In her Spotify series “The Real Story of Jagged Little Pill,” Alanis describes this song by saying “It was my empathy for the feminine, for the vulnerable, and the self care, particularly for those of us who are service oriented and generous and the orientation in life is to give and ask questions later. For the people who are in a position of service for their career or otherwise, just a reminder to take care. And it was slightly influenced by a friend of mine at the time, just watching how sweet she was to me and sweet she was to everybody and then she would go home at night and be really depleted and in my case I would go home and be really depressed, so I just thought there was something that needed to be said about the self care needing to be upped and the empathy. Being in context with so many narcissistic people, the two qualities that disappeared were curiosity about well-being, like even just a "How you doing?” That would never happen for emotional well-being. That wasn’t even a consideration… and then empathy. Often, there was no empathy. So, that song was my way of turning it around and singing to myself in a lot of ways. I would often listen to that song on tour and pretend that “woman” was singing to me."
Throughout the song she paints the picture of a character who has lost enthusiasm for living, withdrawn from the world, and is sleepless, dieting, and denying herself the freedom to cry in order appear a certain way that is very different to how she genuinely feels to the objective observer. She is also portrayed as a person making risky choices about their lifestyle to their own detriment and not thinking clearly about the consequences of these decisions before making them. From: https://genius.com/Alanis-morissette-mary-jane-lyrics
