Could I Just: Little Egypt

"Could I Just..." is gonna be a little sidebar series, most likely inspired by something irking me at the moment, or something that has long irked me but that I just remembered to write about. In this case, I've been thinking about the many many many many anti-woman sentiments of the mid-century pop and rock that I lurrrve ever so much. I could start a lot of places, but I'm gonna start with asking could I just say a little something about  "Little Egypt" the Lieber and Stroller penned hit for the Coasters, since one strain of the discussion in my Varieties of American Feminism seminar today had to do with empowerment vs enslavement for women working in sex industries, and because I was talking about this song just the other day. Here's a  quick link to a version that sounds alright in case you are unfamiliar. I'm not responsible for the graphics.

Though I started out thinking that this would be unrelated to my politics of appearance blog and too modern to tie in to my seminar (1830-1930 y'all), it turns out that ties exist. Little Egypt, according to my brief internet research was the name of several late 19th century belly dancers, two of whom danced at the Chicago Exposition in 1893. As in the Chicago Exposition I recently read about in the writings of Ida B Wells who, along with others, objected to the representation (or lack of it) of African- Americans in the fair. I love it when shit comes together! Doubtless there is some thinking to be done here about othering, marginalization, and fetishizing, but that's for another day. Maybe after I read this book: Looking for Little Egypt.

On to my analysis of the song though:

The female protagonist of our story, referred to here only as Little Egypt, something that I truly hope was a self-determined stage moniker, is seemingly a burlesque/ striptease artist, along with being something of a gymnast and an expert in a move called the hoochie coochie (note to self: learn hoochie coochie in case teaching salaries fall any lower) which she does real slow. We hear of this though, not from Little Egypt herself, but from our male narrator who observes the show and later marries Little Egypt, whom I will refer to from here on out as the Narrator-Husband-Power, Agency, and Voice Usurper...or NHPAVU for short.

Now, given that Little Egypt doesn't get to tell her story her, I'm making some assumptions, but it seems to me that Little Egypt starts out as a woman of some sexual, economic, and creative power. A crowd comes to see her self-crafted dance, paying 1/10 of a dollar for the damn privilege, which doesn't sound like a lot, but if Coke was a nickel then, and now it costs...I dunno...$30 a bottle?...no, that's bourbon...anyhow, let's say $10 adjusted for inflation (no. no one should do the real math) then Little Egypt could easily pull in the equivalent of $1000 per show. Now, thanks to the NHPAVU, we haven't a clue how much her take home is, but at any rate she can afford diamonds and rubies and  an extensive backpiece tattoo that says Phoenix, Arizona 1949. While it is true that Little Egypt is likely objectified by the male gaze in order to make all this happen, nonetheless she is a woman in the public sphere with some degree of independence and agency. And she's interesting, dammit.

Whatever my reservations about the NHPAVU from the start, the story manifests its major problem after the narrative shift at the beginning of the last stanza. In a tone that I can only describe as boasting, NHPAVU explains to us that one cannot actually see Little Egypt in her act anymore, since she is now removed from the public sphere and is consumed with the domestic chores that have resulted from being married to NHPAVU, referred to in the song as "mopping" and "shopping" and taking care of their seven (Seven!...While I won't deny that Little Egypt may enjoy their sex life and the resulting children, this really seems like a very tacky boast on the part of NHPAVU concerning his sex drive and his ejaculatory prowess ( really pales next to Little Egypt's talents) children. Not only is Little Eygpt too busy to do the things that she did before, the very dynamic talents that made her so attractive to NHPAVU in the first place, but in the end her voice is replaced not just by NHPAVU, but by the children who now get to voice her famous "yeah, yeah." In the end, she is rendered as a voiceless, powerless, baby/moppin/shoppin machine.

This song, who's popularity predates Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique by a few years, seems like a clear message as to the "biological destiny" and place of a woman in early 60s American society. I abhor all that it says; yet at the same time...it's still one of my favorite songs and in my conflicted feminist way, I will still squeal when it comes on the oldies station.