Sheryl Crow: Female president should come with 'a shovel and high heels'

Sheryl Crow recorded a new song that is free to download -- but you might want to preview the track before writing it onto your hard drive.

The song, "Woman in the White House," is available for download, and you can also hear it on YouTube.

According to Crow, singing with her trademark country pop sensibility, "It's time to clean out Capitol Hill/With a shovel and pair of high heels" because we need "a little female common sense" on Pennsylvania Avenue.

She also extols the virtues of women's thriftiness and it's applicability to the presidency: "Well we like to spend money/But not money we ain't got/And we can balance a checkbook."

Writer, comedian and communications professional Emily Zanotti told Raw Story that while the sentiment was laudable, "Sheryl is trying too hard to reach across the aisle with the honky-tonk-ness of it all."

She agreed we need "more women in leadership positions, but I'm not sure this is the right marketing tool, unless the the right women have been hanging out in some pretty sketchy bars."

Anna Holmes, writer, editor, and founder of Jezebel, said the website "looks like a bad 'chick lit' title." The song itself, she continued, especially the reference to high heels and a shovel, sounded "Palinesque."

Crow's gendered arguments also rubbed many the wrong way, as she claims "There'll be a lot less fussing and fighting and carrying on/There'll be a lot more loving and listening and getting along" if a woman were president.

"She means well but this is actually sort of patronizing and gender essentialist and cutesy and dumb," Holmes said.

Culture blogger for ThinkProgress Alyssa Rosenberg said that the song doesn't quite hit the right notes for the qualities we need in a female commander-in-chief. She writes, "it sounds like Crow's calling for a First Housewife, a Mom In Chief, rather than a president. Leave the high heels, take the campaign finance reform."

Amanda Marcotte, writer and editor of , agreed, telling Raw Story, "Women deserve to be in power alongside men not because we're more empathetic or kinder or better listeners, but because we're equal to men. If you're looking for someone who plays nice and shares, you aren't going to find it in a politician, male or female."

Listen to the song on YouTube below.

With additional reporting by Megan Carpentier.

[Image: Featureflash via Shutterstock.com]