Spend enough time in honky tonks and you start realizing there are certain people who seem to show up everywhere. There’s the woman who has been dancing longer than half the room has been alive and can tell within eight counts that you have no idea what you’re doing. There’s the woman who drove three hours because she heard somebody was playing a good set in a town she’s never visited. Then there’s the one who arrives dressed like the evening has a dress code nobody else was informed about and somehow knows twelve people before she makes it to the bar. Somewhere along the way, those women became Yeehaw Meemaw, Ramblin’ Ma’am, and Honky Tonk Honey—and naturally, instead of simply appreciating the joke, we built an unnecessarily thorough personality quiz to determine which one you are.
The truth behind it is that women have always been a huge part of what makes honky-tonk culture worth preserving. They’re dancers, musicians, bartenders, regulars, road warriors, fashion historians, dance-floor enforcers, and frequently the only people keeping a room full of men from looking completely helpless. Some of my favorite nights involve dancing with the grannies. Give me the 70-year-old woman who has been two-stepping since before I was born and has absolutely no patience for whatever nonsense I thought I knew. She doesn’t need a lesson, she needs me to keep up. I’ve learned more about dancing—and probably life—from women who grab your hand, say “No, honey,” and physically put you where you were supposed to be than I ever have from somebody counting out loud.
That’s really where the three personalities came from. Yeehaw Meemaw isn’t necessarily somebody’s grandmother; she’s a state of mind. She knows better, came prepared, and has already formed an opinion about the DJ. Ramblin’ Ma’am is the woman who thinks “two hours away” is a perfectly reasonable distance to drive for live music and considers an itinerary more of a loose accusation. Honky Tonk Honey understands that preserving traditional country music and looking damn good while doing it are not mutually exclusive pursuits. The quiz gets into all of it—roadside bars, rhinestones, George Strait, questionable Nashville decisions, Willie Nelson, line dancing, and even the uncomfortable reality that most of us have probably complained about Luke Bryan while knowing considerably more Luke Bryan lyrics than we'd like entered into the public record.
So take the quiz, send it to the women you go dancing with, and argue about the results like responsible adults. The whole thing is meant to be funny, but there’s some genuine appreciation underneath it. Honky tonks would be considerably duller places without the women who fill the dance floors, request the songs, drag their friends out, teach the next generation, preserve the traditions, and occasionally inform the rest of us that we’re doing it wrong. And if you get Yeehaw Meemaw, wear the title proudly. In my experience, she’s probably the best dancer in the building anyway.