It was Madeleine Albright who said, “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” Yet it was Taylor Swift who became associated with that aphorism in 2013, after an interview with Vanity Fair that mentioned Katie Couric as telling her about this quote (without Swift actually bothering to mention the original source). Which was ostensibly applied to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler making a joke about her love life during the 2013 Golden Globes that they were hosting that year. While Swift might have been overly dramatic (as usual) in how she chose to wield the famed quote, Olivia Rodrigo (an erstwhile Swift “protégée” before she seemed to stop gushing about her altogether and went in a more alt-rock musical direction) is not.
For while that specific adage isn’t mentioned in “Serena Joy,” her latest single (a song that was scrapped from You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love because it didn’t quite fit with the album’s overarching theme), its sentiment is all over the seething, brooding lyrics that chastise the sort of women who are complicit in ensuring that patriarchy prevails. Women, in short, who are just like Serena Joy from The Handmaid’s Tale (hence, the song title). And, as readers and/or watchers of the narrative are well-aware, things didn’t turn out so well for “SJ” by being such a strong advocate for men. Or rather, men who hate women and despise the notion of them ever being considered equal or having anything like human rights.
While it’s unclear if Rodrigo is basing her version of Serena Joy on Bruce Miller’s TV adaptation or Margaret Atwood’s original novel, the effect remains the same (though it should be noted that, in the book, Serena Joy is, in contrast to the TV character, an older woman around her sixties/seventies whose rage and resentment stems partially from her child-bearing years being over). And that effect is to highlight that the kind of women who work to promote “ideals” rooted in misogyny and patriarchy do so at their own peril. For, karmically speaking, they’re condemned to be bitten in the ass by that sort of complicity sooner or later.
A recent “in real life” example of that was Pam Bondi, thrown to the wolves by a certain Orange Creature/Overlord in April. And shortly before her, Kristi Noem. Not to say that the Orange Creature/Overlord doesn’t have some women he’ll “keep around” in the long run. Namely, Melania T***p and Amy Coney Barrett—though even wives who know where the bodies are buried and Supreme Court justices can be replaced in the real-life Gilead that is the U.S. right now. Yet the Orange Creature/Overlord’s female lackeys are hardly the first of their kind. Before them, there were also Serena Joy-esque women like Sarah Palin, Condoleezza Rice and Phyllis Schlafly. The latter is among the most notorious for betraying “her own kind,” going so far as to campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment being ratified to the Constitution. Indeed, her crusade surely helped with preventing the ERA from ever officially gaining written recognition in the Constitution to this day. Or, as political scientist Jane J. Mansbridge said, “Many people who followed the struggle over the ERA believed—rightly in my view—that the Amendment would have been ratified by 1975 or 1976 had it not been for Phyllis Schlafly’s early and effective effort to organize potential opponents.”
And if even something like the ERA couldn’t “warrant” genuine, legally-binding inclusion in the Constitution, it’s no wonder a Supreme Court ruling like Roe v. Wade could be overturned. A stomach-churning development that took place in June of 2022. The same month, Rodrigo made her first appearance on the Glastonbury stage, where she chose to include in her setlist a performance of “Fuck You” with Lily Allen (as it is her song, after all) in response to the horrifying news. It was arguably this moment that cemented her as a spokesperson for the cause of women’s reproductive rights as she opened the performance by saying, “At the end of the day, they truly don’t give a shit about freedom. This song goes out to the justices, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. We hate you.”
Two years after this literal “fuck you,” Rodrigo would go on to establish her Fund 4 Good (that name an homage to one of her debut album’s hits, “good 4 u”) in 2024 to coincide with the kickoff of her Guts World Tour. In the past few months, Rodrigo has ramped up her advocacy for pro-choice organizations, including the Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood, by interviewing various workers—whether in the healthcare or legal fields—associated with them to shed light and greater understanding about what’s at stake the longer that abortion remains limited and unsafe for women.
So it is that Rodrigo has funneled her anger about what’s been escalating ever since a certain misogynist took office through channels that can potentially make a difference and help those who have been feeling the strain of these archaic and inhumane laws. “Serena Joy” is part of that anger, expressed instead through her artistic medium of choice. And it’s a song that, despite its initially “jaunty” sound (courtesy, as usual, of Dan Nigro)—complete with the same post-punk-meets-New Wave (a.k.a. The Cure) tone present on most of You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love—finds Rodrigo pulling no punches. Certainly not as she alludes to the kind of women who are similar in mindset to the aforementioned ilk, with lyrics that goad from the perspective of both the Serena Joy types and the women on the frontlines of fighting for their rights. Case in point, “While they’re out on the streets/Man, we’re having a ball/Come in close, come in close/Come a little bit closer/Sing along, sing along/What they tell you to do.”
This is then counterpointed by, “If they do it to them, then they’ll do it to you…/They’re gonna do it to you/Have a Coke and a smile.” That latter line a nod to the Coke slogan that first materialized in 1979 and later evolved to take on a sarcastic, sneering sort of meaning. One that essentially translates to, “Shut the fuck up and stop complaining.” The slogan, as it were, that everyone involved in the current administration wants women especially to adhere to. Particularly when it comes to the matter of abortion rights. But with “Serena Joy,” women and pro-choice/pro-feminist (which, to reiterate, refers to people who want equality for all genders) advocates pushing back against this oppression have a new battle cry to sing on the picket lines. Whether that means out in the street or performed in other behind-the-scenes ways.
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