one other child that she went to court to keep secret? It is so fucking far fetched it is laughable. She wouldn’t have even made it to Home Secretary let alone got her name on the ballot paper for leader. But Boris, well, it’s his private life, and he made mistakes but that has nothing to do with his ability to be a Prime Minister, apart from the glaring fact that it makes him a lying, cheating, self serving tossbag.
I love a ‘good girl’ those are words that can totally work for me in the right setting with the right person but in this song they make my skin crawl because her good girl is all about behaving in a chaste and pure manner whilst the boy basically follows her home and kisses her even though she said no, but that is ultimately OK because her parents, well really her Father, decides she can get married and that will make it all OK. Urghhhh. The thing is, this still happens today, men are still forcing themselves on women even when they say no, and being excused for it. Women are marrying men because they are pregnant, they are still being given away by their Father at the alter, like fucking chattel passed from one male to another. It is happening all the fucking time, young girls are dreaming of white weddings and finding the man who is going to look after them rather than being taught they are autonomous independent human beings and who can find out who they are, what they like, what they are good at, before ever even thinking about taking on a man baby to care for. Because that is essentially what happens in most marriages, on the outside he is protectors and provider to his little wife but when you strip back the layers the truth is, she is in fact him Mum, she does all the cooking, cleaning, child care, probably works too. The only difference to him actual Mum is that he gets to fuck this one.
Often in the world I move in, on Twitter and with my friends it is easy to lose sight of how endemic misogyny is within our society and how powerful patriarchal society still is. So many of the people I spend time with are sex positive feminism people (both men and women) striving to make things better but the truth is young women today are singing Fight Songs and Independent Women because the nonsense Doris Day sung about it still all to prevalent in our society. It is not a thing of the past, or a product of it’s time but powerful ideals that continue to police women (especially their bodies and sexuality) whilst excusing men for their behaviour and continuing to reward them even when they at best mediocre and at worst down right abusive. A guy is a guy might appear to be a bouncy little number that is of it’s time but the truth is beneath the veneer it actually tells a fairly sinister story that in 2019 has not really changed that much from 1956 and no matter how hard I try I just can’t find anything cutesy or endearing about it whatsoever.
17 comments
Oh my! I absolutely love your post, even though when I decided on the prompt, I didn’t mean to upset anyone with it. But this post is so spot on, and I am glad you wrote it, because indeed, things haven’t really changed much in all these years since the song came out. We will just have to keep on fighting, keep on doing what we do to make the world a better place, even though I sometimes wonder whether we will ever win this fight (your reference to May and Boris). But if we stop fighting, it means we will never win it anyway, so onwards and upwards we go!
Rebel xox
Oh I am glad you posted it as a prompt. My reaction to it when I heard it surprised me as usually I can take stuff like this with a pinch of salt but this song just poked me the wrong way.
Molly
You took your post for this prompt where I wasn’t willing to take mine. Although I think that we’ve come a little further since the fifties than you seem to, we still have sooooo far to go! And we keep taking steps backwards. I’ve been thinking about that song for the past three days and it bugs me too. It really is just hanging around in our peripheral, taunting us, reminding us of what changed stille need to be made. Really great post!
Oh I totally believe we have come a very long way since the 50’s but in some very key ways their is still much that needs to change.
Mollyx
I am glad that you did decide to respond to the prompt as you had something really valid to say and it was very interesting to hear. I agree with all of the points that you made and enjoyed the way you constructed your argument. Well said! missy x
You said it, sister! I am in a workplace surrounded by blitheful misogyny and I get so goddamn tired of calling them out …..and this in a country where we have woman for Prime Minister, who had a BABY while in power (hear those chains rattling…).
Yeah – i agree – good girl does it for me too – cause what he really means is “get down on your knees bitch and suck” or something similar 😉 x
I completely agree with much of what you say. It was a different time and it is sad that we have barely moved on since that time. But it wasn’t right then and definitely isn’t now. I guess that’s part of the reason I steered a bit clear of the prompt.
Yeah I nearly left it alone too but then it rattled me enough that I needed to vent a bit
Mollyx
Normally I’m the one that would say, “Oh it was from a different era” so it’s problematic but it makes sense. Or I look at it through the lens that the song “Santa Baby” is sung through, reading between the lines. BUT this time, I felt my skin crawl listening to this one. I couldn’t imagine a different context other than exactly what the lyrics state and it was grotesque.
I think it’s easy to forget that the sex blogger community online is a bubble of sorts, and that the vast majority of people don’t always see the world the way we see it. Many more people want to than we may realize, but without the open conversation about sex, equality, toxic masculinity, and misogyny, it’s definitely slow-going. But the younger generation gives me a bit of hope. They won’t get it perfect, either, but they’re certainly more open and accepting than those who have come before them. Hopefully that means good things for the future…if we can just survive the present.
Yes, yes and more yes! I think this post is so spot on and very indicative of how I have been feeling this last week, well always, but this last week has been particularly tiresome on this front. I obviously wrote a post where Doris Day was a fond memory (had the prompt been Patsy Cline that would have been a different tale altogether) but I think you have outlined our current state of affairs very well. Like you, I am more often than not surrounded by folks who are sex-positive, feminist, progressive and just all around happy to see the world move forward in the best of ways. When I’m then confronted with the truth of the world, which is far different I can find it a real struggle, I can’t articulate the why’s of that as well have you have here, so I’m always so grateful to folks who can and do shape these thoughts so perfectly x
Hear hear ?
[…] Not cutesy or endearing by Molly Moore I was particularly struck by the cringeing/frustrated/downright furious response to the song itself.Best of these was Molly’s. With a sustained attack on the patriarchal ideals that underpin the song she draws in recent outrages and shows very clearly that the poison of misogyny and the power of the idea of property still hold sway over far too many who aren’t privileged to be white males. […]
[…] Not cutesy or endearing by Molly Moore […]
Although I agree with much of what you wrote, I confess that I found the song funny. I kind of got the impression that she manipulated the situation just the way she wanted it. But you’re absolutely right about misogyny still being way too rampant. We still have a long way to go. Thanks for sharing! 😉
Thanks for writing this. It was full of strong feelings and things that aren’t said enough. I love our little bubble of sex-positive feminist people but as you say, that is not the real world out there and it is extremely frustrating. I am finding a lot of this happening here in South America and I’m struggling to wrap my head around it some days.
[…] Not cutesy or endearing by Molly […]