Comments on: Then outsource it, dear Henry, dear Henry http://www.formerlyhot.com/2009/03/then-outsource-it-dear-henry-dear-henry/ The tween site for adults Mon, 21 May 2012 11:49:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7.1 hourly 1 By: Hugh Siegel http://www.formerlyhot.com/2009/03/then-outsource-it-dear-henry-dear-henry/comment-page-1/#comment-759 Hugh Siegel Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:43:03 +0000 http://www.formerlyhot.com/index.php/2009/03/26/then-outsource-it-dear-henry-dear-henry/#comment-759 It does seem a precedent to the unending stream of television commercials in which an inept or clueless husband is set straight by his better half, who always seems to have the savvy of an MBA and the confidence of an airline pilot. Those little cultural palimpsests seem to be about empowering women to be the domestic decision-makers (albeit with the cynical objective of luring them to purchase Product X). Perhaps there is simply a long tradition of this impulse in popular culture -- a way to evoke feminine power in what was traditionally a disempowered position. Or alternatively, it could just be a rehearsal for the roles heterosexual couples will fall into around the hearth. Of course, be that all as it may, we all know that the song is really a suggestive little mating dance in which the saucy Liza is giving Henry license to, er, fix her hole with his tools. ("Just bucket, already, Hank!") It does seem a precedent to the unending stream of television commercials in which an inept or clueless husband is set straight by his better half, who always seems to have the savvy of an MBA and the confidence of an airline pilot. Those little cultural palimpsests seem to be about empowering women to be the domestic decision-makers (albeit with the cynical objective of luring them to purchase Product X). Perhaps there is simply a long tradition of this impulse in popular culture — a way to evoke feminine power in what was traditionally a disempowered position. Or alternatively, it could just be a rehearsal for the roles heterosexual couples will fall into around the hearth.

Of course, be that all as it may, we all know that the song is really a suggestive little mating dance in which the saucy Liza is giving Henry license to, er, fix her hole with his tools. (”Just bucket, already, Hank!”)

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