Funny ladies who inspire me

Janeane Garofalo and Maria Bamford recently visited Jackie Kashian in The Dork Forest podcast, and their conversation made my day. It's nice to hear people talking about issues like the challenges of women working in the entertainment industry and financial management (and beads!).

Thank you, Janeane, Maria, and Jackie, for continuing to provide me with positive, quirky, distinctive images of funny ladies in media, images that I hope will increase in number and influence in the future.


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"You funny!"

From Comedy Central's Hot List 2010:

Chelsea Peretti: You're a lady, correct?

Natasha Leggero: Correct! Um, yes. I'm very excited to be a lady.

Chelsea: Oh, god, who isn't?

Natasha: You do a lot of shows with ladies, right?

Chelsea: Well, let's play nice. I hate ladies as much as the next lady.

Natasha: [laughing]

Chelsea: But, people do think it's like a compliment to say, "You're funny. You're the funniest girl." Or usually, here's what I get--

Natasha: "Usually I don't think women are funny."

Chelsea: "Usually I don't think women are funny," yeah.

Natasha: "But you--"

Chelsea: "But you, however--"

Natasha: "You funny!"

Chelsea: "You were pretty funny."

Natasha: "For a woman."

Chelsea: I hate it when someone says, "You're pretty funny." Like, I don't need that thrown in the mix, the "pretty funny". The intros are always the worst.

Natasha: "You guys ready for a lady?"

Chelsea: "You ready for a lady?" Like this freak show's about to march onstage.

Natasha: [laughing]

Chelsea: The worst is they're like, "She's lovely, and she's funny." And then you like trot out in a little dress and tap shoes. It's like such a stressful intro.

Natasha: [laughing]

Chelsea: This is so fun. We should hang out more.

Natasha: Uh, yeah, this is a nice place.

Chelsea: Do you want to hang out more, er . . .

Natasha: You know, I'm actually really busy right now.

Chelsea: Okay, okay.

Oh, funny ladies.


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It's not easy being funny.

Seriously funny, by Jessica Valenti, The Irish Times.

. . . What's particularly radical about this humour isn't just that feminists aren't expected to be funny, but that women in general are so often accused of being humourless. Christopher Hitchens' 2007 Vanity Fair article "Why Women Aren't Funny" [referenced by me here] caused a storm of both approval and opprobrium, and was just the latest in a long line of male swipes at women's comedic ability - there are dozens of websites dedicated to just how unfunny women supposedly are.

And these attitudes can be a big problem for women entering the industry.

Comedian Kathy Griffin, star of the reality show My Life on the D-List, has said that "the level of profound sexism in stand-up is so extreme and so high; not only is [the male-to-female ratio] not 50/50 in the comedy world . . . it's like 90/10." At the root of this culture seems to be the fact that, as Joan Rivers once noted, "men find funny women threatening". Any woman who wields her wit is refusing to be put in her place. . . .

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