Crazy Ex-Girlfriend continues to know no boundaries in its frankness through song, as shown by one of the latest episodes, “I’m Back at Camp With Josh!” Yet again, Rebecca (Rachel Bloom) goes out of her way to get close to Josh by offering to help him volunteer at the camp he goes to every year to be a counselor for troubled youths. Struggling to not only re-create the romance of their own time together at camp, Rebecca also can’t seem to relate to any of the cruel teenagers there–that is, until she has another breakdown over Josh not loving her (which comes when he laughs at a letter she shows him that she wrote to him while they were together).
Finally able to relate over her plight with a guy, the trio of girls come together to sing “Put Yourself First,” filled with the lyrical irony of how women should wear “six-inch heels” “just for [themselves]” and if it happens to attract a man, all the better (though really the entire point of looking one’s best remains for the opposite sex). As a Terry Richardson impersonator wearing a sweatshirt that reads “Male Gaze” snaps photos of the girls while they contradictorily sing, “Put yourself first for him, that’s what you gotta do,” Rebecca can’t help noticing there’s something horribly wrong with that statement. She asks, appropriately, “If it’s just for myself, shouldn’t I be comfortable?” and also adds, “If I put myself first for him, then by definition, aren’t I putting myself…second?”
The girls then burst into the retort, “Don’t think about it too hard/It’s a wormhole/It’s a Möbius strip.” And this is, indeed, what so many women do (not think about it) to justify the lengths they go for beauty under the guise of it being “for themselves,” when really, the end goal is always attracting male attention, and hopefully, a relationship. While Rebecca succumbs to the “Jenny From the Block” makeover they give her, it seems that, in the end, she isn’t they type of girl who can change to make a guy appreciate her. And, by the end of episode, we see that Josh isn’t the type of guy who can change to make a girl appreciate him. So maybe there’s hope for their compatibility yet.
