Good for You!

"They say that opposites attract... she's really something and I'm really nothing... How opposite can you get?"

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"By 'good' of course I mean good for me."

 

Charles Schulz - Peanuts 1963/11/13 and 1964/01/03 

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"I need a shy guy, he's the kinda guy who'll only be mine"

Diana King - Shy Guy

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That song caught my attention when I was twelve (guess why guy) but hit it with a polarity reversal and check how it rings. It's one thing to say "oh hey, on second thought that guy hiding behind the potted plant at last night's party looked sorta cute" and another to specifically demand a man broken for your convenience. How would it sound for a male to declare "I want a girl so damaged that her low self-esteem will put her under my complete control" - romantic, huh?* Oh, I'm sure we could think of a few gender-flipped versions... and just as sure they revolve around telling the shy girl how beautiful she really is, like a makeover in a Hollywood movie.

 

The Police's Every Breath You Take has taken some fashionable jabs over the years as a love song that sounds creepy under scrutiny but in Sting's defense, lines like "every night you stay" and "every bond you break" got that jealous mixed message across from the start. It's not meant to register as idealized as the fangirls made it out to be. I do have to wonder though if anyone would ever question that confrol freak persona had it come embodied in a female vocalist. Read on from that 1964 Peanuts strip to see more of Lucy's narcissism and abuse presented as cute, complete with interminable list of demands, until Linus brings her ice cream so she'll finally call him a good brother and concludes "happiness is a compliment from your sister" - would that sound as cute in reverse? Keeping in mind she's actually the older sibling?

 

It's hardly an accident that men's love songs toward women always sound like "oh baby you know I'll do anything for you" while women's rejoinder runs "oh baby you know you'll do anything for me". Widen your scope to society at large and you'll notice feminism owes its success not to reasoned argument or virtuous role-modeling, but to our instinctive drive to reinterpret in a positive light all the abuse, bullying, psychopathic control, everything we would recognize as negative from a male, so long as it's rebranded as the primordial entitlement of women to be protected and provided for. That instinctive exploitation will not go away no matter how the politics around it shift.

 

 

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* Pretty sure Bug Martini actually ran a few comics like that, purely mocking himself as a loser.