I like country music.
That first sentence was going to be ‘I have an anthropological interest in country music’ but actually fuck that thing where it’s only okay to like the things low-status poor people like if you explain how you’re appreciating it on a different level than them.
I like country music! I like Kacey Musgraves and Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley and Lee Brice and I have practically nothing in common with the lives they sing about but I don’t think there’s anything particularly academic or respectably distant about my appreciation.
And then you hear a song on the radio that’s just kind of impossible not to take an anthropological interest in, and the one that’s been in the radio lately is “Different For Girls.”
She don’t throw any t-shirt on and walk to a bar
She don’t text her friends and say, I gotta get laid tonight
She don’t say, it’s okay, I never loved him anyway
She don’t scroll through her phone just looking for a Band-AidIt’s different for girls when their hearts get broke
They can’t tape it back together with a whiskey and Coke
They don’t take someone home and act like it’s nothing
They can’t just switch it off every time they feel something
I have a lot of feelings about this song. The first one is confusion, because the girls I know are exactly as likely as the boys I know to handle a breakup by having casual sex, if admittedly less likely to wear a t-shirt to the bar if they’re trying to do that.
The rest makes more sense. The guy has to say ‘it’s okay, I never loved her anyway’ because it’s pathetic for men to be heartbroken; contempt and indifference are Certified Male Emotions and heartbreak is definitely not. Men work through their feelings with casual sex, because casual sex is manly.
And the second stanza makes me want to give Dierks Bentley a hug even though he probably doesn’t want a hug because hugs, unless they lead to casual sex as a coping mechanism for heartbreak, are not manly. Because the angle of the song here is that breakups are harder on girls, because they can’t ‘switch it off’, because they can’t drink and sleep their way back to normal, and yet Dierks Bentley clearly also cannot do those things! he’s saying ‘it’s okay, I never loved her anyway’, but we are not supposed to believe him! he can take someone home and act like it’s nothing, but it’s not in fact nothing! he is scrolling through his phone looking for a bandaid! bandaids don’t fix things!
And then he is telling us that girls can’t just switch it off every time they feel something.
Okay, man, but neither can you, and it is really really awful that you have to pretend you can!
It’s different for girls
Nobody said it was fair
When love disappears, they can’t pretend it was never there
They supposedly can’t pretend, and you experience immense social pressure to so pretend! Who wins? Nobody! Oppositional sexism: sucking for everybody since the invention of, dunno, probably sexual reproduction.
I think this is supposed to be a song that says ‘girls, unlike boys, can’t tough their way through heartbreak’ but it’s literally impossible not to listen to as ‘boys experience horrible unrelenting pressure to muscle their way through heartbreak and to believe that this is itself manly specifically because women are not capable of it’
some songs make you cry because they’re so true and this song makes me cry because there are people to whom it will feel so true and all of them are probably hurting even more than they need to be.
I only listen to country music when I’m at my parents’ house, because for some reason I only listen to country music when I’m driving and I only drive when I’m at my parents’ house. But man I really should start listening to country radio on the subway to work or something because it’s so good.
This song reminded me of what I like about country music, which is I think its emotional honesty or straightforwardness or something? Coupled with its focus on the really basic emotions of human existence? I feel like music from other genres always has this level of detachment that country music doesn’t.
Anyway, you could be right but it’s hard for me not to see the “boys experience horrible unrelenting pressure to muscle their way through heartbreak” reading as intentional. Lines like “tape it back together with a whiskey and Coke” and “just switch it off every time they feel something”–I feel like no one actually thinks those are Great Heartbreak Cures, they think they are Bad Coping Strategies. Dierks Bentley, the character, is singing this song about how it’s super easy to be a guy because feelings don’t real–and he’s singing it because of the societal pressure for men to bottle up their feelings and act like cool tough guys. Meanwhile Dierks Bentley the singer is self-aware about the whole thing.
It reminded me of Ain’t Worth the Whiskey, in which the narrator is acting similarly blase about a breakup (and is also going out to a bar and drinking), but is clearly in a lot of pain. That pain is what the song is about, without the narrator ever admitting that he’s not okay or that he might be drinking for reasons other than the end of the week or his desire to salute those serving our country overseas.
There’s also the fact that, as you pointed out, the claims made about girls just aren’t true, even in country music land.
She don’t throw any t-shirt on and walk to a bar
She don’t text her friends and say, I gotta get laid tonight
I’m gonna dress up, in my low-cut
My tight blue jeans, I’m gonna stir somethin’ up
I’m gonna kiss all the boys ‘til I kiss your memory goodbye
She don’t sleep all day and leave the house a wreck
She don’t have the luxury to let herself go
I cut my bangs with some rusty kitchen scissors
I screamed his name ‘til the neighbors called the cops
They can’t tape it back together with a whiskey and Coke
They can’t just switch it off every time they feel something
What I’m really needing now
Is a double shot of Crown
Chase that disco ball around
‘Til I don’t remember
Go until they cut me off
Wanna get a little lost
I feel like this just adds to the unreliable narrator vibe I’m getting.