In Stand By Your Man, women are commanded to, “Stand by your man. Give him two arms to cling to and something warm to come to when nights are cold and lonely.” While most women are content to be a warm something, some women demand more. They’d prefer to be referred to as “someone” rather than “something”. They have opinions independent of those held by the man they are associated with. These women are called feminists.

So how does a feminist select a man? She doesn’t just take the first man that comes along and gets her pregnant. She is looking for a very specific person.

Let’s find out if this video is feminist. That Don’t Impress Me Much by Shania Twain:

Shania Twain is not easily impressed. She is very demanding of men. Her first hit, Any Man of Mine, led us to believe that men she is interested in must do whatever she wants and spend a lot of time hugging and squeezing her. This video raises the bar even higher.

Is it feminist, though? According to this song she is looking for someone to keep her warm in the middle of the night. I find that blankets and a furnace usually do a good job of that for me. So who knows. [Once again](/posts/the- best-thing-about-being-woman-man-i/) we are left wondering whether Shania Twain is a feminist or not. I’m highly suspicious since most of her songs are about men. I feel like a feminist would spend more time singing about non- relationship stuff like spaceships or cowboy hats.

One thing that is definitely feminist, though, is that she refuses to be helpless. No matter what her situation she does not need a man to help her. The video opens with Twain wearing a fully coordinated outfit (your luggage must match your coat and all of your clothing) in the middle of the desert.

No one else is around for miles. How will she get home?

Luckily, a man on a motorcycle arrives.

I like to imagine that she is just standing in a desert with her thumb out. She’s probably been there for days until some insane person decided to drive across the desert for no reason. That’s how you hitch a ride so that is how she is doing it.

She is not happy with the man on the motorcycle (who is apparently a rocket scientist) so she will not ride with him.

He is super bummed.

Several weeks later a huge truck arrives.

It’s more likely that at this point she is hallucinating from sun exposure and dehydration.

The guy is pretty good looking except he is wearing a baseball hat with a crease in the bill. Low class, dude.

Naturally Twain rejects him.

During the guitar solo she turns off a valve that comes out of the desert ground for some reason? I don’t know what’s going on here.

The pipes represent men and by turning off the valve she indicates her non- impressed-ment.

A dude in a rad hot rod shows up.

He leans out of the car invitingly.

Naturally, he is rejected.

At this point Shania Twain gives a delightful smile.

She smiles between two lines of the song and it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Her expression while singing the line before and the line after is totally different from the smile. Why is she smiling like that? She’s like a modern- day country-Mona-Lisa.

A guy on a Jeep tries to pick her up.

He is extremely attractive and has a spot on his face, around his eyes, that is not filthy.

To try and clean off the filth he pours water over his face while shaking his head back and forth.

Awesome, but rejected.

Then a man dressed as an Arab arrives on a horse.

Naturally, Twain rejects him immediately. Too ethnic.

Ultimately she is still alone in the middle of the desert.

That is dedication. She will probably die out there.

Also, I’m just noticing that Shania Twain kept sticking her thumb out for a ride, waiting for the vehicle to stop, and then waving the driver away. What a jerk! I’d be so pissed if I were one of the drivers. If she didn’t want a ride why did she stick her thumb out?

Man, total dick.

-PTD

Note: I will not be posting tomorrow or Friday due to Thanksgiving. Another Flavor returns on Monday, December 2 with more music video fun.

In It Was a Good Day by Ice Cube he describes a good day for a black man living in South Central Los Angeles. The second verse ends, “Plus nobody I know got killed in South Central LA. Today was a good day.” This has more power than a song lamenting a dead friend or describing all the terrible things that can happen. For Ice Cube, the best he could hope for in a day is that no one he knows is killed. That is grim.

Shania Twain in Man! I Feel Like a Woman uses a similar approach to describing what it is like to be a woman. She keeps repeating, “The best thing about being a woman is the prerogative to have a little fun.” This is like saying that the best thing about being a Hispanic man in Arizona is that some days you don’t even need to show your birth certificate to the police. She describes a woman going “totally crazy” by wearing a man’s shirt with a short skirt and coloring her hair. A woman’s role is so constrained that anything actually fun or fulfilling is denied to her. The best she can do is have a tiny bit of fun. Only on a special night, though.

Man! I Feel Like a Woman by Shania Twain:

The video opens with Shania Twain going “totally crazy”. She seems to be wearing a combination of men’s and women’s clothing. Wow! That’s wild!

She is standing in front of a band that she pays absolutely no attention to. The band is made up of models, just like a Robert Palmer video. The twist is that the models are men.

They are wearing a ton of make-up and goggles for some reason?

Check out these guys’ chests. Man. Also, no one showed them how to pretend to play their instruments so they just move their hands around aimlessly. It’s pretty great.

Shania Twain is hiding her face for some reason. Is it because she is trying to “forget I’m a lady”?

According to the Wikipedia page for this song, she is wearing a veil because her entire family was killed in a freak hog stampede the day before they filmed the video. The show must go on, though. As a fan of New Criticism I’ll ignore that fascinating and true fact and try to interpret it in the context of the video. Since the best she can hope for is to have a little fun, maybe the veil is meant to show that, even while trying to have a lot of fun, she has to remain serious and composed. Everyone is counting on her to take care of them. She can’t just go out, get shitfaced, contract a social disease, and spend the next week in jail. She is only allowed that little moment of fun.

Here we get to see the short skirt that she has been hiding.

Tantalizing. Throughout the video she becomes more and more undressed. This represents her struggle to free herself from patriarchal shackles. Every time she exposes herself further, though, she reveals that she represents the traditional role of a woman: thin, perfectly coiffed, an object.

Here at the beginning of the video she is still intriguing dressed.

She takes off her jacket, though.

And suddenly the models who were objects have become objectifiers.

Maybe he doesn’t find her sexy. Licking your lips implies that you are imagining tasting her. So he might be a cannibal. Is this video secretly about cannibalism? Maybe it’s meant to imply that eating meat is like being a cannibal. Did you know that Shania Twain does not eat meat? Did you know that her real name isn’t even Shania Twain? It is Shania T. Wayne. She changed it to Shania Twain after hearing the shouts of workers on the Missippippi river. Note: Since Shania Twain isn’t even American they don’t even have the Mississippi river so she did her best to pretend with the Missippippi.

She continues to show more of herself. First she unbuttons her shirt.

Then she removes it entirely. The models think this is a somber event.

She removes her hat, revealing that she has red hair.

All of her men’s clothing removed, she waves her arms around in a decidedly carefree manner.

So is this actually a feminist video? Probably not. At least this song is about being a woman and doesn’t mention a man. So maybe in the country world we can consider it progressive. But maybe secretly Shania Twain is showing us just how terrible it is to be a woman in our society and that’s pretty cool.

-PTD