Women Is Losers

Jennifer McKenna

Women Is Losers
by Janis Joplin
1968

One, two, three, four!
Oh ...
Now women is losers
Now women is losers
Women is losers, oh
And then women is losers.
You know, I know you must have heard it all,
I said now men always seem to end up on top of the world.
Oh!

Oh, you know, if they told you they want you
They come around by your door.
And I say now, if they don't desert you,
They'll leave you cryin' for more!

Women is losers
Now women is losers
Women is losers, oh!
And then women is losers.
N-now I know you must-a heard it all,
I said now, men always seem to end up on top of the world!
Alright, alright!

Remember you should be in confusion
They'll leave you when no one has thought to play.
They might say to watch out after your conduct
Why the hell there ain't another way, oh!

Women is losers
Women is losers
Women is losers, oh!
And then women is losers.
N-now I know you must-a heard it all,
I said now men always seem to end up on top of the world!

Oh, now they wear their nice shiny armor
Until there is a dragon for to slay.
And I say it depends,
Course with men beggin' to pay 'em
Then they'll turn and run away, oh!

Now women is losers
Yeah, women is losers
You women is losers, oh!
And then women is losers.
Hon I know you must-a heard it all,
I said Lord, men always seem to end up on top of the world.
Thank you.
(http://smironne.free.fr/JANIS/JOPLIN/box.html)

Janis Joplin was something of an enigma. She was born in Texas during the second World War and grew up in middle-class white America, but went on to become a blues singer. She and the band Big Brother and the Holding Company played a musical amalgamation of the blues, folk and psychedelic rock. She was a rock star when all the rock stars were men. She was a hedonistic bisexual during the period that newly liberated women were trying to define what equality and sexuality meant.
I love Janis Joplin. I first heard her catchier songs like "Mercedes-Benz" and "Me and Bobbie McGee" on the oldies stations my mom listened to her. I loved her voice. So I started to look into her music. This song appeared on one of her posthumous CD's: The Essential Janis Joplin.
Janis Joplin's feminism was very much a product of her times. Lilian Roxon, a music critic of the time, described Janis, saying that she "perfectly expressed the feelings and yearnings of the girls of the electric generation – to be all woman, yet equal with men; to be free, yet a slave to real love; to [reject] every outdated convention, and yet get back to the basics of life.” Janis never answered the questions, but she gave them a very distinctive voice. In "Women Is Losers", Janis examines the no-win situation many women felt they were in. They felt trapped between the old world order, where men were counted on to slay dragons and women were to watch their conduct, and a yet-undefined new world order. Despite the strides being made for gender equality, Janis felt that "men always seem to end up on top of the world".
I think her message is still relevant forty years later. It's been said that chivalry is dead, but for a woman to get ahead, she still has to act like a lady. Society is far more accepting of men who love 'em and leave 'em than it is of women. And it seems that even now, in the twenty-first century, men still end up on top, especially in terms of wealth and power.
Janis doesn't offer empowerment or suggest a way to right society's wrongs. She lived her own life in defiance of society's expectations -- and died before thirty of an accidental heroine overdose. She doesn't offer the answers, just the knowledge that every woman faces this same struggle.
I think we need more songs like this. I think people need to be exposed to a broader definition of feminism. There are too many stereotypes of feminists that Janis Joplin can't be pigeon-holed into. She wasn't a man-hater, she was looking for a better way. She wanted the freedom to live her life for herself, yet understood the loneliness that accompanied that. She once remarked that in her concerts she made love to ten thousand people, but she went home alone. She voiced the lack of balance that women often feel, the sense that every decision is the wrong one.
I love Janis Joplin. I'd have loved to see what she became if she had lived to see how the women's rights movement had progressed. I wonder what she would have thought of the world where there's a credible female presidential candidate. Her music still resonates with me because the questions she wrestled with still have no easy answers.

Additional resources:
http://www.rockhall.com/inductee/janis-joplin

http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/janisjoplin/biography

http://www.officialjanis.com/bio.html

http://www.janisjoplin.net/articles/?id=13

Jennifer McKenna