You know that thing when people are all like, "Blah blah blah women aren't funny," and you're all like, "What!? Is that a thing people actually say?" and then you never speak to those people again? Yes, do know that thing because we're friends. As friends we should both read We Killed: The Rise Of Women In American Comedy. It's a new oral history about women in comedy by writer Yael Kohen. She spoke with many, many people, including: Ellen DeGeneres, Janeane Garofalo, Lisa Kudrow, Eugene Mirman, Mon'que, Aubrey Plaza, Sandra Bernhard, Maya Rudolph, Joan Rivers, David Cross, Phyllis Diller, Robin Williams, Kristen Wiig, Matt Besser, and more and [...]
Holy mackerel. Roseanne's three-page-long ode to menopause is really intense. Aside from being funny and something we ladies should probably all email to our future selves, it makes me feel like everyone connected on this human journey and that being a woman is like riding a giant pirate ship through the Amazon, stopping only to spear fish before forging on ahead through the jungle to take pictures of parrots (I may be thinking of the popular 1994 computer game The Amazon Trail). Here is what she says to fellow menopause-passers:
Ahoy, matey! Hail, hail, all ye who enter here! You have arrived! Congratulations, sister!
You have made [...]
Although it’s not something of which I’m proud, I can finally admit it: At one time, not so long ago, I was a comedy chauvinist.
Remember that guy you knew in college who summarily dismissed the comedic talents of an entire gender, proudly (and stupidly) proclaiming, “Women aren’t funny?” That was me. I wasn’t militant about the subject, and I didn’t spend hours trying to convince others that men were genetically predisposed to be funnier than the fairer sex. I simply did not, would not, could not acknowledge the possibility that women were just as talented as men when it came to making people laugh.
