So… is she a hooker? I say yes. After all, her mom gives her a fancy dress and sends her out of the house with the injuction “Be nice to the gentlemen,” and afterwards “there was no way out” because she was stuck in the life of a Lady Of The Evening and she knew “exactly what Mama was talking about.” Then she catches the eye of some rich guy who either marries her or just installs her as a high-class call girl, I can’t decide which. But she’s definitely a hooker in my mind.
Heard the song a lot, being the son of a country music fan.
I’m not sure she was a hooker in the strictest definition, but her mother was definitely telling her to go out and get a man (or men) to take care of her. She may not have been walking the street or working for an escort service, but there are women who make their living basically doing the same thing.
I think it’s obvious too, so obvious in fact that I have a hard time explaining my reasons for believing it when asked. Had an argument with some friends who insisted her mom was just sending her out on a date or something.
Well, yeah, she’s a hooker, but it wasn’t like she had planned her whole lifes’ goal on being that. We’re talking survival here, at least as far as the song tells the story.
Her mom was telling her, basically, “You’re uneducated, you’re pretty, and I’m dying. Take care of yourself and that’s the best anybody should expect from you.”
So, the easiest way to do all this is to strut her stuff and smile for the gentlemen.
It all worked out.
But yeah, if you want to come down to brass tacks, Fancy was a call-girl, hooker, prostitute, whatever you want to call her. She survived, even whilst the cockroaches ran across the tops of her shoes.
I don’t think she is a hooker…More like a mistress. Her mother is telling her to get her ass out, and find a rich man. It states in the song that she “charmed a king, congressman…” “Charmed” is not a word I would use to describe what a hooker does. Maybe it is just one of those things like “How many licks to the tootsie center?” The world may never know.
You also have to keep in mind that this was originally sung by Bobbie Gentry(?), who also sang that confusing hit “Ode to Billy Joe”
Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? Morons!
~Can you be so warm? Can you know what I feel? -Better Than Ezra
“Just be nice to the gentlemen Fancy and they’ll be nice to you.” I don’t see how any conclusion other than selling sex for money/favors can be arrived at.
I believe the story is intended to show that Fancy “worked her way up” from common streetwalker, the level at which she would have started on her new career, to high-level callgirl, thus the “King, Congressman, Diplomat” line.
Back when Bobbie Gentry first released this song, things could not be graphically spelled out in popular music. A little had to be left to the imagination.
What other conclusion could you possibly come to? Am I imagining it or does the end of the video sugest she’s moved on to madame status? I don’t like many country songs, but there’s always been something compelling about this one that I love.
You know, I always thought that she was a dancer because she called her new dress a “Dancin’ Dress”. Of course that was just my naive, innocent mind a work. Now that the facts have been pointed out, it’s obvious that she is indeed a hooker.
The mystery is what exactly did the narrator of the song have to do with Billie Joe’s death? The preacher said he saw a girl who “looked a lot like you up on Chocktaw Ridge. And she and Billie Joe was throwing something off the Tallahatchee Bridge.” What were they throwing off that subsequently led him to kill himself?
In the movie that later came out (I think it starred Glynnis O’Connor if my film memory is correct), she and Billie Joe were throwing their illegitimate child off the bridge. I haven’t seen the movie in ages though, so I don’t really remember more than that.
And yes, Fancy is most definitely a hooker. “Charmed” is just a nice euphemism for seduced or even snookered (tricked). To put it in present-day terms, she “played” a King, a Congressman, and an occasional Aristocrat. She became their call-girl, but in return she gained social mobility.
Nope. First, the movie and song are two differnt things. The illegetimate child supposition was one of the guesses about the object in the song. In the movie, they’re throwing her childhood doll off of the bridge. It symbolises her giving up childhood things and becoming a woman, and has little to do with Billie Jo’s suicide. Billie Jo kills himself because he’s gay, and can’t cope with the resulting inner conflict.
Bobbie and Billy go on a date, and she rejects his sexual advances. He later has a sexual encounter with a man, and, freaked out by the experience, confides in Bobbie. To “save” him, she offers herself to him, and he isn’t interested any more. This sets up the scene where they toss the doll off the bridge, symbolizing their loss of innocence, sexual and otherwise.
In the song, the object they toss off is a MacGuffin, and it doesn’t cause the suicide so much as foreshadow it.
On the OP, Fancy is definitely trading her sexuality for material gain, but I don’t think she’s a quid-pro-quo street-walker. It seems more like she’s easy for the right kind of man, i.e., one who will take her out to nice dinners, buy her presents, rent her an apartment.
Yes, she’s a prostitute, but there’s more than one kind.
This is sort of the point I was trying to make. I have known women who had "sugar daddies" as it were, but I wouldn't call them prostitutes by any means.
Forgive me if I am wrong. But isn’t a woman who gives sexual favors for monetary gain a prostitute? Be it for one man or 1000 men. Is it numbers that make a prostitute?
