By Deanne Revel
Wild Sweet Orange’s lead singer, Preston Lovinggood, says this of women today: “The modern woman is two things: (1) The Modern Woman is the new sexual animal and (2) The Modern Woman has the Great Wall of China wrapped around her heart, so, she is hard to talk to. If we pray, maybe it will turn into the Berlin Wall and fall.”
To me, Wild Sweet Orange is just another local band from my hometown of Birmingham, Ala., but over the past year, with an appearance on David Letterman and a song featured on “Grey’s Anatomy,” Wild Sweet Orange has developed a mainstream following. I was shocked then, when Bottletree Café, a hole-in-the-wall vegan restaurant and bar in Birmingham, advertised an intimate show with the band over the holiday break.
Lovinggood lives up to his name. Between songs, he asked the audience to raise their hands for a series of questions: “Is anyone in love? Has anyone found a new love? Is anyone engaged? Who here is married?” People raised their hands and screamed, but when Lovinggood asked anyone in the audience to come up on stage and testify their love stories, the crowd was silent. At this, Lovinggood merely replied, “Romance is a beautiful thing!” and began the next song.
I thought that his statements were just boozy musician talk – comparable to Faulkner’s boozy prose. His introduction to new song “Mascara Kara” proved otherwise. He said the song was about witnessing girls crying while driving on the highway or talking on their cell phone in a parking lot. This was an observation he made while in high school. Without any transition or segue, he made his aforementioned statement about “the modern woman.”
Ladies, are you a “modern woman?” Do you have a cold heart that is metaphorically protected by one of the most popular tourist destinations on the planet? If so, does this particular heart warm as a result of too much fornication caused by a new animal instinct that surpasses any male urge historically? If so, every now and then on the bypass do you reflect upon these adventures and have to stop at the local Publix and call your best girlfriend on your Sidekick while your Sephora mascara streams down your face? If so, would you consider this display an inspiring picture for a local musician who has recently been on David Letterman?
Seriously, who believes in the “modern woman” – or better, who accepts the “modern woman?” I get cougar vibes from Lovinggood’s first component, and creeper vibes from the second. Are college men OK with cougars and creepers? Can a cougar be a creeper? Yes.
SCAD student Robert McLean, with a pleased smirk on his face, says he is fine with a woman (a decade his senior) who approached him at a bar. However, when asked if he considers himself dominant or submissive, he says he’s dominant. “I like to be in control,” he says. But men must have to be sliding into some sort of submissive behavior for there to be such an increase in female forwardness.
From McLean’s response, it seems like, while men are pleased or entertained with women’s efforts, it is best for women to back off, because in one particular story he began talking about a praised cougar, but ended the tale on a very low creeper note. This was the tale of hooking up with his childhood babysitter – now that he is 20 and she is 26. That’s probably a little more animal than Lovinggood had in mind.
Am I a “modern woman?” No, I am not, but I like to think that I’m a moderate. When I go out, I give the medium-rare smile. This is the just-enough smile that lets a guy know that instead of making awkward eye-sex, I would like the guy to come over and say hello, ask me to dance or buy me a drink.
Note: If you are a generally happy, pleased person, or if you have a natural, neutral smile, be careful in large social gatherings. You may be using the medium-rare smile unconsciously. When the cross-eyed and haggard Jolly Green Giant walks up with a gin-and-tonic as if it were your idea, it’s hard to break the news that, while your eyes were staring at the guy behind him, your smile may have accidentally landed on the cross-eyed and haggard Jolly Green Giant.
Maybe I do make the first move, but I think that when a guy takes my glance as a cue and approaches me, he makes the first official move. Eye-sex is coincidental chance. Smiling at someone is just a small decision and, comparatively, approaching someone is monumental. As such, I applaud the “modern woman,” but I am happy to be the destination – not the traveler.
