What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

Elvis Presley & Feminism

The whole “is he white or is he black” thing came into play. It was controversial. He was controversial before anyone even saw him perform, but when they saw him perform it went up to another level. He MOVED. He wiggled his left leg. He almost lay on the ground, stretching the mike-stand out beneath him. He would move his shoulder in a provocative manner. He would collapse after shows he was so wiped out. And the crowds went In. Sane.

And that was when the op-ed columns and the pulpits went into overdrive.

The girls were running and screaming and crying and tearing their hair out. It cannot be overstated how radical it was to see young girls behave in the way they did at Elvis shows…

A well-mannered young man, he “yes sir” and “no sir’d” the reporters to death, often disarming them with his humor, good nature, and politeness. But the reporters always came in for the kill. He had a lot to 
answer for is the attitude of many of the reporters. Why was he doing this to the young girls? Was he doing it on purpose? What was he after? And why?

There is a deeper level to all of this, one that interests me greatly: the hostility towards women choosing something without prior approval from … men? The patriarchy? I don’t know. There are approved tastes, even more so then, and girls chose Elvis Presley all on their own. They screamed spontaneously when he moved because it turned them on, and although op-ed columns clucked at them disapprovingly, they did not care. This was a threat. Nobody understood it. Boys will be boys, oh sure, we understand boys, we indulge boys, they need to have a little fun, but the entire structure of our moral society rests on girls’ shoulders, and they cannot be allowed to run wild, willy-nilly. It’s incredibly misogynistic, and paternal, and was the beginning of a revolution of its own kind that had nothing to do with Elvis Presley, but it was something he helped start.

To quote my friend Mitchell, “Women openly admitted he got their vaginas wet. Had never happened before.” Maybe Rudolph Valentino had brought on a similar frenzy? But who else? It was a bomb going off in the culture. Women were sex symbols and pin-ups. That was not supposed to be men’s job. Women didn’t ache for sex like men did…

Herb Rau went off on Presley – but more than that: he went off on the screaming fans. He compared Presley’s act to a striptease, saying, by implication, that all of the girls who loved him were being corrupted without measure by contact with him. Herb Rau said that all of the girls who loved Elvis deserved to be slapped in the mouth.

Blatant hatred and fear of women doing what they want to do. Talking about the young women of America in such a dismissive and violent manner? It was par for the course, and in some respects, it still is. 

- Sheila O'Malley, What Is To Be Done About All Those Screaming Girls?

A long but thoroughly fascinating article.

(Source: sheilaomalley.com)

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