Soundtrack of My Life: Du Blonde on Peggy Seeger’s “I’m Gonna Be An Engineer”
Welcome Back to Milk is Out Now Via Mute
May 27, 2015
Beth Jeans Houghton
Soundtrack of My Life is our recurring series in which the artist writes about how a particular album, song, or artist helped get them through a tough time in their life, such as a break up, mourning a death, their first job, or otherwise impacted their life. For this edition of Soundtrack of My Life, Du Blonde (aka Beth Jeans Houghton) writes about Peggy Seeger’s 1979 song “I’m Gonna Be An Engineer” (which you can stream below). Beth Jeans Houghton’s debut album, 2012’s Yours Truly Cellophane Nose, was released under her own name, but 2015’s follow-up album, Welcome Back to Milk, has been released under the name Du Blonde and is a rawer record than the orchestral pop leanings of Yours Truly. Future Islands’ Samuel T. Herring provides guest vocals on “Mind Is On My Mind.” Read on as Houghton recounts discovering the song and how it reminded her of her grandmother.
I remember my mother playing me this song when I was a child. At the time it had a light-hearted positivity to it and I related to its overt sarcasm toward gender stereotypes. My childhood was one spent exploring wilderness and climbing trees. I kept garden snails as pets and my eyes widened as I pulled away the wrapping paper from an ant farm I had kindly been given for my birthday. My Saturdays were spent in battle with my brother, each of us behind a respective sofa, peashooter in hand. During my formative years there were no Barbies, in their place were remote control monster trucks and walkie-talkies. When I did finally did get my hands on a Pocahontas doll, I immediately cut her hair in an attempt to make her seem more real. My brother and I were given the same discipline, the same opportunities, and the same options when it came to toys, activities, and emotional support.
I was raised in an environment where the differences between men and women were based upon their singular personality traits, irrespective of gender. People were people, they were their personalities, they were their actions-not their gender, race, class, or sexual orientation. Stereotypes are taught by our parents and those we spend time with. If you’re lucky enough to avoid these teachings at an early age you will certainly meet with them later in life whether it be in school, a job, or with a new set of friends. Luckily I was well into high school before I really became aware of the severity of people’s judgments towards others based on anything but their character and personal decisions.
I grew up in the hands of hard working, kind and realistic people. My grandparents built their own house from scratch, they owned hardware and bike repair stores. They sailed the world, and in each and every endeavor, my grandma worked as hard as my grandfather, however menial or dirty the task at hand was, because, well… Why wouldn’t she? The day she entered a yacht master class, with the intention of learning how to sail a boat, she was asked by the tutor at the marine college, “You know this isn’t a knitting class, don’t you?” “Yes,” she replied, politely taking her seat in a room occupied solely by men. She subsequently passed her exam like a boss and became the first female yacht master in the North East, while many of the men in her class didn’t make the grade.
During a recent conversation with my mother, she recalled the day a man came to the door and asked to speak with the homeowner. “That’s me,” she said, the man pushed further, “No, your husband.” “I don’t have a husband and I own this home,” she replied and promptly shut the door.
The women in my family have always worked hard, they have been as good at their jobs as any man in their field and they have always stuck up for themselves and their rights as people. They were equal within their family, even if they were not deemed equal within society as a whole, and as a child, these were the relationships between people and work that I saw. So when, as a young girl, I heard “I’m Gonna Be An Engineer,” I heard confidence. I put my Grandmother’s face next to Seeger’s voice after a small lifetime spent watching her fix bikes and lay concrete. I thought the song was about the excitement of having dreams to fulfill, not the injustice of having those options taken away from you.
As an adult, I digest the contents of this song very differently. Where as a child I heard humor and sarcasm, I now hear the importance and seriousness of its place in reality.
I hear the underlying tone, hidden beneath the humor, that this idea that a woman is any different to a man in terms of capability in certain fields of work, is a view based solely in a world that has been created by the minds of those who give themselves the power to manipulate society and its children into believing these gender stereotypes, it is not based on nature, it is not based on fact.
The fact that this song still speaks volumes in terms of the state of gender equality, even in 2015, and is not an artifact of a history that we worked hard to, and managed to overcome, is truly disturbing.
So, in the words of Peggy Seeger:
“I been a sucker ever since I was a baby
As a daughter, as a mother, as a lover, as a dear
But I’ll fight them as a woman, not a lady
I’ll fight them as an engineer.”
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