Jokes on You: Women in Comedy
A comedian is a “professional entertainer who uses any of various physical or verbal means to be amusing.” The stereotypical image of a stand-up comedian is often male, and in today’s world, the industry’s more notable faces include John Mulaney, Seth Meyers, Nick Kroll, Tom Segura, and Sebastian Maniscalco. Flashback to the 70s through the 90s, you have the talents of Steve Martin, Chris Farley, and Chevy Chase taking over television sets. Women comedians were scarce, and thankfully, we are now in an age of television and comedy where women comedians are increasing not only in number but also in popularity. At long last, the humor that women hold within them is finally gaining the recognition it deserves.
From my experience, the first “funny” women I was introduced to were Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Kristin Wiig on Saturday Night Live. I lived for Wiig’s performance as Gilly in SNL and I remember being especially devastated when she resigned. What’s important to be mindful of, however, is that female comedians aren’t one hit wonders. Despite the pain that came with the resignation of Fey, Poehler and Wiig, they were replaced by a new generation of female comics: Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, Leslie Jones, and more. The population of female comedians was never and will never be scarce, it was just without a platform to share their gift. We now sit on copious amounts of content from female comedians, including but not limited to Ali Wong, Iliza Shlesinger, Amy Schumer, Tiffany Haddish, Whitney Cummings, and more. The utilization of Netflix for the distribution of these female comics’ hour-long specials has been helpful in getting their work out in the open, but what it really comes down to is that these women are genuinely just straight-up hysterical. They don’t get the ratings and the viewership they do because of their clothes or their makeup, they get it because they make people of all ages and genders laugh.
With this in mind comes the obvious difference between male and female comedian content or the different approaches that they take to the same topic. Male comedians tend to get away with a more brusque script, one that tilts toward demeaning women and talking about them like they’re sexual objects. A lot of older male comics have something particularly nasty to say about their wives or how hot younger women are. Women comedians, however, don’t take the same approach; their conversations about men, dating, and sex tend to be much more light-hearted and empowering. There isn’t an urgency to degrade the other sex, but rather to just talk about their lives in a humorous way. Men seek the pity, the sympathy, but the women automatically know they probably won’t get that regardless, so why try to evoke it?
All of this isn’t to say that women comedians have been obsolete up until this point in time. That would be unfair to Betty White and Lucille Ball. White was considered “The Queen of Comedy,” which was in part due to her performance on the 70s hit Mary Tyler Moore show and her later role in Golden Girls; Lucille Ball was also granted the same title from her work on the evidently famous comedy sitcom, I Love Lucy! However, in the last twenty or so years, the appearance and performance of women comics have been overshadowed by the abundance of men in the field, too. Robin Williams, Will Ferrel, Steve Carrel, Jim Carey, Seth Rogen, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler… the list goes on and on. When I was younger, these were token actors and comedy stars on screen, and they were all male. All I remember in terms of “funny” women was the representation of Phoebe Buffay on Friends and she was funny because they were making fun of her intelligence frequently; it wasn’t until I started sneak-watching SNL that I was introduced to the likes of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.
This also isn’t to diminish male comics. I will be the first to admit that I know each of John Mulaney’s Netflix specials like the back of my hand and can quote them at the drop of a hat. I have introduced several individuals to Tom Segura and I’ll do it again. However, the general consensus that the comedy industry is white heterosexual male-dominated is something that needs to be cracked; we as an audience need to be malleable and more aware of the comics that are emerging that aren’t necessarily fitting the “mold.” An example of this is Ali Wong, an Asian-American woman who has won over millions with her specials Baby Cobra and Hard Knock Wife, as well as her Netflix original movie, Always Be My Maybe. Ali is… funny. I mean, like, silent seal laughter and aching belly funny. Not only is she funny but she was pregnant in each of her specials, showing that not only are women funny as hell, but they’re also invincible, too. She even touches upon this in one of her specials, on how when a comedian has a baby they just suddenly disappear from the spotlight; she refuses to disappear after having a baby and she refuses to disappear while pregnant. This needs to be normalized! Why do men get to make all the good jokes about being a dad, as Wong comments, but women are expected to give it all up? No!
“Women in comedy” is not limited strictly to the existence of women comics, but rather a woman’s place within the more intricate parts of the industry. A lot of comedic personalities are judged for the way they joke about women and the derogatory verbiage they use; the topic of sexual assault used to be fair game for many comedians, one that is not only insensitive but downright unsettling. Yet, in my humble belief, if a woman joked about men or spoke about men in the same tone as men talk about women, it would not be as easily accepted as it is. One of the more wholesome approaches I’ve seen to incorporating women into acts is John Mulaney, who talks about his wife in every special and about how enamored he is with her. He mentions once that he asked her whether or not she’d be okay with him continuing to use her in his shows, the catch being that he would most likely make fun of her in some capacity. She told him it was fine, so long as he didn’t say “she was a bitch” and that he “doesn’t like her.” This prompts Mulaney to think, “The bar is so much lower than I thought.” You can incorporate women into your jokes without being blatantly disrespectful and misogynistic, especially in the year 2020; a basic respect for women in a script is something that can be easily achieved when you’re the one holding the pen.
The focal point so far has been on stand-up comedy, but one of the more interesting approaches to providing a visual representation for women in comedy outside of that specific genre is the Amazon original, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The show is set in 1960s New York, where a wife and mother, Miriam Maisel, turns to stand-up comedy as a therapeutic release after her husband leaves her. The show was touched upon by fellow comic, Alison Stevenson, where she digs deeper into what it means to be a female in comedy and how Mrs. Maisel incorporates certain issues into the show. Stevenson says that women comics have to work 10x harder not only to impress their audience but also their peers; to be taken seriously in the industry is hard for women, considering the men comics are the ones who have set the precedent. “This is really a show about a woman finding her voice in a world that doesn’t want her to.” Stevenson also discusses the intrigue that comes from Miriam Maisel taking the stage by storm in the 60s, solely because, at this point in history, many men expected women to fade into the background while they took the lead; the blatant disregard for the societal norms is just another piece of proof that women were already beginning to knock down borders around predominantly male industries.
It’s safe to say that humor is opinion-based, as are most things in the entertainment industry. What one finds funny may provoke a straight-faced reaction from someone else; I’ve made my friends watch comedy specials where they’ve barely laughed, and I have definitely been forced to watch some pretty boring ones myself. However, we have to dislodge the ideology that humor is a male specialty because it is not. Women are and have been funny and they deserve more respect and credit in the industry than they’re given; they shouldn’t have to work 10x harder for the basic respect that men in the same position get instantaneously. There is nothing more affirming than a woman comedian; you may not know them personally, but you know that you’ve gone through similar things and have similar ways of coping with it. Not every tragedy we go through has to remain that way; female comics help us bring a light-hearted approach to things that may seem to have destroyed us, helping us to laugh about what once made us cry. John Mulaney is absolutely hysterical, but sometimes, John Mulaney just doesn’t get it.
