“I’m just another lady without a baby.”
Jenny Lewis’ delivery of this line in “Just One of the Guys,” the third song on her new album, The Voyager, is quiet, yet powerful. She seems almost to be taunting the listener, or possibly to be imitating someone she once heard describe her. In the video for the song, Lewis’ face is serious as she leads up to this sentence, and the camera zooms in on her face. But, the minute she begins to utter the phrase, her lips widen into a smile–an inside joke with herself, perhaps–and she begins to dance.
The Voyager has been making waves since its release on July 29. It’s Lewis’ first solo project in 8 years, and most reviews are overwhelmingly positive. Jeff Himmelman at the The New York Times writes that Lewis has “depth and soul.” SPIN rated the album a 9 out of 10, referring to Lewis as “one of our foremost chroniclers of heartache and its discontents.” NPR calls it “an album to spend time with.” And nearly every review mentions “Just One of the Guys.”
When it was posted on June 15, the video for the song, which Lewis directed herself, received over a million views and is now closing in on 3 million. The video opens with an all-female band, made up of Lewis and actresses Kristen Stewart, Anne Hathaway, and Brie Larson–all of whom Lewis calls friends. By the beginning of the first refrain, (“No matter how hard I try to be just one of the guys/There’s a little something inside that won’t let me”), Lewis’ glamorous all-female cast has transformed into male caricatures. Anne Hathaway glances up from behind a mustache and Adidas fitted cap, a rattail hanging from the back of her neck. The rest of the group, all similarly dressed in drag, follows her.
Chloe Stillwell at Music.mic calls the video “exactly what feminism in music should look like,” and Huffington Post writer Jessica Goodman writes, “let’s give Jenny Lewis all the music awards right now for ‘Just One of The Guys.’” But, some bloggers are less certain about Lewis’ message. Alexandra Brodsky at Feministing.com commented that she’s “just not really seeing the irony” in Lewis’ message. Brodsky writes:
If we take the lyrics on their face, this is Jenny Lewis announcing women are fundamentally different than men because — and only because — they can have babies…And by that reading, the drag isn’t really blurring any gender lines but reifying them: paired with those lyrics, the half-hearted wardrobe-swapping appears to ridicule the idea of “women acting like men” rather than challenge gender roles.
Lewis’ interest in masculine dress extends beyond the video, however. Himmelman writes that recently “Lewis has taken to wearing airbrushed suits for her live shows, rather than the sexier get-ups she used to wear onstage; she has said she feels ‘androgynous’ these days and wants her costume to reflect that.” Lewis’ female cast of characters, too, has its roots in personal experience. Himmelman reports that in contrast to her earlier days collaborating with mostly men, Lewis is now seeking women musicians to play with and that the crew that shot the video for “Just One of the Guys” was comprised of only women. The inspiration for the female band came from Robert Palmer’s 1985 “Addicted to Love” video. In contrast to Palmer’s band, however, Lewis’ women break free from their heavily made-up solemn faces and have some fun, liberating themselves from the viewer’s expectation with every new move.
Still, Brodsky’s critique may stand. Despite an interest in androgyny and female camaraderie, Lewis doesn’t seem entirely confident in her own feminism. Himmelman writes that Lewis told him “she didn’t like to talk about feminism…and in particular the trend of women criticizing one another for not being feminist enough.” Himmelman reports that Lewis asked him, “‘What does it matter what I think of Lana Del Rey?’” For anyone who’s forgotten, Del Rey told Fader she didn’t think feminism was an “interesting concept,” and that she’s more interested in “you know…what’s going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities.”
While I agree with Lewis that the feminist community sometimes splits hairs too much, and that people shouldn’t feel policed in their beliefs, I was pretty disheartened to hear that Del Rey is more concerned with outer-space than gender equality here on, you know, earth. I’m disappointed that Lewis also dislikes talking about feminism, especially since I think she wrote a kick-ass feminist anthem.
Personally, I think the message in “Just One of the Guys,” is more nuanced than satire or sincerity. Lewis sings that there’s “a little something inside,” “a little cop,” that prevents her from feeling like she can seamlessly fit in with her male peers. While the language she uses to describe this feeling may come across as casual, the phenomenon is significant and relatable. As the daughter of two self-identifying feminists, I’ve never questioned the idea that my gender should have no bearing on my actions. Still, even though I’m confident in my ideals, I’ve often found myself unconsciously holding back from some behavior that might be perceived as unfeminine, or traditionally inappropriate given my gender. It’s not because I don’t want to make the first move on a date or tell a raunchy joke. It’s because I’ve internalized a societal voice that tells me not to. Lewis’ lyrics speak truth to experience, because, as she writes, “No matter how hard I try to have an open mind,” she’s internalized societal constructs that make her feel constrained. I think every human on earth feels this way sometimes.
For Lewis, a major shackle is society’s inability to understand her as a childless woman nearing age 40. She feels her “little clock inside ticking,” not because she necessarily desires to have a child, but because she recognizes that others around her hear the ticking. Finally, she sings, “There’s only one difference between you and me/When I look at myself, all I can see/I’m just another lady without a baby.” This line is poignant. The idea of looking at yourself and being unable to see your flesh, your face, your humanness, seeing instead your image as someone else does, as a female trope, is sorely relatable. It straddles a line between satire and sincerity on which the self-aware feminist woman often finds herself.
And then there are parts of the song when Lewis’ lyrics are pure irony, where her words are bitter, recitations of tired gender stereotypes every woman has heard: “I’m not gonna break for you/I’m not gonna pray for you/I’m not gonna pay for you/That’s not what ladies do.” Despite her aversion to the topic, Lewis did tell Jenny Liebelson at Mother Jones, “”I’ve fought to be where I am today, and I’m absolutely a feminist.”
Stillwell argues that Lewis brands her own form of feminism in “One of the Guys.” Stillwell writes:
Where Beyoncé, Miley, Katy, Rihanna and their compatriots are promoting an equally valid but forceful “free to do what I want to” kind of feminism, Lewis is speaking to a more moderate, realistic version of everyday feminism where women are trying to find a balance between the old and the new. Both versions are valid, but Lewis is doing the leg work to prove that more than one kind of feminism can succeed in the image-obsessed, sex-crazed world of music.
It does feel like it’s been a while since pop-culture packaged gender equality in anything other than high-cut sequin bodysuits and lyrics that scream of sex-positivism. As exciting as those declarations have been, Stillwell is right that it’s refreshing to see another perspective.
The beauty of “Just One of the Guys,” is Lewis’ ability to smuggle complex subtleties within catchy, melodious phrasing, to package eerie sadness along with seemingly common images of Americana. This is the beauty of The Voyager as a whole, and it will be lost on some. Stereogum blogger Tom Breihan theorizes in his review of the album that maybe “Just One of the Guys” is a song about female loneliness. He writes, “I’m not sure I’ve ever met a childless 38-year-old woman who isn’t at least a little bit sad about her lack of kids.” I imagine Jenny Lewis reads this review, and gives her knowing smile. Then she dances.