Girls In Country Songs

Turning to country music for an example of the music industry’s sexist content was both an obvious and regretful move on my part. I love country music; it takes me to my happy place and I’m rarely happier than when I’m blasting Luke Bryan in the car with my windows down. However, I’m also aware of the depressing reality that many of the lyrics in country music contribute to the sexism of gender roles and degradation of women in the industry. I am also not alone in this observation.

Maddie and Tae made a hugely awesome statement when they wrote “Girl in a Country Song.” It also happened to become a huge hit. Played on radio stations all over the country, Maddie and Tae sing about the objectification to which a girl in the average country song is subject, slyly inserting lyrics from the top male country singers to prove their point. If it weren’t obvious already, their music video does an even better job; three cowboys are depicted doing the degrading and asinine things country girls are expected to do, making it so laughable that it should be a wonder any such portrayals actually do happen. The singers call out the uncomfortable bikinis and tiny shorts, the name-calling, and the whistling by asserting that they really do have an opinion about it all. Watch the music video here.

In Anne Bader’s study “Love Will Steer the Stars” and Other Improbably Feats: Media Myths in Popular Love Songs, she researches the effects of lyrics in popular love songs on listeners due to the cultivation theory. While this study concerns the myths about love and romanticism contained in popular lyrics, it also shows that song content really does affect listeners’ ideas of appropriate behaviors, values, and expectations. Studies have also shown that adolescents utilize the role model at hand, namely being media content, to shape their behaviors. When listeners are constantly bombarded by sexist messages and stereotypical gender role examples, this does have an affect on them. It is when positive messages are spread throughout the media, such as Maddie and Tae’s song, that this becomes a positive thing. Otherwise, it can be very detrimental, as Bader found in her study. Myths about love contained in the lyrics of popular songs proved to be instrumental in shaping adolescent behavior and expectations regarding romanticism and gender roles in relationships. In fact, many country songs display on of the myths she coded for, “To attract and keep a man, a women should look like a model or centerfold” (149). Maddie and Tae directly confront this myth by showcasing and ridiculing the fact that the purpose of most girls in country music videos is simply to look hot and ride along in the back of their truck with their mouth shut. I constantly see women being viewed as accessory pieces or material assets in many country songs, so luckily girls like Maddie and Tae are around to keep things straight.

Bader, A. (2007). "Love will steer the stars" and other improbable feats: Media myths
in popular love songs. In M.-L. Galician & D. L. Merskin (Eds.), Critical thinking about sex, love, and romance in the mass media (pp. 141-160). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.