If a boy is mean to you, it’s because he has a crush on you. If a girl is mean to you, it’s because she’s jealous of you. That was the explanation we were given when we were bullied at school.
When Ethel Cain released “Fuck Me Eyes” on July 2, I was reminded of that heteronormative dichotomy. The song is a character study of fictional Holly Reddick, a classmate whom Cain views as a romantic rival. Desired by boys and hated by girls, Holly’s fuck-me eyes cause quite the stir in town one way or another. Cain, from her queer perspective, presents Holly differently. The desire and resentment in her gaze collapse into something more ambiguous or maybe even erotic. Holly isn’t just competition; she’s fascination incarnate.
From Nina Simone to Ariana Grande, there exists a great backlog of condemnatory tracks written by women about women, wherein jealousy is the kernel of resentment. In these songs, beautiful girls are construed as angels and whores who live for the express purpose of stealing boyfriends and creating inferiority complexes.
The most iconic example is Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” In the song, an emphasis is put on the other woman’s beauty, with her “ivory skin and eyes of emerald green.” While the rival might be superior in terms of sex appeal, the narrator wins our support by flaunting more demure traits: sincerity, loyalty, and humility.
Jolene might be hot, but the singer is a real yearner. Surely the better match then, right? The implication is clear: the clichéd figure of the other woman is hollow in her seduction, capable of nothing beyond sex and allure. She is little more than a foil designed to highlight Parton’s depth.
Olivia Rodrigo’s “lacy” offers a more openly resentful take on the other woman trope. Unlike Parton’s pitiable plea, Rodrigo’s lyrics brim with bitterness: “Lacy, I just loathe you lately.” Whether Lacy represents a real person or embodies the oppressive female beauty standard, Rodrigo directs her anger at another woman rather than challenging the patriarchal system that fuels such rivalries. She thus reduces Lacy to an object of envy, defined by her looks. In turn, she unwittingly reinforces the very cycle of competition the song critiques.
Cain refuses this setup in “Fuck Me Eyes.” Instead, she writes against this pigeonholing of the other woman. Holly is thus introduced:
She’s got her hair up to God,
She’s gonna get what she wants
Her nails are heartbreak red
‘Cause she’s a bad motherfucker.
Neither backhanded compliments nor warnings, these details of her appearance are markers of her ambition and self-possession. She does indeed craft her appearance with desire in mind — not that of men, but her own. That shift is what queers the gaze entirely. The power of her sexuality lies in its refusal to obey heterosexual logic. Thus, Holly is not a threat to stop, but a force to admire.
With “her hair up to God,” Holly is not construed as immoral, even though the romantic rival is usually portrayed as a devil-in-disguise. In Taylor Swift’s “Better Than Revenge,” her nemesis is described as:
Not a saint and she’s not what you think,
She’s an actress
She’s better known for the things that she does
On the mattress.
This other woman maintains a façade of saintly innocence, but executes ungodly schemes and sexcapades. This relies on an assumed strict dichotomy between virtue and sin.
Holly, in comparison, might “raise hell,” but she still makes it to church on Sunday. It might not be something that Taylor Swift or the Catholic townies of the Ethel Cain universe can understand, but being sexually active and god-fearing are not mutually exclusive. In fact, Holly’s faith feels more honest because it exists alongside, rather than in denial of, her impulses. This coexistence of faith and lust mirrors Cain’s own sense of queerness and Southern womanhood: being devout and deviant at once. In the queer imagination, holiness and sin aren’t opposites but twin engines of desire.
If anyone is godless in “Fuck Me Eyes,” it’s the men who pursue Holly. In the song, she is asked, “What you do with all that mouth?” to which she responds, “Boy, if you’re not scared of Jesus, fuck around and come find out.” Her sharp response extends any potential religious guilt to a man who might partake in sin with her. Holly’s reversal of moral judgment exposes the town’s patriarchal hypocrisy, drawing attention to the simultaneous acquittal of male transgression and punishment of female agency.
However, there is a sense that this agency is limited. Holly is stuck in a cycle of poverty, with beauty being her only real currency. The song opens with “she really gets around town in her old Cadillac.” It is a line that plays on the double meaning of getting around — sexually and geographically — yet the image we’re left with isn’t one of freedom. Holly is circling a dead-end town in a beat-up car. She has no home, no way out, and no options. Her beauty may get her attention, but it doesn’t grant her mobility.
Holly is a girl who self-sexualises in the hope that it might help her break free of the loneliness and even potential tragedy that the townspeople assume will characterise her future. What she craves isn’t conquest, but escape: Cain sings, “she’s just along for the ride.” Autonomy remains her chief concern, seconded by real intimacy — both rarities in the small-minded town she inhabits. This yearning feels queer too, the idea that she might be looking for freedom beyond the narrative of heterosexual belonging.
Cain continues, “She’s scared of nothing but the passenger side.” Holly doesn’t want to be taken somewhere. She wants to be the one driving, but within her environment, she knows men have all the power. If she is going anywhere at all, it might have to be on their terms. Her self-sexualisation is both an act of agency and a painful concession to the roles that are available to her. It is, as is often the case in real life, both self-expression and a social trap.
Overall, Cain’s gaze is about recognition, not rivalry or righteousness. Unlike the jealous narratives of “Jolene,” “lacy,” or “Better Than Revenge,” her view of Holly resists an easy verdict. At the end of the track, Cain sings:
I kinda hate her
I’ll never be that kind of angel
I’ll never be kind enough to me
I’ll never blame her for trying to make it.
There is envy and jealousy, hatred and self-hatred, judgement and admiration. It reminds me of the aforementioned lyrics in “lacy,” but better captures the contradictions women often feel about each other.
Cain casts the archetype of the other woman in a new light; she envies Holly not for her looks or success with men, but for her boldness and complexity which threaten small-town stereotypes of what a woman should be.
What Cain does differently is portray the other woman figure not as a villain, but as someone whose desires and struggles complicate simplistic moral binaries. Holly doesn’t want to steal your man, she wants to get the hell out! In a world that only sees this kind of woman as a threat or a lesson, depicting her as aspirational is revolutionary. For queer listeners, that revolution resonates doubly: to see oneself in the “wrong” girl and love her anyway is to unlearn the shame of desiring the forbidden.
By bel (she/her)