huh
Let’s go over some things, shall we?
- Jenny was originally designed to be a shape-shifting superhero; her “pigtails” are rocket thrusters, and her entire body can morph and shift to create weapons. Given her standard appearance is more to look like a humanoid girl, it seems reasonable that that’s an appearance she chose, rather than her default, especially because we know she can modify her appearance however she likes, albeit restricted to her two base colors unless she gets a new paint-job.
- Though her mother learns to be more supportive of her later on, Jenny was originally confined to house arrest save for doing her job, supposedly because the world around her wouldn’t accept her.
- She is canonically six-foot-six, which is rather tall, though it seems the average height of humanity has also gone up. So it’s not too uncommon for other men to be taller than her, but she’s also taller than most people. She has so far only dated other men who are taller than her.
- She gains two different disguises for looking human. The first one doesn’t pass at all, while the second passing one convinces her to behave like a normal human girl, whispering into her ear to not only look, but behave like a “normal” girl, even if it’s not in her best interests.
- It’s evidently quite common for androids to be made from different base personality points- Kenny, a boy she dated for a little while, was a re-purposed dog robot, and still carried over some of his dog traits.
- The two most popular girls in school specifically have it out for her, because she’s a robot “pretending” to be a girl.
- Jenny is allowed to play in her high school’s male football team.
Don’t forget this scene:
I’d suspected Jenny was trans coded for a long time, but this scene was what had me 100% convinced.
Prior to this episode Jenny had always treated Ms. Wakeman as her mother, always referring to her as “mom/mother”; which caused Wakeman to be mocked by her peers. Ms. Wakeman was typically cold towards Jenny, always referring to her as XJ9 (essentially Jenny’s deadname) and usually treating her as nothing more than a defence droid. But in this scene Ms. Wakeman is actually seeing Jenny in danger and rushes to protect her, finally calling her “my daughter” for the first time. As soon as she does, the pure joy and amazement in Jenny’s voice just makes my heart swell.
This show is so incredible and SO ahead of it’s time.
Worth noting that the creator of the show acknowledged this, basically saying “We didn’t intend for Jenny to be trans coded, but we’re ecstatic that trans people are finding comfort in her. Just because we didn’t intend the subtext doesn’t mean it’s not there.” Very cool and way the hell better than Hartman handles shit like this.