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Women in Comedy

Let's Pick Apart This God-Awful Article About How Pretty Women Can't Be Successful Comedians

by | August 24th, 2012

Oh, Jesus. If you'd prefer to avoid getting angry at your computer screen, do not read Ashley Fetters' new piece for The Atlantic, Why Do So Many Pretty Female Comedians Pretend They're Ugly?. It makes the argument that, in general, women cannot be funny while also being pretty — that pretty female comedians must ugly themselves up in order to get people, specifically males, to laugh at them. Pegged to the death of Phyllis Diller, here's the main argument: Diller's reign as the frumpish, clumsy queen of the underbrag was groundbreaking on many levels. She did, after all, prove that women with bad hair, bad cooking, and loud [...]

Women in Comedy

Whitney and the Triumph Against the Discrimination of Sexy Women

by | September 26th, 2011

This article argues that Whitney Cummings represents a new breed of sexy lady standups, boldly wearing makeup where no female standup has worn makeup before (onstage, I guess). Apparently, in the past, women standups couldn't be pretty because audiences would hate them too much. As comedy manager Dave Rath puts it:

Comedy is all about watching somebody on stage be really honest and talk about their perception of the world in a funny way. But it is about vulnerability, people have to identify with those things and that’s what everybody is laughing at. So when a hot girl goes on stage all the guys want to be with [...]

Women in Comedy

How Female Hosts Are Making SNL's Season Memorable

by | February 27th, 2012

Anna Faris, Zooey Deschanel, Melissa McCarthy, Emma Stone, Maya Rudolph: this article makes a good case for why this season of SNL has been so "unusually rich in funny, provocative female-focused moments." Amazing recent female performances in movies and TV translates into comedically stronger female hosts, which means sketches that don't just feature that host as a straight man or "hot girl." Time to chalk "better SNL episodes" up on our gigantic list of reasons to keep making funny movies about women, right?

Women in Comedy

Everyone Still Wondering Why There Are No Women TV Writers

by | September 8th, 2011

A recent and super-depressing study showing that the percentage of female TV writers has halved over the last four years has prompted another round of asking everyone who might have an opinion: "Why Is Television Losing Women Writers?"

Turns out there are a lot of possible reasons! The bad economy and writers' strike fallout affecting women and minorities most. The intimidation women face when entering the male-dominated writers room. Genre trends leaning towards episodic shows about spies in fancy suits setting off car explosions rather than hourlong emotional feeling-fests (because, as we all know, those two extremes are the only possible types of television shows! Nothing [...]

Women in Comedy

Judd Apatow Is Probably A Feminist, If Anyone Still Wants To Know

by | October 27th, 2011

If there's one important takeaway from this, the milestone one millionth article about whether Judd Apatow is a feminist, it's probably a reminder to get really, really excited for the HBO show Girls, written by Lena Dunham and produced by Apatow, premiering in early 2012. The pilot episode apparently features a scene in which "a young woman talks about the digestive perils of snorting coke and then drops a ­Flaubert reference." I'm as excited as Madame Bovary was "a doctor's wife who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life"!

Anyway. The article talks about the [...]

Women in Comedy

On Funny Women, Feminism, and Being Pretty

by | August 5th, 2011

I’ll admit it. When I go to an improv show and I see a woman on stage, I brace myself. “Please be funny, please be funny.” Why do I do that? I'm a feminist! Why do I internalize this idea that women can’t be funny or witty?

The notion that women can’t be funny is a mantra repeated both subtly and explicitly in theaters, classrooms, black box spaces, and large performance clubs and venues, a mantra spoken and internalized by men and women alike. In 2007, Vanity Fair magazine perpetuated this assumption by publishing Christopher Hitchen’s article “Why Women Aren’t Funny.” Someone recently asked Brad Sherwood why [...]

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