Songfacts®:

• In "Cursed Female," Porno For Pyros frontman Perry Farrell shares some sympathy for those who are cursed to be born beautiful, poor and female. He lived in Los Angeles, where he saw many beautiful women get exploited by rapacious, manipulative men. "There's none that suffer more," he sings.
• The song is a companion to "Cursed Male," the song that follows on the album. That song looks at the curse of being a guy - at least one in Los Angeles. When they finally make enough money to buy a fancy car, they're too old to impress women with it. You can see how these cursed males and cursed females might interact.
• "Cursed Female" wasn't released as a single, but the band made a video for the song starring the transgender actor Buck Angel, who navigates a seedy sex scene in Los Angeles. Angel posted about the experience: "It was actually how I felt most of my life living and growing up female. The disconnect from my physical body. The disconnect from life. Hard for me to participate in anything. I remember they used to think I was just this shy little girl, this shy teenager. But inside I was struggling with my own identity. I was modeling for a while because my androgynous look was the in thing at the time. People could not tell if I was a woman or a man. Misgendered everyday. Back then you just dealt with it. In fact now that I am older and used to bully behavior and hate, it has surly helped me grow thick skin. Then I was cast as a lead in a music video for Porno for Pyros. This video was so controversial for its time that they ended up banning from MTV because of the content! Can you imagine."
  
  The video was directed by Melodie McDaniel, who also helmed "God" by Tori Amos and "Carnival" by Natalie Merchant.
• This is one of the first songs the band started working on. They got the initial idea before they were even formed when Perry Farrell and drummer Stephen Perkins, both previously with Jane's Addiction, were with guitarist Peter DiStefano at a party in Hollywood where they made music with a DJ. The results were promising, and convinced DiStefano they were on to something.
  
  "I was like, 'This is different than Jane's Addiction,' he told Songfacts. "It's more jazzy. We're going to use jazz loops, jazz chords."
  
  The band refined the song and included it on their self-titled debut album in 1993. It became an integral part of their live set - they played it at Woodstock '94.