In anticipation of her new album Carnival Ride, American Idol winner
Carrie Underwood is doing some press, and what she wants us to know is that she’s not a dumb blonde. (Actually she wants the readers of Seventeen to know that she’s not a dumb blonde. But I doubt she wants us to believe she’s one, either.)
Here’s the full quote:
“It bugs me that because I’m a blonde from Oklahoma who sings country music, people think I’m stupid. People don’t give us Oklahomans credit. We don’t ride around in covered wagons! We have indoor plumbing. We’re smart, good people. I won’t say I’m business savvy, exactly, but I have common sense.”
I think that riding in a covered wagon is more a symbol of being from the 18th century than it is of being stupid. And, actually, it kind of bespeaks a bold, adventuresome nature — being a Western settler was not for the faint of heart!
But while I don’t believe this quote makes her look like a rocket scientist, I’ve never thought she was stupid. (Oklahoma, however, has spawned its share of rocket scientists and astronauts, including Dr. Shannon Lucid and Wiley Post, the first person to design and wear a space suit.) And I’ve actually never heard anyone else call her stupid. When I did a computer search, I didn’t find anyone insulting her, but I did find one unfortunate quote
of hers, “There’s not ever much of anything going on in my head.”
And I did find one unfortunate picture.
But there are not a lot of people publicly insulting her out there. But I don’t want to be dismissive of her personal experience.
If it sounds like I’m just mocking her here, I’m actually not. I like Carrie Underwood. I rooted for her on American Idol, both because I like country music and because I thought she was great, and I was glad when she won.
(If she had been responsible for choosing the single, “Inside Your Heaven,” I would have thought she was stupid, but I know that’s not her fault.) I have her first album. I listen to it, and I like it.
Here’s a video from it.
And the empirical evidence is on her side, too. Per her quote, there are certain smart people in and from Oklahoma. I may not agree with her politics, but nobody could accuse Jeane Kirkpatrick of being stupid.
And Alfre Woodard has always seemed bright.
Carrie Underwood was also the salutatorian of her high school class, and she graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University in Talequah. So, by purely academic standards, she’s not stupid.
The best evidence that she’s not a dumb blonde, however, is that she’s navigated and managed her almost instantaneous success with grace and without committing any notable public gaffes.
(Faith Hill, however, has not handled Carrie Underwood’s success with as much aplomb.)
If I were Carrie Underwood (and yet still retained my way of looking at the world), and I thought I was being perceived as a dumb blonde, I would cover Dolly Parton’s “Dumb Blonde.”
Here’s Dolly singing it in her first televised performance. I love her.
Or better yet, I’d ask Dolly to do a duet of it with me. (And now I completely want Carrie Underwood to do this because it would be so great. I’m going to write someone a letter.) That way she could acknowledge and dismiss the perception in one fell swoop.
Of course, Dolly has courted the dumb blonde perception as much as she’s disproved it and not everyone can manage her own PR as adroitly. But I have faith that Carrie has a certain amount of savvy.
I’ll leave you with Dolly’s best quote about being a dumb blonde. “I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb … and I also know that I’m not blonde.”
