Jman, that’s a way of looking at it I hadn’t thought of, and one I can both understand and appreciate. many thanks.
It kind of bugs me for a few reasons…
First off, people CAN and DO recover from troubled childhoods. We all have our traumas, and we all find ways to deal with them. Furthermore, there are plenty of strong, healthy and emotionally stable children growing up in single and double mother households. I resent the idea that people (and in this song, “girls” particularly) become damaged goods, unable to love or become proper women (lovers and then mothers), entirely because of their fathers.
Secondly, this song define women entirely by their relationships to men. The “woman” in this song has no thoughts or feeling in her own right. She is wholey a creation of her reactions to the men in her life. It kind of reminds me of the old style of looking at women as belonging to their fathers until they get a husband to belong to. This guy is upset that her father didn’t prepare her adequately for the next stages in life- “lover” and then “mother” (notice how neither of these words describe the actual woman, they describe her relationships).
In other words, he’s not concerned about the woman herself and any pain she might feel. He’s concerned that he can’t properly fulfill her roles towards men. Well, boo-hoo.
Thirdly, it relies on heavy gender stereotypes. A father is a “God”? Boys are “strong” and don’t have baggage that they bring in to relationships? And the role of the women in their life is to hang around being their emotional foils so they can “soilder on”? What the hell decade is this?
Fourthly, it’s pretty heavy on the enforced hetrosexuality. It forwards a worldview that all of society revolves around and relies on the pairing of males and females. It implies that there are these natural and universal set of human relations based entirely on gender with the key human interaction being men and women falling in love. I think we can all agree that human relationships and love is way more complicated and varied than that.
Finally, the passiveness of the song bugs me. Girs “become” lovers who “turn into” mothers? What are we, some kind of butterfly? In this song women drift passively from man to man, soaking up influences and uncontrollably acting them out like programmed robot.
Is John Mayer a raving sexist who wants to lock women up? Of course not. He’s just echoing the subltly sexist tropes that fill our society…kinds of like most pop musicians. Don’t think we’re out their trying to boycott him or anything. But it is useful to look a little bit closer at pop culture.
So have I, from the other side. The gentleman I’ve been dating for the past year and a half is superficially similar to my father – they’re both stubborn, competent engineers. There is a great difference, however, in the way they treat me, and the gentleman insists he is nothing like my father and that a nightmare I have that he’ll turn into my father is not something that’s going to happen. He isn’t like my father. Recent events in my life which have left me more dependent on others than I would have chosen to be have demonstrated that. Every so often, however, I have to keep the damage done by my father from interfering with my relationship with the gentleman who graces my life. Every so often, too, I must admit, I do have to tell the gentleman I sympathize with his desire to deck my father. I’ve had that urge a few times myself.
Here’s the thing though. Before I gave this gentleman my phone number, I had to undo the damage done to me by my father and others. I had to work out that I had merit and the right to be treated decently simply because of who I was, not who I was in relation to anyone else. A year before I met the gentleman, I was unexpectedly laid off. In the months following, I became suicidal several times because I thought I wasn’t any good to anyone and I thought my existence served no purpose. I still struggle with the notion that I, SDMB Siege, human being, have any merit in my own right and the gentleman can tell you, if he chooses that telling me I matter simply because I exist brought a denial and tears to my eyes. Frankly, I still struggle with that notion. This song, in which a woman is defined only by who she is in relation to others, doesn’t help with the idea that I have merit not because I’m my father’s daughter or my gentleman’s lady, but because I am myself.
By the way, **Friar Ted[/b, old friend, you do have my sympathies.
CJ
I just don’t much like the song. I don’t think it’s that sexist, maybe a little. It doesn’t feel like it has any application to my life, which is unusual for one of his songs. “Only Heart” and “Split Screen Sadness,” though–I’ve lived them and will probably continue to do so.
If I were to witness my friend saying to his son “Quit being a faggot!”, I would tell him not to call his son a “faggot”. That doesn’t mean that “Don’t call your son a ‘faggot’.” is complete parenting advice. This song is not intended to be complete parenting advice. On that same note, neither is “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys”.
[I can just hear the objections now: “Who is this guy telling mothers that they should force their sons to be doctors or lawyers? What’s wrong with being an engineer? Or a construction worker? Why can’t boys decided for themselves what to be? What a sexist asshole!” ]
It’s about a boy who is having problems with a girl. He finally comes to realize that the root of the problems is the girl’s shitty father and her shitty upbringing, and as a way of lamenting that fact, he admonishes fathers to treat their daughters well.
You people are reading way too much into this.
He’s got a point. It’s a John Mayer song. Sounds like there’s a certain ‘girls are fragile’ thing going on, but reading too much into it seems pointless.
A lovely song, sung lovely. What bothers me is the video. Most of it is a low key, black and white, minimalist closeup of Mayer singing. But it’s intercut with these closeups of, I dunno, someone’s “daughter.” But her makeup, the hot neon colors, and the chiaroscuro lighting all scream, “teen hooker.”
I don’t really like the song, relative to others on that album, for much the same reason as others in this thread, although if John was trying to express the idea( that “boys will soldier on” as opposed to girls who cannot) as something he believes in, a snapshot of something that occured to him once, or just as someone else in his situation might think, I can’t really say, but that doesn’t stop me from not liking the song even when I don’t know if he actually means what he sings.
On the other hand, the way the melody is written minimalizes the offensiveness. A naive view of gender roles is more acceptable when sung in a 70’s soul/folky type song.
For Christ’s sake. It’s a four minute song. Not Kinsey. Exactly what would you have pop artists write songs about?
That’s the only thing that bugs me about the song. I don’t find it offensive or sexist, I don’t find it a particularly good or bad song, I just don’t like the suggestion that people aren’t responsible for themselves by the time they’re adults. The singer realizes that his girlfriend is screwed up because of her upbringing, so he reprimands everyone else’s parents? I get it, but would rather hear a song reprimanding people about letting their childhoods negatively affect their adult relationships. Maybe I’ll go write one. 
Daughters reminds you of '70s soul???
I don’t know precisely how to put it. The sound that’s sort of like Paul Simon meets Costello’s Brutal Youth and Schoolhouse Rock, probably with a wah-wah guitar in the background, either that or an acoustic with a hint of organ. I’ve never heard it called anything. But the singing in those types of songs sounds a bit like 70s soul. That or folk rock. Which is where my term came from. If anyone knows precisely what I’m referring to, does the sound have a name? And doesn’t Daughters sound like it (well of course it does, otherwise it’s the wrong genre 
)
A bit more of a hint: in a lot of bits in that song, I detect a bit of a “sneer” in the voice (again, I don’t know how to put this,) that sounds like the singer had the mouth fixed open firmly, that I also heard in a lot of 70s stuff.
Now, the things is I usually LIKE John Mayer.
But this song drove me nuts. (1) It became the “let’s play this every hour” song for a radio station I listen to a lot. Or that is, I listen to it until it takes a song and turns it into a guaranteed channel flipper, which it did with this one.
(2) The whole song is not treating daughters as PEOPLE but as potential lovers who will turn into mothers.
(3) The chorus was very, very catchy and kept getting stuck in my head, which became a bad thing as I was developing a negative reaction to the song.
(4) The stanza about how you can mess up boys and they’ll be okay . . . sexist! In fact, sexist all around.
So my determination is: Sexist in the most part, but brilliantly catchy.
(Note that in past arguments about songs I have deemd the Rolling STones’ “UNder My Thumb” as “non-sexist” and James Taylor, or much of his oeuvre, as sexist. My criterion: can you turn it around?)
Actually, I’ve known two men well who lost their fathers when they were pre-teenagers, one to divorce and one to cancer. Both of them were deeply hurt by the loss and it has continued to affect them to some degree.
So, it’s a stupid pop song. On the other hand, given a choice between this song, anything by Janet Jackson, or anything by John Cougar Mellencamp, I’ll take this song. Better yet, I’ll take NPR or the off button!
C
For me, that is John Mayer’s music in general.
Bad message, bad music, bad lyrics. Cloying, repulsively and exaggeratedly sweet tone.
But it’s Mayer - I am in no way surprised.
The ‘boys you can break’ bit made me do a mental double-take the first time I heard it - ‘Is this moron actually advocating that child abuse is okay, as long as you spare the girls?’
I have since concluded it’s just the unfortunate, stupid choice of words by an unfortunate, stupid man.
To me, what Mayer is saying is that boys, on the whole, react to abusive parenting differently than girls do. Boys tend to be more stoic. He’s not saying boy don’t react to abusive parenting, much less that it’s OK to be abusive to boys. As he concludes that stanza, “But boys would be gone without the warmth from/ A womans good, good heart.”
Agreed.
I’m surprised no-one has brought it up but there is another level on which I’m offended by Mayer… He’s not a father, he’s just a snot nosed kid. Don’t fucking tell me how to raise my daughter until you’ve got one of your own and can speak from a point of some experience and not pure ignorance on the subject.
Mayer is a :wally
How nice.