Bette Davis Eyes


Kim Carnes, Bette Davis Eyes

In my youth, I assumed Bette Davis Eyes meant her eyes were very beautiful, but this review of the film Dead Ringer suggests to me that the eyes of Bette Davis were probably famous for being very expressive instead.

To be fair, the very first line of the song is Her hair is Harlow gold and the next three lines each list a body part with some kind of descriptor:

Her lips a sweet surprise
Her hands are never cold
She's got Bette Davis eyes

So I think the way the song is written, it's easy to assume it is a physical description of the woman, but it's mostly not. It's mostly a description of some woman's behavior and character or personality.

This realization makes the song even more of a delight for me. It's like a gem hiding in plain sight that probably got accepted by the world in part because I'm probably not the only person who didn't listen closely to the song and mistook it as an ode to a woman's physical beauty, thus a standard reinforcement of the status quo.

To be fair, I have trouble following song lyrics and I misheard She got Greta Garbo's standoff sighs as standup thighs. This misperception was no doubt influenced by my assumption that the song is a listing of all her body parts and their physical appeal but also by the fact that Greta Garbo's legs were insured by MGM studio for a million dollars in 1943 ($17,127,803.47 today).

I have also read that the description of Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby suggests that the most attractive detail about her is her voice, not her appearance. Although I have never read the book, that bit of trivia stuck with me because of a long history of comments about my voice.

In my youth, I somewhat often was told by someone I had just met "You have an interesting accent" and then I would enumerate the various influences on my accent -- German, Hoosier, military (yes, there is a "military accent"), Deep South. No one in The South seems to think I sound Southern, but when I get far enough west, I do sometimes get asked if I'm from The South, so I apparently have a very slight Southern lilt.

In my youth, I heard far too much about how a woman's looks are everything and nothing else mattered. That doesn't actually fit with my life experience, but it's hard to wash that off.

I wish the world did more to give women a variety of viewpoints. That's one of my goals for my writing.