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Tuesday 17 March 2020

A Necessary Gender Theory of Jenny Lewis' "Just One of the Guys"


While Jenny Lewis explicitly names three distinct gendered categories in her 2014 Voyager track, "Just One of the Guys" (the girls, the guys, ladies without a baby), one of the named genders mentioned therein (ladies without a baby) suggests the existence of a fourth distinct gender left unnamed (ladies with a baby).

Further evidence for the existence of a fourth Lewisian gender can be found in the singer's invocation of the possible supercategory of ladies, as in "I'm not gonna pay for you / That's not what ladies do," which would theoretically contain ladies with a baby and ladies without a baby both. That is to say, that whether a lady is with a baby or without a baby—a baby being an accessory to gender, rather than a discrete gender all its own—there are things that she simply does not do, including but not limited to: breaking for you, praying for you, or paying for you.


Ironically, partaking in any one of these three anti-lady activities would remove Lewis from the greater lady supercategory, potentially giving her license to join one of the other two named gendered categories that remain: the girls or the guys. (n.b.: Our friends, child brides, only sisters, and little cops describe circumstantial performances of or relating to gender in which any member of any gender might participate, rather than exclusive genders unto themselves; verbs not nouns, etc.)

"No matter how hard I try to be just one of the guys" would seem to imply that Lewis tries very hard to be one of the guys, but her lyrical admissions reveal a strict adherence to a gender system of her very own making, thus contradicting her stated desire "to be just one of the guys," which, one can only conclude, is merely a cover for her far more embarrassing want to be one of the unnamed.


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