Analysis of Will Wood's "I/Me/Myself"

Will Wood’s music is known to be the type that serial killers would listen to as they start their descent into madness and violence; however, as Wood emphasized in an interview on Bleeding Cool about The Normal Album, the songs really “reflect a lot of my personal growth through proper treatment of my psychiatric troubles, therapy, personal work” and are about “coming to terms with my flaws and learning to be honest with myself”. Many people interpret this as him coping with bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses. While that may add to some of the meanings behind his lyrics, I find it much more plausible that Will Wood’s music details his struggles in defining his gender, gender expression, and coming to terms with who he really is. His song titled “I/Me/Myself” acts as a primary example that is hard to deny even without micro-analyzing the lyrics.

As someone who is transgender, I’ve had my fair share of coping with the reality that I was born in a body that doesn’t fit me, with clothes I’ve been told to wear my whole life feel wrong, and with expected behaviors that I always viewed with disgust because they didn’t feel true to me. “I/Me/Myself” hits the issue of a gender identity crisis dead on:

“For some reason I find myself lost in what you think of me

And too confused to choose who I should be

…

It’s been a point of contention between myself and this body that they stuck me in

The privilege of being born to be a man”

In the first line, Wood is detailing how people’s impressions of us have major impacts on how we behave, what we wear, and so on. Wood and I are going different ways on the scale of gender expression (him presenting more feminine, while I tend to prefer masculine). While it certainly did take a lot of guts for me to start presenting as a man rather than continue the lie of living as a woman, it is incredibly more difficult for people who are going the other way around. Society has built up this idea that men being feminine or rejecting masculinity is obscene and mockable. After all, why would anyone want to be anything other than the dominant, benefitting gender in our rigged patriarchal society? If women present as masculine, however, they may get applauded, which is an incredibly unfair result of toxic masculinity. The line “For some reason I find myself lost in what you think of me” shows just how self-conscious Will Wood is about actually presenting feminine, so much so that (although he has explicitly stated he is not transgender) Wood feels that if he was a girl, it’d be so much easier for him to be feminine without receiving any judgment. It wasn’t until 2016 that the artist finally switched his outfits from a goth presentation to a more non-conforming feminine one. In an article on N.J., Will Wood states that he “was so in love with femininity I had to wear it myself”. The feeling of wearing clothes that best show your true self is beyond euphoric. You feel complete in such a way that you finally realize you’ve been doing it wrong the whole time beforehand.

Jumping to the last line, “the privilege of being born to be a man” uses sarcasm to emphasize further the harmfulness of toxic masculinity. As the whole rest of the song details his dreams of being feminine, saying, “I wish I could be a girl”, “Am I pretty now?”, “Flower petals and feathers tether me to the ground”, and “You’d wish I could be your girlfriend, boyfriend”, he adds in this one bitter line detailing how he should be grateful to be born a man in this patriarchal society. How dare he want to deny his masculinity and privilege, right? It’s a problematic ideology that a large proportion of society commonly shared until fairly recently. Wood is hoping that now people will be more accepting of him presenting as feminine rather than masculine, even though he is a man.

When it comes to figuring out one’s gender identity and expression if it doesn’t match the ones they are assigned by society, it can cause quite a mental breakdown since it is an identity crisis of sorts. Will claims to be “too confused to choose who I should be” which is perfectly natural considering how fluid gender and gender expression are. There is no one way to be non-cisgender or gender non-conforming in presentation, which makes it so much more difficult to figure out on your own. You have to wonder if you want to present as your assigned gender if you even are your assigned gender, and if you’re not, then what are you? Which label fits you or do you not want a label? Do you want to wear this or that? If you want to change your outside self completely so you are true to who you are inside, you have to throw out your old clothes, cringe at past photos of you, get the paperwork done, wince every time you hear the wrong name or pronouns, undergo medical treatment, and receive hate throughout the process – it’s exhausting. It’s horrible. Why would anyone want to go through that? Would you really want to go through all of that just to be true to yourself? It’s a nightmarish dilemma that many people face, including Will Wood as he figures himself out in this song.

Finally, the best definition of gender dysphoria is the line “It’s been a point of contention between myself and this body that they stuck me in”. This isn’t the first song where Will Wood describes how he doesn’t feel like his body matches himself either. Time and time again, he has made references to looking in a mirror and seeing himself, not sure exactly who is looking back at him: “I’m looking at myself… Well, who else could I be, when I can hardly see?... Who should I be then if I’ll never be the same?” in “Dr. Sunshine is Dead”; “Why I can’t see / that I am the me / that I was born into?” in “The Song with Five Names”; “Dead in your own skin / but you didn’t choose what you were born in” in “Mr. Capgras Encounters a Secondhand Vanity”; “I check in the mirror to see how I look / I look different in different ways… Who’s looking back? / That’s not me!” in “Cotard’s Solution”; and lastly, “You bear a striking resemblance / some kind of semblance of something I’ve been remembering / You appear familiar, dear / You look just like my bathroom mirror” in “6up 5oh Cop-Out”. All of this showcases how he’s been having reoccurring thoughts where he sees himself in the mirror and can’t identify with the body staring back at him. I’ve known that feeling all too well. It’s suffocating, and yet, it also makes your thoughts so chaotic and hectic as you contemplate who you fundamentally are if you aren’t the body you were forced to grow up in.