dejavula, I disagree. I think the speaker is exploiting the boy's naive nature ("You cut your arms/Baby just to fit in") to get what she wants. It's ironic because she refers to him as 'Autonomy Boy', autonomy meaning self-governing or choice and yet she doesn't give him any. He says he likes to be alone and yet she won't let him do that and the second verse seems like she's dressing him too. Given the fact that this is a B-side to a song called 'Appropriation (By Any Other Name)', which is about a film called 'Vertigo' where a man dresses his new lover up to look like his former one, I think this interpretation is fitting. It seems to me that 'Autonomy Boy' is 'Vertigo' but with a gender reversal. MissMack, this song is not on an album. The Long Blondes recorded this way before making their album.
dejavula, I disagree. I think the speaker is exploiting the boy's naive nature ("You cut your arms/Baby just to fit in") to get what she wants. It's ironic because she refers to him as 'Autonomy Boy', autonomy meaning self-governing or choice and yet she doesn't give him any. He says he likes to be alone and yet she won't let him do that and the second verse seems like she's dressing him too. Given the fact that this is a B-side to a song called 'Appropriation (By Any Other Name)', which is about a film called 'Vertigo' where a man dresses his new lover up to look like his former one, I think this interpretation is fitting. It seems to me that 'Autonomy Boy' is 'Vertigo' but with a gender reversal. MissMack, this song is not on an album. The Long Blondes recorded this way before making their album.