6 Most Sexist Songs of the '60s

The 6 Sexistiest Songs of the ’60s — #1

Wives and Lovers – Jack Jones (1963)

Hey! Lit­tle Girl
Comb your hair, fix your makeup
Soon he will open the door
Don’t think because there’s a ring on your finger
You need­n’t try anymore

For wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
I’m warn­ing you…

Day after day
There are girls at the office
And men will always be men
Don’t send him off with your hair still in curlers
You may not see him again

For wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
He’s almost here…

Hey! Lit­tle girl
Bet­ter wear some­thing pretty
Some­thing you’d wear to go to the city and
Dim all the lights, pour the wine, start the music
Time to get ready for love
Time to get ready
Time to get ready for love

****

Here we are.  The most sex­ist song of the 1960s.  “Wives and Lovers” by Jack Jones.  It’s prob­a­bly the most obscure song on the list, but I think you will agree that it deserves to be at the top.  This has every­thing a per­son could hope for in a sex­ist ‘60s song.  Order­ing women around?  Check.  Empha­siz­ing that a woman’s place is in the home?  Check.  Reit­er­at­ing that it’s only nat­ur­al for men to sleep around?  Check.  Offer­ing demean­ing advice to do every­thing you can to please your man and warn­ing that he’ll leave you if you don’t?  Check.  Veiled threats of vio­lence?  Check­mate.  It’s like Burt Bacharach and Hal Davis (who wrote the song and should get their fair share of the cred­it) dis­tilled sex­ism in its purest form and smeared it all over Jack Jones smil­ing, white teeth.  And speak­ing of Jack Jones — his con­de­scend­ing, smarmy, yet total­ly earnest and chip­per deliv­ery is half of what makes “Wives and Lovers” stand above all the oth­er sex­ist songs – like a man stand­ing above a woman after he slapped her for not hav­ing din­ner on the table when he came home from a hard day at the office.  And his dul­cet tones – it’s no won­der this song won him a Gram­my for Best Vocal Performance…

The curi­ous thing for me is the style of the song.  Even for the 1960s, this song sounds pret­ty dat­ed, and makes me think of Frank Sina­tra (who, inci­den­tal­ly, also cov­ered this song — as did Dionne War­wickAndy WilliamsElla Fitzger­ald,  among many oth­ers).  It’s like a throw­back to the 1940s, which makes me think there is a trea­sure trove of sex­ist songs from that era that I don’t know about.  Sex­ist songs of the ’40s… now that’s a list I’d like to see!

So, there you have it.  Just a lit­tle reminder, from me to you, that you’ve come a long way, baby!

 

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As a spe­cial bonus for putting up with this list, here is Jack Jones’ poor­ly-con­ceived dis­co ver­sion of “Wives and Lovers” from 1979. Enjoy!

58 thoughts on “The 6 Sexistiest Songs of the ’60s — #1

  1. Tech­ni­cal­ly, what might be said to be the “intent” of the advice — to not take your spouse (or part­ner) for grant­ed — is excel­lent advice. The thing is — it is a two way street. What woman wants a guy who does­n’t make an effort? A strong mar­riage requires both spous­es to make a 100% effort in lots of areas. So while keep­ing up in one’s appear­ance is gen­er­al­ly appre­ci­at­ed by one’s spouse, so are being con­sid­er­ate, lis­ten­ing skills, shar­ing inter­ests, shar­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties, and so on. While the song is sex­ist and a sign of how things were, even then a good mar­riage was more than just look­ing good. But it was a sign of the times — I think you missed the biggest affront — call­ing a wife a “lit­tle girl”.

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  2. This song was writ­ten to pro­mote a movie of the same name. It’s apro­pos for the movie. Many women have sung it as well. Per­haps a lit­tle research on the song might have been in order. By the way, the song was writ­ten by Burt Bacarach and Hal David. It’s their song.

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    1. Thanks for writ­ing in, DG. It appears that you did­n’t see my com­ments under the song. I gave Burt Bacarach and Hal David full cred­it (or blame) for the cre­ation of the song. I also point­ed out that it was cov­ered numer­ous times by dif­fer­ent artists (includ­ing women) and pro­vid­ed links to their per­for­mances. I’d like to think that I did a fair amount of research. As for it being part of a movie, I feel that is irrel­e­vant to the fact that it is extreme­ly sexist.

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  3. Glad you includ­ed that gaw­daw­ful Wives and Lovers to occu­py the #1 spot. I would have sug­gest­ed that if you had­n’t. Also check out some of the jin­gles from prod­uct ads from the six­ties. The one from Lux soap: A wom­an’s born to soft­ness and that’s the way it is. A soft and mag­ic crea­ture a man can call his. This one I find espe­cial­ly repulsive.
    ,

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  4. This was quite enter­tain­ing. I don’t know why — but I woke up singing this song this morn­ing. My dad used to lis­ten to this song when I was a lit­tle girl. I could­n’t quite remem­ber the lyrics — but I thought, “that sounds so sex­ist.” So nat­u­ral­ly — when I googled the lyrics — I found this site.
    lol
    Thank you for the chuckles.

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  5. Kudos for you post­ing. I remem­ber this song as a kid and thought “I don’t want a rela­tion­ship like that!!”

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    1. Geez. I love the song — thank good­ness women are embrac­ing their fem­i­nin­i­ty again because at the end of the day : it’s about love.

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      1. I loved this song when I was lit­tle. I agree it’s sex­ist but it’s say­ing just because you mar­ried the guy, don’t let your­self go. It’s a mes­sage to the woman, but he should­n’t either is implied. You should keep it alive and he should too. It nev­er con­dones infi­deli­ty. He sees women at work that may be com­ing on to him and you should not let them be com­pe­ti­tion. It is sex­ist but in fun, just like “Any Man of Mine” by Sha­nia Twain.

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      2. LMAO — what kind of *con­trol­ling* love is that?! The dude full-on says he wants to sleep with women at the office… how sad for you.

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  6. One of the most ridicu­lous and annoy­ing ideas that misog­y­nis­tic men have tried to force into being accept­ed as fact is the bla­tant lie that men were “nev­er meant for monogamy.” It’s that utter and com­plete garbage they’ve been using for ages as an excuse to jus­ti­fy bad behav­ior and to take the blame off of them­selves. “It’s not my fault I screw any­thing that walks upright, I’m just a guy! It’s in my genes to sew my wild oats near and far! That’s how the cave­men did it! I am in no way respon­si­ble for my own actions and you’re just a needy, nag­ging, b!tch if you insist I choose between you or every oth­er bipedal crea­ture. Maybe you need a reminder of where your place is.《SLAP!》Now go get sup­per started.

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    1. *Oh, and we must­n’t for­get the dou­ble stan­dard. He should be allowed to be with how ever many women he wants with­out con­se­quence or objec­tion, but if she so much as looks at anoth­er man (and even if she did­n’t but he is con­vinced she did) she should expect noth­ing short of a beat down. And she must­n’t get upset because she knows she deserved it.
      It’s the whole Madon­na-Whore complex.

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      1. It’s amaz­ing how trig­ger­ing this song is to some people.

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      2. It’s amaz­ing how trig­ger­ing this song is to some people.

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  7. This old song went very well with crip­pling stilet­to heels, lots of cleav­age and woman dress­ing almost naked, often in faux bondage. And of course-thanks to the 70’s- women are free from all of these restric­tions today, so we don’t need trou­ble our lit­tle heads any more about this garbage. Oh dear… no, hang on… wait a minute…!

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    1. As I was read­ing your post I got where you were going and start­ed to chuck­le. I agree, if any­thing, we are pro­mot­ing an even worse sce­nario now! I refer to music videos, lit­tle girls cloth­ing and the fact that peo­ple born in the 30s to 50s are still walk­ing around keep­ing that men­tal­i­ty alive and well along with pass­ing that Nean­derthal atti­tude down to the next generation!

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  8. Yeah, but it real­ly swings. Like music from the 60’s, not the 40’s. Great song.

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  9. Lis­ten to the hep stars song “sun­ny girl”, writ­ten by ABBAs very own Björn Ulvaeus. “She’s domes­tic, she’s prop­er­ty, she’s sweet like reed”.

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    1. Under My Thumb” was on my mind when I made this list, but as I wrote in my intro, “In terms of the music, it helped if the songs were guile­less, earnest, cheer­ful and not at all sexy (which is why the Rolling Stones’ “Under My Thumb” is not on the list).”

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  10. In the first “For Bet­ter or Worse” strip, we see the strip’s hero­ine, Elly Pat­ter­son, vac­u­um­ing in a bathrobe and slip­pers. The song Wives and Lovers comes on and Elly smash­es the radio and keeps on vacuuming.

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  11. I don’t care who wrote the song.ok When­ev­er I think of Burt Bacharach, from now on I’ll think of pigs. Chau­vin­ist pigs. And I’ll be hun­gry for bacon, but not from him.

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  12. Yes the lyrics are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a time. So were many lyrics of the ’50s ‑60’s. In the 60’s women felt lib­er­at­ed to be open to sex­u­al­i­ty. “Men will always be men”, Don ‘t be neive, Hal David tossed that in as an inside line. The secret to the hit; a pump­ing brass line w/ a 3/4 to 6/8 jazz beat. You can dance to this tune. Ladies, light­en up.

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    1. Murph — I love what you said. I’m a woman and I play jazz piano and I can not get enough of play­ing that tune. It’s embed­ded into my reper­toire I don’t care WHAT the lyrics are. It’s that good.

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  13. Its a fan­tas­tic song — you women should get back to being women and be a lit­tle bit more appre­cia­tive of your men

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    1. Tru daht, Waz­zap, such a snazzy tune. And I’ll get right to mak­ing that ham sam­mich for ya — while you pay all my bills, take me out to din­ner and buy me nice clothes & jew­el­ry. :snick­er:

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  14. I don’t think any­one real­izes that Wives & Lovers isn’t actu­al­ly being sin­cere. This wasn’t prop­er even back in the 60s. It’s sex­ism was pur­pose­ful and sup­posed to be tak­en tongue in cheek back as it was writ­ten for inclu­sion in a com­e­dy about cheat­ing. Today’s gen­er­a­tion is tak­ing it a bit too seri­ous­ly (from Mad Men) not actu­al­ly under­stand­ing what it was actu­al­ly like back in the 60s. This may seem incred­i­ble to mil­lenials, but back in the 60s, we had big fem­i­nist and racial equal­i­ty move­ments back then too. We weren’t cul­tur­al­ly walk­ing around unaware drag­ging our knuckles.

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    1. Very good point, julie651. Some­times con­text gets lost as time goes by, espe­cial­ly when one part of a pop-cul­ture piece (in this case, the song) has out­last­ed anoth­er (the movie). And your point about the ’60s equal­i­ty move­ments should be remem­bered as well. Thanks for writing!

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  15. I heard the song a week or so ago on Pan­do­ra and could­n’t believe how sex­ist it was. Since then Wives and Lovers has been part of a dis­cus­sion group on Social Con­flicts in Amer­i­ca, and con­ver­sa­tions with my wife and oth­ers who remem­ber it from the 60s. The Har­vey Wein­stein thing makes the song push even more but­tons since so many women or girls at any time have remained silent about sex­ist offenses.

    I frankly don’t know where to put the lyrics…as a satire of the time…as an offen­sive joke ofvthe time…a state­ment of rela­tion­ships at a point in time.…or a real feel­ing that men will always have about women and their wives. I think the song may be some­thing for men and women to think about. Is that what men real­ly want even today? 

    At the risk of being male, I think that there is some truth in the song that men can’t cov­er up or admit to.…and women need to real­ize (awful as that sounds).

    Any com­ments.

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    1. I am a stone cold fem­i­nist. But I like to look good for me. And the man I am mar­ried to. The song is dat­ed, but like so many cul­tur­al and social habits of the 50’s and 60’s, it has some mer­it. In those days it was not unusu­al for peo­ple to think, “Now I am mar­ried. I don’t have try [to look good] any­more.” We all know that is untrue, espe­cial­ly now when peo­ple do not have to even get mar­ried to live togeth­er and can get divorced with no social stig­ma. If you are liv­ing with some­one, make your­self presentable.

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      1. Gosh, I wasn’t sup­posed to take it seri­ous­ly? I was a cute young mom I the 60’s mad­ly in love with my hand­some hus­band. I loved that song and would take the time before he walked in the door to look good, for him and for me, and to be ready for love. I would do it again. Don’t tell my frumpy lib­er­at­ed sisters.

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  16. I was 10 when “Time To Get Ready For Love” was released,and though it was about a mid­dle-to-upper-mid­dle-man­age­ment type who might be tempt­ed by his (in those days,inevitably) blonde sec­re­tary if his wife became slovenly,in this era of sex­u­al harass­ment charges lead­ing to the fir­ing of all man­ner of executives,the
    boys’ club atmos­phere of that era would­n’t fly with women (and men) on Jan.3,2018.

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  17. Excuse me,“Wives And Lovers” is the cor­rect title,but every­thing else I typed is accu­rate!!! By the way,where is Jack Jones today?

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  18. I won­der how many men actu­al­ly come home from a hard day at the office “ready for love?” Prob­a­bly more like a bour­bon than wine and a list a chores need­ing to be done. Sounds like “lit­tle girl” is set­ting her­self up for disappointment.

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  19. I remem­ber this song well. I also remem­ber the 60s. Dur­ing those “dark age” years, peo­ple had the mind­set exact­ly like the lyrics state. We lived in a man’s world and women were treat­ed as sec­ond class cit­i­zens. Many of you may be too young to remem­ber those times. Pri­or to 1975, women could NOT get cred­it in their own name, could not buy a car or get a check­ing account with­out their hus­band’s “per­mis­sion.” Let that sink in, as you lis­ten to those demor­al­iz­ing lyrics.

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    1. What’s the prob­lem ? If you mar­ried the right guy, you would­n’t have to wor­ry about it ! hahahahaha

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  20. In the same year one of my favorite songs came out, ‘You Don’t Own Me” sung by Leslie Gore . This said it all and coun­tered the above men­tioned song. This song was sung by a younger per­son and addressed to teenagers. The oth­er was geared towards the “house­wife” . It shows how the younger gen­er­a­tion back then would think about rela­tion­ships and marriage .

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  21. I like the Sina­tra ver­sion and I was born a fem­i­nist. His deliv­ery does­n’t seem to imply ‑to my ear — any­thing being read into it.
    “Don’t think of your­self as a sex­less frump, you’re still some­body’s baby”. Imag­ine say­ing the reverse?
    “That’s it mar­ried peo­ple- LET your­selves go. No one cares what you look like any­way. Your part­ner will nev­er look at any­one at work either because he’s sex­less now too.”

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  22. Darn right it’s sexist.I was mar­ried in 1965 at 16 to a com­men­su­rate mom­ma’s boy.She told him he could and SHOULD make my life HELL.She’s been dead for years, and he’s still cling­ing to her muti­lat­ed rules.But hey.… Now I fight back, and he is the one get­ting HELL.

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  23. Born in the 50’s, couldn’t stand the song back then, no change today. Here’s some info about Jack Jones (grant­ed, he didn’t write the song, but he was enam­ored with it, as it suit­ed his style).
    “Jones has been mar­ried six times. In the sec­ond half of the 1960s, Jones had a well-pub­li­cized rela­tion­ship with actress Jill St. John and the two were briefly mar­ried. In the ear­ly 1970s, Jones mar­ried Gretchen Roberts. Sub­se­quent­ly, he was linked roman­ti­cal­ly to British actress Susan George. From 1976 to 1982, he was mar­ried to Kathy Sim­mons. From 1982 to 2005, he was mar­ried to British-born Kim Ely and they had a daugh­ter, Nicole (born in 1991). The singer has anoth­er daugh­ter, Crys­tal Thomas, from a for­mer mar­riage to Lee Fuller. Jones lives with wife Eleono­ra in Indi­an Wells, in River­side Coun­ty, California.[12]”
    Guess he couldn’t find his per­fect “lit­tle girl.” Bleh.

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  24. Vive la Dif­fer­ence, men, but don’t extend that notion to demean­ing women. Of course, men are gen­er­al­ly stronger, more aggres­sive and sub­ject to over­play­ing their hand. Men would ben­e­fit from treat­ing women as humans instead of as prop­er­ty… which we still don’t do as a soci­ety . They would more deeply enjoy the dif­fer­ences. As a male of the 1970’s and a clear rec­ol­lec­tion of the 60’s this song was all over the air­waves cir­ca ’63. Since then, we have, as a soci­ety, grown, but many men still treat women as prop­er­ty or per­son­al pos­ses­sions. We may not be the only mam­mals to behave that way, but humans have the poten­tial and, I would hope, the desire to change cus­toms and mores by SELF-moti­va­tion. As much as we may deny it, we are still vic­tims of social­iza­tion and hor­mones. Too bad, it may take anoth­er gen­er­a­tion or two to approach the lofty goal of true equal­i­ty. Some men…and women will always be neo-Nean­derthals… Vive la difference !!!!!

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  25. This is amazing. 🙂

    I looked up this song because it’s cur­rent­ly on rota­tion on my radio sta­tion (I blog from 55 years ago at galacticjourney.org; KGJ is one of our aux­il­iary projects) and boy is it awful. You hit the nail right on the head.

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  26. I total­ly agree with you about Wives and Lovers! That song was on the radio when I was a 5 or 6, and I thought it was awful then! My mom would spend all day tak­ing care of three babies, and then this song would come on and remind her that she might not be per­fect enough for Dad when he got home?

    Offen­sive and loath­some beyond belief…

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  27. ladies — light­en up?!”
    See,that’s just it. Every­one is ban­ning Seuss’ books rt now for being racist– yet any time a HIGHLY Offen­sive some­thing-or-oth­er against women comes out — we all need to get over it…
    This dude here is EVERY stereo­type dis­played in the song. Bravo!

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  28. Fun­ny how so many females–there are few “women” these days, such being an hon­orif­ic title bestowed tra­di­tion­al beings who choose to retain their virtue and sub­mit then mar­ry strong men (of whom there are just as few, if not few­er) in their youth, there­by putting oth­ers before themselves–are so quick to label rea­son­able expec­ta­tions and account­abil­i­ty as “sex­ist” because they’re unwill­ing to see the trans­ac­tion­al nature of love, mar­riage, and fam­i­ly rearing.

    If a man is will­ing to work his ass off so you don’t have to, the least you can do is have a warm meal wait­ing for him, keep the house clean and dish­es washed, greet him when he returns, make your­self pre­sentable so he’s not embar­rassed to be seen with you in social sit­u­a­tions, keep an uplift­ing and sup­port­ive mood so the weight of hier­ar­chy and hard­ship isn’t wors­ened, stay phys­i­cal­ly fit so that he’ll remain sex­u­al­ly attract­ed to you for both your sakes, and “put out”. That last one is CRITICAL to main­tain­ing long-term rela­tion­ships and it’s found that cou­ples who have sex dai­ly, if not every oth­er day, report high­er lev­els of over­all rela­tion­al hap­pi­ness and stay togeth­er longer.

    Obvi­ous­ly, men should do THEIR part by work­ing hard to be sole providers, stay­ing fit to be an object of sta­tus and jeal­ousy their wives can tote among friends and fam­i­ly and even more plea­sur­able to screw, stay emo­tion­al­ly strong and stal­wart through tough times so that he can main­tain the myth of uncon­quer­able man­li­ness that’s a com­fort to ben­e­fi­cia­ries, and com­pe­tent­ly lead the rela­tion­ship but, there’s lit­tle point in doing all that if you can­not get a tra­di­tion­al woman.

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  29. After see­ing Raquel Welch’s “per­for­mance” in the 1970 flick “Myra Breck­in­ridge,” I thought the lyrics “Day after day, there are girls at the office“should have been updat­ed to: “Day after day, there are girls in his orifice.”

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