I'm not like a regular girl. I'm a cool girl.
On reclaiming The Chicks, chick lit and other teen girly things patriarchy told me were lame.
A few items of business before we get started: Perhaps you noticed the name of this publication has changed. Perhaps you didn’t. Either way, the name of this publication has changed.
It’s now Matriarchal Blessing. Less because I’m changing my content to match the name, more because I’m changing the name to match the content I like writing about….. patriarchy and moral support in deconstructing it.
I’ll be telling you more about that as well as some fun new additions next week.
Speaking of fun new additions… I’m trying out offering an audio recording of me reading this post along with the usual written post. Please let me know in the comments if you utilized this offering and would like me to continue!
Ok on with the show.
To this day I can sing every word of The Chicks’ (formerly The Dixie Chicks) 1999 album FLY. Without the CD even playing.
I was 14 when I asked my mom to drive me to the Best Buy so I could buy a copy with my babysitting money.
![Dixie Chicks Music CD - Fly [GOOD CD / FAST SHIPPING]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vlto!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffe67cf84-9f94-42c2-9c6b-16210a944823_1200x900.jpeg "Dixie Chicks Music CD - Fly [GOOD CD / FAST SHIPPING]")
Two decades later visceral memories still emerge with each song.
When I hear “Ready to Run” I am transported back to my 9th grade self holding up the family’s cassette tape recorder while singing along because I thought my voice killed it on that track (it did not).
The song “Some Days You Gotta Dance” brings back memories of choreographing in my room around piles of clothes imagining I’m in a dance competition.
When “Sin Wagon” would come on, I would run to my boom and turn down the volume. My parents were worried enough I was perpetually about to onboard any number of sin wagons, so no need to fan those flames. Once I was confident only I could hear the sin song, I would strut around, pursing my lips, swaying my hips, quietly delighting in pretending to be the bad girl for three minutes and 41 seconds.
Whenever I was done listening, I would take the CD out of my boom box, unzip my baby blue CD collection folder and carefully slide The Chicks CD behind my Matchbox 20 CD lest anyone discover my very embarrassing secret of loving The Chicks as a teenage girl in Texas in the 90s…..
According to my carefully curated CD collection- my favorite bands were Third Eye Blind, Fastball, Matchbox 20 and The Goo Goo Dolls. I don’t know if even my best friend1 knew I owned one CD from The Chicks (I owned three).
I wasn’t like all the other girls, who liked Britney Spears. I liked real bands.
(and The Chicks….. secretly).
Over the last two weeks Apple Music has slowly revealed their 100 Best Albums of all time complete list. They announced the list by counting down from 100 over 10 Instagram posts.
Side note: If anyone out there is looking for a topic of study for their gender studies PhD, the comment section of these 10 posts could be an entire dissertation.
Despite women taking up only 28 out of the 100 spots on the list, pushback ensued over just about every one, but especially blew up over the female pop stars who happen to be popular right now:
But no one sparked more outrage over all 10 Instagram posts than Taylor Swift, whom despite only being listed once at number 18 took up about 80% of the discourse across all 11 Instagram posts.
The verdict is in: men singing in the 80s= high quality classics. Young women singing in the 2020s: fun, but not to be counted among the greats.
When I entered the dating scene in earnest in college, the music I listened to held all the more weight as a social currency. It was no longer enough to know “real” bands (read: not girly ones), I now had to shun all popular music and devote my loyalty to yet-undiscovered male bands.
Dashboard Confessional (before they became big), Something Corporate, The Format (before they became big).2
I wasn’t like all the other girls who listened to Avril Lavigne and Christina Aguilera. No. I could hold my own with the hipster boys, whose company I preferred over the other girls in my dorm3. Together we would go to The Get Up Kids concerts, belt out The Darkness and send each other our old Napster files of Built to Spill songs over AIM.
Despite teenage girls having a great track record for being the first to like “the best rock stars of all time” (The Beatles, Elvis, The Rolling Stones), for some reason you are not a “real band” until men like you.
As Ashton Irwin, lead singer of the band 5 Seconds of Summer so eloquently put it:
“Seventy-five percent of our lives is proving we’re a real band. We’re getting good at it now. We don’t want to just be, like, for girls. We want to be for everyone. That’s the great mission that we have. I’m already seeing a few male fans start to pop up, and that’s cool. If the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and all those guys can do it, we can do it too.” - Ashton Irwin
I joined my first book club fresh out of grad school when I was 25. The first book was Austenland by Shannon Hale — a modern day cosplay of Pride and Prejudice. Sigh. I was anxious to discuss…. important books.
When it was my turn to choose a book, I never chose chick lit. Not once. I chose Nickle and Dimed, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and Deep Work by Cal Newport. Real books on real topics.
I complained to my husband when we had to read Divergent (“What’s there to discuss? Why can’t we read thought-provoking books?”).
Privately I lost myself in period romances like Edenbrooke and Blackmoore. But I never chose those books to discuss at bookclub.
Author Mary W Walters loves good literature. She loves to read it. She loves to write it. But if she ever writes about a female character, her books are not considered ‘literature’ but ‘women’s literature.’ And if her protagonist happens to begin a relationship? Even worse!
“Do I write chick lit? Well, I didn’t think so. I am not interested in reading it, and have not read much of it, so how can I possibly write it? And yet within the past few months I have been told several times—and not only by readers and fellow writers, but also by two agents—that the reason I am having trouble placing my newest novel is because it is chick lit, and I am not marketing it properly. It is not “literature,” they tell me. It is not even “women’s literature” per se. It is “chick lit.” - Mary W Walters
You would think two centuries after Charlotte Bronte and Louisa May Alcott had to write under male pseudonyms to be published, we would have evolved past women needing to change their name to be taken seriously.
But if they want their work placed on any bookshelf other than “women’s literature,” many women authors still change their name. Author DJ Connell swapped out her name Diane to avoid being relegated to the “chick lit” shelf:
“Why do I find the chick-lit label so offensive? Because it not only condemns a work of humour to the ghetto of the light and frivolous but it is also ridiculously outdated. Who in Playboy Mansion Hell still refers to a woman as a chick?
When you call a woman a chick you diminish her as a human being and dismiss her as something less than intelligent.
"Chick" offends me but it is the tacking on of "lit" like an accessory that really causes my testosterone levels to spike. Whatever lit is, it is certainly not literature. It is much lower on the food chain, something light and unimportant. While I admit there are plenty of light novels written by women, there are just as many, if not more, "easy reads" churned out by men… but they are taken seriously." - DJ Connell
The verdict is in: when men write fiction about men or women = real literature. When women write = cute chick lit, not real literature.
I wish I could say I woke up one day and realized that my penchant for “real” music (read: music by men) and for “real” books (read: books by men) and my allergy towards all things pink and girly was actually just internalized patriarchy, and I immediately course corrected accordingly.
But that’s not what happened.
In my early 20s I started dating a guy and when we came to the inevitable “what kind of music do you like?” conversation, I was primed and ready, having curated my patriarchy-approved cool taste in music for years. But when I asked him what music he liked—without any shred of embarrassment he said, “I like musicals.”4
He was a cool guy, so I thought he must be joking. But when I started poking fun at him, he held his ground.
Huh.
Musicals are the opposite of cool- they are dramatic, passionate, overly-earnest and very girly.
Publicly, unapologetically liking embarrassing music? I….. didn’t know that was an option.
It awoke something in me. Together we scream-sang to Wicked, Rent, Les Mis and Hairspray. I LOVED this music.
I became high on the unencumbered embrace of the uncool.
To this day, whenever I am confronted with a cool-band pissing contest- I stop it mid-stream and excitedly exclaim, “I like musicals!”5
Sadly, it took a patriarchal stamp of approval from a cool boy before I could embrace my girly, uncool musical preferences.
But it would be many more years before I fully realized how and why I had fallen victim to the patriarchal shunning of all things teen girl.
Because I wanted to be cool and respected, my preferences—every thing from my music taste, favorite movies, podcasts, books and even which colors I preferred— de facto became those of men.
I started to intentionally de-code my internal patriarchal programming during COVID. Deconstructing patriarchy fell in lockstep with deconstructing Mormonism for me. It’s been sobering, depressing and eventually empowering work.
After years of not buying anything pink (even refusing to buy anything pink for my girls when they were babies), I now can’t get enough. My office chair is pink velvet. My water bottle, slippers, pjs, and laptop- all pink.
A few years ago, I prided myself on listening to big thought important podcasts. Now, I’m not embarrassed that one of the podcasts I listen to most is Shameless (“the pop culture podcast for smart people who love dumb stuff”6). I regularly devour chick lit (bonus points for smutty chick lit) and am vocally excited when a girly book is on the docket at book club.
I’ve found there is power in going back and reclaiming the girliness that was pressured out of me as a teenage girl.
“Discussions of teenage girls are ripped from 19th and 20th century discourse on female hysteria. There's an underlying assumption that teen girls are not in control of their emotions or interests and become overly excited or upset for no reason… We make sure [teen girls] know that their interests are vapid and trite. We hate everything they love, on principle.” - Bailey Poland7
The years between 2004-2020 were relatively Chicks-less for me. What was once lost from view became actually lost (a metaphor!).
But when the band came out with their new album Gaslighter, oh my gosh how could I have forgotten how much I LOVE The Chicks!!
For weeks, they were all I listened to. I made four different The Chicks playlists based on mood and energy level. I took long drives passionately belting out all my old favorites.
It was like a homecoming.
Two summers ago The Chicks were coming to play at The Gorge about two and a half hours from my home.
I have two daughters in middle school now. I took them to see The Chicks.
Their opening song was Sin Wagon. I looked wide-eyed over at my girls, who didn’t catch the significance, but were happy for my excitement none the less. I threw my hands up, swayed my hips and sang every word.
One of my daughters does not wear her feelings on her sleeve, but has certain tells when she is into something. Her toe tapping and filming large chunks of the concert on her phone gave her enjoyment away.
My other daughter, well, it’s a wonder she didn’t lose circulation in her arms because they were up in the air the entire two hour set. Even when she didn’t know the words, she was dancing, eyes closed and feeling every beat.8
When Cowboy Take Me Away came on, I stood between my two daughters, wrapped my arms around their shoulders, and together we swayed and yell-sang. “Fly this girl as high as you can into the wild blue.”
I don’t have any hope for my teen daughters to think I’m cool, but I do hope that they won’t wait two decades to let themselves love what they love as teenage girls.
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Hi Mallory! Hope you didn’t just lose all respect for me.
I can’t think of even one band or singer I liked during this period with a female singer.
if anyone from college is reading this- hi. Also sorry for being an insufferable pick me. Patriarchy made me do it.
If you were wondering to yourself if this fellow was gay- say hello to your internalized patriarchy! :)
Actually now I say, “I like Taylor Swift!” which my 8th grader assures me accomplishes the same thing.
blerg, even their tagline falls victim to seeing teen girl stuff as dumb.
HIGHLY recommend bringing an 11 year old to concerts!
Loved this post and totally feel it. I can so relate to the point that I'm 34 and still trying to figure out what I like. Because I always wanted to prove to boys that I was their equal/superior and I was certainly NEVER inferior to them.
Love this one, Celeste! This has been the topic of so many discussions between my friends and me lately! The reclamation of “female” interests. Last summer- Eras Tour and Barbie Movie- felt like a bit of a turning point. A little sad though that people only feel the need to take women’s interests seriously when they realize it will sell well… that (particularly millennial) women will go all in! I’m loving the renaissance of “girlhood” though. I’ve never felt safer than in a crowd of (mostly) women all dressed to the nines screaming “f*** the patriarchy” with Taylor Swift.