Women in Country Through the Years

The progression of women in country music has paralleled the progression of women in society. In “Coal Miner's Daughters: Women (Re)Write Authenticity in the Country Music Autobiography,” a chapter from her book, Natural Acts, Pamela Fox discusses how in the 50s, 60s, and part of the 70s, “country discourse equated women's gender authenticity with nurturing domesticity, especially motherhood-the single mode of conventional femininity most available to poor Southern white women” (127). Female country artists had to demonstrate that they were good wives and even better mothers in order to be successful professionally and personally. Even if their stage persona was someone who strayed from this identity, they had to show that in their real lives they were the perfect picture of femininity, which also meant the perfect picture of domesticity, because the two were conflated at the time. This was true not only within the genre of country music but in American society at large. One was only truly a woman if they had a man to serve and children to look after.

Fox explains how, within her autobiography, Tammy Wynette would often reduce herself to just a mothering body (129), making that her defining characteristic, rather than the other things she had accomplished in life as a woman trying to make it as a country star. This reduction of herself to a mothering body is also present in the music she performed considering some of Wynette’s most famous songs revolve around the fact that she is a mother and a wife.

While these ideas of "true" femininity have not completely left us, there has certainly been some progress made.

Her 1968 song, “I Don’t Wanna Play House,” demonstrates the intensity surrounding the importance of motherhood for working-class women during this time. The premise of this song is a woman who watches her daughter outside tell a friend that she does not want to play house because she has seen her parents play house and “It makes my mommy cry/‘Cause when she played house my daddy said goodbye” (Wynette). This idea of your child seeing how you have lived your adult life and not wanting to mirror it is terribly sad, but this song conveys more than just that experience.

What we first seem to see (or hear) is this deep despair over the fact that her daughter does not want to play house. A little girl at the this time was supposed to dream about becoming a wife and mother. Because her daughter was not, it is insinuated that this woman has failed in her duties as a woman. She “hung [her] head in shame” when she saw that her daughter did not want to play house because part of authentic womanhood during Wynette’s time was, essentially, playing house and being the perfect wife and mother.

The mother in this song seemingly failed at the wife aspect, seeing as how it was the husband who left (the word choice is especially interesting because saying it was the mother who was playing house insinuates the fact that she was not playing it well enough for the father to want to stay). She seems to have failed at the mother part as well because her daughter does not want to play house, overall lowering her ability to call herself a real woman according to the standards of the late 60s.

Wynette's “Stand By Your Man,” while not being about motherhood, does seem to convey this obligation to be a good wife but not hold your husband to the same standards. The lines “You’ll have the bad times/And he’ll have good times/Doing things that you don’t understand/But if you love him, you’ll forgive him” (Wynette) specifically accept a sort of “bad” behavior from her husband and go so far as to forgive all of this bad behavior because a good wife loves her husband too much to allow anything to hinder all of the support she is meant to give him as his wife. As a poor woman from the South, as Fox said, marriage and motherhood were her only claims to any sort of social power. We can see in this song and most of her other songs a desire to cling to that. Additionally, and practically, we understand that the increased household income that often comes as a result of marriage helps to alleviate the stress of trying to survive as a working-class woman. While we look upon Tammy Wynette who is choosing to stand by her man and ask her why she is doing such a thing, we should also realize that for working-class people, sometimes standing by your man is not a choice. It is an obligation, not in the sense that all women should stand by their men, but in the sense that to leave would be financially and socially detrimental.

Even her song, “Take Me To Your World,” and the lyrics: “I’ll come back and live the way you wanted me to live/All I want is just to be your girl/Please come and get me/And take me to your world/Away from bar rooms filled with smoke/Where I won’t have to serve a drink” (Wynette) illustrate this idea that working-class women should be willing to concede certain desires or ways of living in order to leave their working-class world and escape to their husband’s. To be a working white woman in the 50s and 60s was usually an indicator of a lower-class status because middle-class women were often subject to private (unpaid) domestic work within the home. So working white women would do what they could in order to make that socioeconomic climb and I think this song depicts part of that struggle.

I believe that Wynette is a woman of her time and so I do think she felt obligated to be a good wife and mother. I am sure she believed that the husband in a partnership was meant to be the breadwinner and that the woman was meant to care for and be subordinate to him, which is highlighted in the way she usually refers to herself as a girl in her songs. Still, I think it is important to recognize the working-class nuances within her music. We have to realize that the luxury of marrying someone you love or raising a child with someone who you know will support you is not something working-class women can always afford.

Modern female country artists still focus on romantic relationships and children more than artists of other genres. However, they do so in a way that is reflective of the social and legal progress we have made in terms of gender equity. Women can now be seen as real women without needing to define themselves by their relationship to a man. Country artists are still singing about divorce, but they are not doing so in a way that portrays it as their failure to be genuine women worthy of womanhood. “Got My Name Changed Back” by the Pistol Annies is a perfect example of this and juxtaposed with Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man,” it highlights the changes in modern society.

“Got My Name Changed Back” details a woman who is happily going through a divorce after her husband’s infidelity. Without even comparing the lyrics of this song to Wynette’s, we can see the clear shift in feelings surrounding something like a divorce or separation just by listening to the melody and tempo of both songs. “Got My Name Changed Back” is light, up-beat, and fast paced. In the music video, the three members of the girl group are wearing extravagant outfits, covered in sequins, popping bottles of champagne, dancing, and eating celebratory cake. The divorce being depicted is a liberating event, one that has no impact on authentic country womanhood. These country women are still genuine women but they have decided not to stand by their men because they do not have to. They are not living in a society where divorce is as shameful as it was in the era of Tammy Wynette.