Funny Ladies

It's unclear who first said that women aren't as funny as men, though it's a myth that has been written about plenty. But like many fallacies regarding gender roles, only better opportunities and strong, persistent, and generally badass people are able to prove these types of stereotypes wrong. It seems these days that many of the most exciting comedians are, in fact, women. The Golden Globes were a great reminder of this. Not only are Tina Fey and Amy Poehler the perfect duo hosts--something the Oscars would do well to remember, along with the fact that alcohol makes dull, self-aggrandizing awards shows much more entertaining--but funny women are all up in TV and movies grill these days!

Television generally seems to have incorporated funny women more easily than film, perhaps because of the sheer volume of content and turnover, but film hero Emma Thompson--originally a sketch comic-shows that perfect comedic timing in women has always been around, it's only now much, much more visible. Take, for example, a wonderful interview between Mindy Kaling and Roseanne about being comedic writers/television show runners. Mindy takes the opportunity to praise Roseanne for breaking down sexist barriers in comedy and tv and Roseanne, in turn, praises Lucille Ball. There's a long history of women struggling for the opportunity to be funny in front of an audience.

The truth is that women have always been as funny as men, but now that the path to the big and small screens has been cleared by some very strong females, more and more women are finding their way onto the public radar. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are being joined  as leading ladieson TV by the likes of Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Laura Dern, Mindy Kaling, Zooey Deschenal, Lena Dunham, and soon Broad City's Abby Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, as well as Rashida Jones new show on HBO; to name a few. 

Funny women aren't a new phenomenon at all and they aren't on screen only. Standup clubs have been filled with funny chicks for generations. The standup circuit's glass ceiling might be evidence that it was never a problem of funny women being less common and certainly not that they were less funny, but that society may not have been ready to accept female comedians in the past. Women making raunchy or edgy jokes wasn't as accepted until recently. Not until women battled, and battled to prove they had just as much validity in the world than their male counterparts. Had Sarah Silverman been starting in comedy now, she may have had more widespread success. In the meantime, Amy Schumer and Amy Bamford continue to solidly rocking comedy clubs and comedy specials though perhaps with less fanfare than they deserve. 

We would do well to remember the fallacy of the myth that 'women aren't as funny' when people such as Kenan Thompson state that black women aren't funny enough for SNL. This is blatantly wrong. The problem is more likely that minority women are still battling to get heard; still trying to break through the hurdles which stop them from getting into similar positions of men and white women. I would put Aisha Tyler up against Kenan Thompson any day, not to mention Maya Rudolph, Retta from Parks and Recreation, or Yvette Brown from Community.

So keep rockin' it women comedians! You're my favorite type of feminist, aka women-who-don't-need-to-label-themselves-feminists-because-they're-just-living-it-by-kicking-ass, or WWDNTLTFBTJLIBKA's.

Oh, and Jerry Seinfeld, when you're plan out your next season from Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, would you add a few more women riding shotgun? Please. We all have mad love Louis CK and Chris Rock, but that one Sarah Silverman episode is not enough funny ladies.