

While initially, he had thrown himself into his female persona for the sole purpose of reaching a previously-forbidden intimacy with the women in the band, he eventually grows to enjoy living as a lady, and learns something about the confusing and complicated expression of his own gender. Jerry also learns an important, if more confusing, lesson about himself. By living as "Josephine," he learns to be a more thoughtful and romantically sensitive man. In listening to Sugar's perspective on playboy saxophonists from the safety of his disguise as "Josephine," Joe begins to see that his two-timing ways are damaging. Not only does cross-dressing give Joe and Jerry a better understanding of women, but it also gives them a fuller understanding of their own identities. Thus by putting on dresses, the two come to a better understanding of what it means to be a woman in a man’s world.

In this way, the gender-bending serves as not only a sight gag, but also a thematically significant element of the plot in adopting the lifestyle of two vulnerable and single women traveling, Joe and Jerry learn more about the difference between the sexes, and the particular nuisances faced by women. Rather unexpectedly, they immediately take to their roles, realizing just how unwanted so much male attention is to women. When the two musicians have to don women's clothes to escape the wrath of Spats Columbo, they realize the subtle inconveniences of being a woman. Buy Study Guide Walking a Mile in Someone Else's Heelsįrom the beginning it is immediately apparent that Joe and Jerry (especially Joe) are very interested in meeting and two-timing women their main interest is sex, but they do not consider the particular perspective of the fairer sex.
