Not only are the country music artists beating out every other mainstream music genre on the appreciation of strong women, their fans are happily building and jumping on the bandwagon. Brooks and Dunn have numerous platinum records. Raye's album, with "I Think About You" as the title track, debuted at number six on the Billboard Charts, eventually going platinum as well.

Think about the leaps and bounds the human race would have made if every man sitting in Hooters or someplace worse looked at the waitress and thought about how he would feel if his daughter or wife was employed there. Instead of making the personal political, as 60s feminists fought to do, Raye is taking the inverse step: making the political personal.

Now, when I turn on my radio, I'm freed of the guilt I had when I was a rock listener enjoying the beat but realizing that most of the music out there, especially by male artists, stereotypes and objectifies women. (Anyone think the Barbie song was a positive portrayal of women?)Instead I hear about the glories of strong, intelligent women from singers of both genders. Just picturing millions of other country music fans enjoying songs about these women is enough to send me racing to anywhere where people do the two-step.

I stopped listening to country music in high school, telling my best friend that when I heard one--just one--feminist country music song, I would come back to country. It was a woman who produced that first song a few years ago. But it's the men who turned me from a country listener to a country fan, and it's the men who make me think I want my sons and daughters to grow up in a community of country fans.

Strong, determined, and smart is sexy... Harvard women, it's about time to go country.

Valerie J. MacMillan '98, a former Crimson executive, is a government concentrator in Adams House. She two-steps and jitterbugs.