Saving Jane - "Girl Next Door"

I’ve taken a lot of mocking for liking this song. My friend Rebekah spent thirty minutes lecturing me online about why this song was stupid and pointless and I should be ashamed of myself for liking it. And to Rebekah, her reasons for disliking the song are perfectly valid: it sends a horrible message to people (very true) and it doesn’t really promote any sense of aestheticism or even a sense of originality (potentially true, I’m a little biased).
But let’s face it: I don’t like this song for the message. Rebekah is perfectly correct: this song promotes the opposite of what I like about people. Instead of going out and changing whatever it is that she doesn’t like about herself, or realizing that she’s in the marching band because she likes the marching band, the singer just bitches about the backseat debutante. The song is whiny, really. There’s not really another way to describe it.

BUT.
This song is whiny. It is trite. It sends a horrible message to impressionable teenagers. All these things are true.
And I say again: BUT.
This song is honest. It makes no bones about the fact that the singer is jealous, and petty, and petulant. Teenagers? Are whiny. And jealous. And petty. (I fully support the theory that the lowest circle of Hell is one where you have to spend the rest of eternity as an unpopular teenage girl in a small Catholic school, because that’s the worst fate I can ever imagine reliving.)
So is this song. It’s targeted to teenaged girls, and frankly, I think it does a good job in the market. I have no idea what the statistics are for this song, what ranking Billboard gave it or anything like that, but I do know that I hear it a lot on the radio, and it’s the opening song for some reality show about teenage pageant queens.
There was a clique in my year in high school known as “The Eight”—Margaret, Maggie, Alicia, Emily, Kim, Sara, Becca, and Kate. I went to grade school and junior high with 5 of The Eight. Oh, how honored I was. I got to spend almost all of my childhood being surrounded by girls who were prettier, more popular, better dressed, and better liked than I was. Hoo rah.
And I was bitter. And angry. And I admittedly made up stupid reasons to be a member of the “Hate The Eight” faction. Margaret, Maggie, and the rest had never done anything particularly malicious to me that I can recall. There was the requisite cheating off of me on tests, but everyone with an opportunity cheated off of my science, social studies, English, and spelling tests. And if they weren’t too bright, they cheated off of my math exams as well. So it’s not as if I can single them out for any particular offense, especially not once we got to high school and The Eight was born. They left my clique of social rejects alone.
But we were social rejects, and at dances and parties, we never forgot that.
So I like this song. It’s HONEST, which is really all I’m looking for out of a song about a high school girl’s experiences with the popular crowd.



Small town homecoming queen
She's the star in this scene
There's no way to deny she's lovely
Perfect skin, perfect hair
Perfumed hearts everywhere
Tell myself that inside she's ugly
Maybe I'm just jealous
I can't help but hate her
Secretly I wonder if my boyfriend wants to date her

She is the prom queen
I'm in the marching band
She is a cheerleader
I'm sitting in the stands
She gets the top bunk
I'm sleeping on the floor
She's Miss America and I'm just the girl next door

Senior class president
She must be heaven sent
She was never the last one standing
A backseat debutante
Everything that you want
Never to harsh or too demanding
Maybe I'll admit it
I'm a little bitter
Everybody loves her but I just wanna hit her

She is the prom queen
I'm in the marching band
She is a cheerleader
I'm sitting in the stands
She gets the top bunk
I'm sleeping on the floor
She's Miss America and I'm just the girl next door
Oh and I'm just the girl next door

I don't know why I'm feeling sorry for myself
I spend all my time wishing that I was someone else

She is the prom queen
I'm in the marching band
She is a cheerleader
I'm sitting in the stands
I get a little bit
She gets a little more
She's Miss America
Yeah, she's Miss America
I'm just the girl next door...