Thursday, January 25, 2018

Before You Wrap the Leftovers

Two Greetings


1A—If you say, “Good morning, little schoolgirl . . .” and you’re carrying a guitar—you’re under contract.

1B—If you say, “Good morning, little schoolgirl . . .” and you’re not carrying a guitar—you’re under arrest.

2—If you say, “Hey, little girl . . .”—you’re Jack Jones winning the 1964 Grammy Award for Best Vocal Performance, Male.

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Greeting number 1 (A & B) is my bad joke riffing on the famous blues song recorded by, among others, Muddy Waters.

Greeting number 2, written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David(1) is an unintentional bad joke of a song that competes for top spot in the Crappiest Song League, Sexist Division.

The song is entitled “Wives and Lovers”—here are the lyrics:

Hey, little girl, comb your hair, fix your make-up
Soon he will open the door
Don't think because there's a ring on your finger 
You needn't try any more
For wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
I'm warning you
Day after day, there are girls at the office 
And the men will always be men
Don't stand him up with your hair still in curlers 
You may not see him again
Wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
He's almost here
Hey, little girl, better wear something pretty
Something you wear to go to the city
Dim all the lights, pour the wine, start the music
Time to get ready for love
It's time to get ready for love
Yes, it's time to get ready for love
It's time to get ready, kick your shoes off, baby

There are three groups that are insulted in this 1960’s bundle of stereotyped sexism. 

The first—and most obvious—are stay-at-home wives. They have achieved their great goal—a ring on your finger. But they have turned into frumpy, disheveled little girls, who can be summoned with a demeaning Hey, be lectured to about how to please their husbands, and—most importantly—be warned that there are girls at the office

If the women who don’t work are insulted, so too are working women, the second stereotyped group. Unmarried, they are not submissive weaker halves to their hubbies; they are wanton(2) hussies, Loreleis, who, coldheartedly, lure faithful husbands onto the rocks of extra-marital dalliances. 

And that brings us to the third insulted group: men— And the men will always be men. Are these 1960s men counter-Harvey Weinstein types who have such a low libido that they have to be lured into making love at home by the hair-curlered drabs turning themselves into sexpots who can rival those man-eating typists—Hey, little girl, better wear something pretty
Something you wear to go to the city
Dim all the lights, pour the wine, start the music?

Or are they spineless creatures who, forgetting their vows, let uncombed hair turn them into workplace predators?

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I was quite surprised in doing research for this post to learn that “Wives and Lovers” had preceded Marabel Morgan’s best-selling book The Total Woman: How to Make Your Marriage Come Alive by a decade. That notorious tome proclaimed, "It's only when a woman surrenders her life to her husband, reveres and worships him and is willing to serve him, that she becomes really beautiful to him.”(3) As Wikipedia puts it, the book was famous for “instructing wives to greet their man at the front door wearing sexy outfits; suggestions included ‘a cowgirl or a showgirl.’” This idea was expanded (apparently by a reader) to include greeting hubby while swathed in Saran Wrap. 

It was 35 years after The Total Woman was published that blogger “Bonnie” at “Peculiar Beauty” related that her search for the origin of the Saran idea led her to 
“Perfect Bodies Equal Perfect Sex” on Christianity Today. Teri Looney (which would totally be my pen name if I wanted to write about keeping sex alive in Christian marriage) writes:  "I remember feeling queasy the first time I heard the idea: if your love life seems stale, send the kids to a neighbor's house, prepare a candlelight dinner, and greet your man at the front door swathed only in Saran Wrap. First of all, Saran Wrap isn't cheap and I'm a size 12. Second, do I really want to send my husband the subliminal message that I'm just 'leftovers'? And third, what happens if I get too close to those candles?”(4)

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Saran Wrap as a sexual come-on. Even Mel Brooks (as the 2000-year-old man) didn’t think of that:

[Carl] REINER: In the 2,000 years you’ve lived, you’ve seen a lot of changes.
BROOKS: Certainly. 
REINER: What is the biggest change you’ve seen?
BROOKS: In 2,000 years, the greatest thing mankind ever devised, I think, in my humble opinion, is Saran Wrap. You can put a sandwich in it. You can look through it. You can touch it. You can put it over your face and you can fool around and everything. It’s so good and cute. You can wrap it up. I love it. You can put three olives in it and make a little one. You can put 10 sandwiches in it and make a big Saran Wrap. Whatever you want. It clings and sticks. It’s great. You can look right through it.”(5)

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(1) They also wrote "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head,”  "I Say a Little Prayer,” "Walk On By,” "What the World Needs Now Is Love,” “Alfie,” and "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?"

(2) Bad speller that I am, I first typed “wonton”—I like that image better.





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