Lyrics and Life

By Caitlin Ward

Everyday Clothes
By Jonathan Richman

Going to a party and she’s wondering what’s the way
I said look why don’t you just wear what you’d wear everyday
You know, T-shirt
You know, sweatshirt
You know, cut-off shorts you know those
Plain old everyday clothes

She had a black dress that I remember still
But in her ordinary clothes the girl was dressed to kill
I loved her, I loved her
At first sight I suppose
And I couldn’t have loved her more than in her plain old everyday clothes

CHORUS
Jeans and a sweater
Jeans and a shirt
Started going soft and I started to flirt
Jeans and something that didn’t fit right
Oh, but I loved her, at first sight

Now she’s in something from the hardware store
But Pierre Cardin and Fiarucci could’ve done no more
’Cause I loved her, ’cause I loved her
’Cause that’s the way it goes
And I loved her even more in her plain old everyday clothes

CHORUS

Now she’s in something that she’s put on by chance
But when I fell in love, when I fell in love it plain made no difference
I loved her, I loved her
Since every angel knows
And I loved her more in just her plain old everyday clothes
My God, her plain old everyday —

Jeans and a sweater
Jeans and a shirt
I started going soft and I started to flirt
Jeans and something from the second hand
Well remember what I said about Pierre Cardin
Jeans and something from the hardware store
Well the Italian boys could’ve done no more

I don’t remember my feminist awakening, but my sister does. It came at the age of five or six. We were watching Disney’s Sleeping Beauty in the basement of our old house on 3rd Street one afternoon, when my mother sat down with us. After a few minutes, she said, “why do you think Princess Aurora can’t save herself?” For us, that was it. We’ve been card carrying members of the equality camp ever since.

In school, every book we read was subjected to my nascent feminist critique, and my Grade 6 report on historical Fiji made an honest go of deconstructing the patriarchy. I didn’t have the theory or the vocabulary, but by God I was pissed off. On that particular paper, my teacher wrote that I was “putting too much of my personal feeling on male-female relationships” into it. I think that comment was probably a direct result of my impassioned but barely related exposition on polygamy as ultimately no more oppressive than the leisure gap working mothers face in the western world.

In retrospect, I sometimes feel quite sorry for my elementary school teachers.

The upshot of being so fervent at so young an age is that by the time I got to university, I had calmed down quite a bit. I have never stopped identifying myself as a feminist, but I’m not constantly upset at the world anymore, either. I have my moments, but after a certain point I realized I couldn’t spend my life railing against the machine at every waking minute. It may be maturity, or it may be exhaustion. Take your pick.

Not so for everyone, though. One of my good friends had a feminist awakening fairly recently. I think it started when she was buying toys for her nieces; she looked around at shopping-obsessed Bratz dolls that dress like hookers and the latest incarnation of My Little Pony, in which every magic pony seems to be weirdly preoccupied with having a pony-boyfriend. And she wondered how her young nieces were going to grow up, living in a media-soaked world that heavily implies they should be “sexy” before they’re even in elementary school. And then she began to think about all the ways women are objectified, and the impossible beauty standards they’re held to, and then she wondered why a woman’s worth had to be so intimately connected to how thin she was. And then she started watching documentaries about all this. To be honest, she’s been angry ever since. That was a year ago.

Frankly, I don’t blame her. You see, last Friday, she came over to my house for supper. She’d recently watched a documentary about how porn culture’s infiltration of the mainstream was adversely affecting young women. She hadn’t seen a lot of the music videos that the documentary addressed, so we ended up spending a chunk of the evening watching Katy Perry and mainstream hip hop videos while we waited for the onions to caramelize. After about 20 minutes, we were both furious. At everything.

Well, that’s perhaps a slight overstatement. And it’s hardly original, but it’s difficult to suppress the thought that, as a culture, we’re constructing a somewhat bizarre public perception about what it means to be a woman. It’s one thing to be risqué in the context of a mature audience — it’s another thing entirely to trade on some abortive idea of sexual freedom with pre-teens.

At this point, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with Jonathan Richman, an American singer-songwriter known for his quirky lyrics, being the godfather of punk, and refusing to play old songs at shows. Well, perhaps not much at all. But then again, perhaps that’s the point. You see, it’s because of songs like this that I manage not to be constantly furious at the mainstream music industry for their somewhat grotesque treatment of women. Was Everyday Clothes ever a top 40 song? No. Is it an intelligent diatribe on feminism? No. Is it anything more than a rather sweet and slightly silly love song? Well, no. But in 1989, Jonathan Richman released a very real love song about a very realistic sentiment — made all the more believable by the fact that it’s about his wife. And when I get the chance, I’m going to play it for my friend’s nieces.

Ward is a freelance writer and aspiring documentary filmmaker based in Saskatoon. You can find her short bursts of insight and frustration at http://www.twitter.com/newsetofstrings