Her question gets at a fundamental rejection of the idea that women should have to check or alter any aspect of themselves in order to be respected. It’s another form of severity, an assertion of self. “You should have the confidence of a mediocre white man,” Baker says. “I can occupy this space and I can be here, and not just physically embodying a space. I can do this on the stage and I can write these songs and I can exist in this way, and I can and I want to and I should. I absolutely fucking should.”
When Baker got into an Uber pool with a college-bro type on the way to a gig during South By Southwest, he interrogated her when she said the guitar in the trunk was hers. “We have to do it better, we have to do it twice as hard,” she says. “I should be able to just fucking do this.” - from “Guts Club Spills Her Guts”