Sammy Kershaw
Several years ago, I started the practice of completing the Year Compass journal. I get super into it and I make a cute little cover for it and sometimes bind it with embroidery thread. Other times I use a Sharpie and angrily placed staples. Just depends on the year I’ve had. Anyway, I have found that the practice really puts my year into perspective. It’s easy for me to get into a headspace that I’m not doing enough and journaling like this reminds me that I have actually accomplished something. I tend to be a “there is always room for improvement” type of person, also known as “perpetually dissatisfied with themselves”, or the more culturally embraced term, “self-deprecating”. I like the term self-deprecating when applied to me because it implies that I am awesome, but I’m just giving myself a hard time. To me, being awesome and somehow not knowing I’m awesome is the pinnacle of human existence. I attribute this belief to a country singer named Sammy Kershaw.
If you were to look at my Year Compass from around 1994, which I didn’t complete because it didn’t exist, but if it had, I would have said that one of the most influential songs of that year was one by Sammy Kershaw called She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful. If you know me these days, you might be surprised to hear I was a wayback country fan - I try my best to avoid it now. But you must remember that this was the 90’s - the era of Garth Brooks, Shania Twain and the Dixie Chicks. 90’s country talked about more than just trucks and solo cups - they sang about real life. Notably though, my exposure to country music was a product of the convergence of something called “the radio” and “my mom”. This radio device, found in most cars and inside of many households, played music picked by someone at a place called a “station”. These station people, called “dj’s”, would select songs and then those songs would be broadcast to every radio within a certain distance. I couldn’t drive yet, my mom had a radio in her Camry and country was a musical genre that my mom and I could both tolerate. Dad’s truck was rigidly oldies, but my mom was willing to branch out.
Back to Sammy Kershaw. This song, She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful, isn’t great or anything - just pop country nonsense. If you haven’t heard it, then I’m surprised because it was really popular, but I still wouldn’t recommend it. It’s just that it came along in my life at the exact wrong time as to be very influential.
Here’s the chorus, which is aside from like two other sentences, the entirety of the song:
She don't know she's beautiful (never crossed her mind)
She don't know she's beautiful (no, she's not that kind)
She don't know she's beautiful
Though time and time I've told her so
Isn’t this, like, really problematic? Especially for a teenage girl who definitely does not think she’s attractive, like, at all?
Here’s what the song was saying to teenage Amy.
—-
First, be beautiful.
Wait, don’t try to be beautiful though. It has to be effortless.
Don’t even THINK about being beautiful even though it has just been mentioned a couple of times.
So while you are thinking of anything else but your looks, be beautiful. Got it?
Oh did you fuck it up? Did you think about it? Are you one of those kind of girls??
Oh ok, you didn’t think about it. Good. Just keep being attractive but also really playing it down.
Awesome! Great job.
By the way, you’re beautiful.
AH! Don’t thank me! Don’t acknowledge it in any way. Deny it you egotistical paramour!
—-
Was that what Sammy Kershaw was trying to tell me and a whole generation of women? I have no idea. He didn’t write the song, but I looked it up and it was crafted by two dudes. And I’m thinking it was probably two dudes who thought that a woman should be incredibly good-looking but not in anyway confident. I wish I could swap out the impact from this song for pretty much anything by Lizzo, but alas, we are a product of our times. You can’t help but be influenced by the music you heard from preteen years through your early 20’s. Your brain simply sends logic and reasoning to boarding school and throws the doors open for a decade-long house party.
All of this to say, I really think Sammy Kershaw is to blame for years of internal suffering. I could sometimes scrap together enough self-esteem to think I was looking pretty hot but then I’d remember to tone it down a few notches. What if someone caught me thinking I was beautiful? Then I’d be THE WORST. Even worse than being un-beautiful!
I do realize that there are plenty of women my age who were not quite so adversely impacted by Sammy K. Some of them may have been spared his music entirely. Maybe they had parents that listened to jazz. (In that case, I’m actually ok with Sammy.) Or maybe, Sammy’s particular brand of misogyny didn’t resonate with them. It rolled right off their backs that were somehow both beautiful and accepting of that beauty. I’m sure the lyrics hit me harder because I was already tender there. I was young, I wanted to be adored by someone and Sammy was providing a road map of sorts.
I look at my kids, two in the thick of their most influential music years, and two approaching those years, and I wonder what song lyrics are going to get implanted so deep in their brains that they may be compelled to write a blog about them 25 years later.
I sure hope it’s Lizzo.