comedian and keep that in your head for
just a bit while I talk laughter is the
best medicine this is a lovely saying
that choose to make light of negative
situations however the creator of this
passive remark forgot one important
detail when people say this phrase you
see when the joke is made by a woman
suddenly a bunch of ailments occur when
a woman makes a joke suddenly a bunch of
adjectives and categories get pinned on
her just because she’s trying to be
funny a woman must suddenly be funny but
not vulgar slapstick but not sloppy
pretty but not unordinary you see a
woman is suddenly pinned into a lot of
categories with a lot of details put on
her just because she’s trying to make a
joke I simply call this being
pigeon-holed a pigeonhole according to
Webster’s dictionary as a neat category
that fails to reflect actual
complexities essentially women in comedy
are being pigeon-holed that comedian you
thought of you probably thought of a
male right I mean I do when I think of
the people that are my role models in
comedy I often think of men but what
about women what about women comedians
are so many of their I mean look at Amy
Poehler Tina Fey and Ellen DeGeneres
wonderful women comedians out there who
are making an impact but they have
adjectives pinned on them such as blonde
quirky and lesbian in no particular
order
[Music]
these women are automatically put into a
category just because they’re trying to
be funny a lot of people say when I hear
them talking about comedians they’re
often like oh they’re too much or too
sexual or two in my face or just my
taste not my taste like we’re describing
some side dish at a restaurant or a
wedding venue for our friends not my
taste these are people making their
careers out of this but it’s just not
our taste so I’ve dissected this taste
we have four female comedians and I’ve
come up with two apparent flavors two
different categories for women to be put
into these are the overly feminized and
the overly masculine eyes be overly
feminized these are female comedians
that must be women in order to be funny
they are often with pretty with a low IQ
they talk about nail salon
misunderstandings dumb boyfriends
self-doubt escapades of the gym they
must look sexy and pretty on stage in
order to sell tickets these are women
such as Mindy Kaling Jenny slate Ellie
Kemper and iliza shlesinger having to
look like that in order to sell tickets
be overly feminized they’re really
masculine eyes is on the other side of
the scale these are women who equate men
to be funny they are in your face or
brass their crash their unabashedly
sexual they talk about one-night stands
and drunken escapades throughout the
cities they are simply matching a male’s
humor in order to be funny these are
women such as Sarah Silverman Amy
Schumer Chelsea Chelsea Handler Lena
Dunham and Leslie Jones the over
masculinized so we have these two
categories for women to be pigeonholed
I’m on the improv troupe here at Furman
improv is a fast style of comedy and
which you make up humor on the spot
there is no script no nothing you just
go out there and do impromptu theatre
will be demonstrating this later this
afternoon but in improv I found that
whenever I want to alter a scene or
dominate a scene I enter the stage as a
man I come on and create a character
that is a man and I find when I am a man
I can be unabashedly in other people’s
faces I can be unapologetic and I can
make the women on stage feel smaller I
also can bring a lot of physical humor
into my style for example so when I’m
not rolling around on the stage or being
a man on stage I become ridiculous women
the northern mom and an ice storm who’s
trying to find tostitos for her kids the
flight is sexy flight attendant whose
bending over to arouse passengers the
teenage girl at a sleepover with a
horrible list that keeps saying Shanna
peach don’t you see what I do i migrated
from flavor to flavor to flavor of
ridiculous women pigeonholing them as I
go along and the sad thing is is I
choose to do this I choose to create
ridiculous women on stage to make
something funny female comedians have to
stand up on stage simply being
themselves and get pigeonholed
automatically in order to sell tickets
they have to be in your face or really
pretty in order to give butts in the
seats they’re being pigeon-holed so we
have these two blatant categories for
women to be put into and I stand here
today as a 21 year old female going into
the world of show business wondering why
why do we just have to gat aghori for
women to be put into as some Nell
Scovell of Marie Claire magazine says
comedy is a contact sport and no one
wants to get beat up by a girl right
right my older sister when I was
creating this talk asked me a very
important questions you said what do you
do when you imitate other whim
what do you do when you imitate other
comedians how do other people imitate
you it becomes a bit in our improv
troupe to imitate me on stage a lot of
times people walk in and they’re very
dominating and very physical to start
rolling around on the stage and talking
over people I’m kind of proud of that
but that’s how I’m being pigeon-holed in
my comedy so people are imitating me in
a specific way a man named Christopher
Hitchens wrote an article for Vanity
Fair called why women aren’t funny in
this article he said that there’s a few
decent female comedians out there but
when it boils down to it they’re either
hefty Judd I key or Jewish or some combo
of the three he says that men dominate
the style comedy they set the standard
for what is funny and they want women as
the audience and when women aren’t the
audience they are able to critique them
they don’t want women in on the joke or
god forbid to make the joke for them
they just want them to sit there and
listen if they sit if they don’t they
become superior and unattractive and
then therefore they can be critiqued
Samuel s Jonas the study for the
American Journal of psychoanalysis he
studied comedians behaviors and IQ
factors that factor into it so he did a
test taking male and female comedians
and then average people I don’t know
what to call them someone just call him
average people average people and so he
did this IQ test and he found that male
comedians had an average of 138 on the
IQ test female comedians had an average
of 126 on the IQ test and the average
person got a score of 90 on the IQ test
138 126 and 90 this gap in the IQ shows
that the comedian’s automatically have a
superior IQ to most people it’s not
saying I’m smarter than most of you
but society teaches us that superiority
features intelligence in order to be
smart it’s seen as more attractive
however a man likes being the one that’s
smarter than the woman so when a woman
suddenly has a higher IQ and more
intelligence she becomes unattractive to
them and to quote Carol Burnett I people
are afraid to be unattractive I’m not
afraid of that goodness knows but all
but one in a million women are afraid to
mess up their hair not wear lipstick
slouch or look flat-chested they labor
under the necessity of being feminine
they are afraid that being funny is
unfeminine so we have these two
categories for women do put into the
overly feminized where you have to be a
woman in order to be funny in the /
masculinized where you have to match a
male sense of humor in order to be funny
is there a way that we can weave these
two categories together do they have to
be mutually exclusive can we be both
feminine and masculine onstage or do we
just have to be just one men tend to
have the upper ground of being way over
the top and their humor they can be an
average person just simply speaking on
stage no added hype no added performance
or they can be way flamboyant over the
top very very mundane very boring women
only have the upper ground of being
feminized or the lower ground of being
masculinized is there this middle ground
for women to be put into can women be on
stage with no added hype no added
performance and still be funny can we
make the two categories be combined to
be both feminine and masculine at the
same time I believe we’re starting to do
that I mean look again at the comedians
Amy Poehler Tina Fey and Allen DeGeneres
women who have said you know what I’m
going to make my comedy for myself I’m
going to be funny and I don’t care what
you say Tina Fey in her book bossy pants
said on the topic of critics like
Christopher Hitchens saying why women
aren’t funny she said when faced with
sexism ageism look ism or even really
aggressive Buddhism
ask yourself the following question is
this person between me and what I want
to do if the answer is no ignore it and
move on Amy Poehler said in her book yes
please you have to care about your work
and not the result you have to care
about how good you are and how could you
feel not about how good people think you
are or how good people think you look in
Ellen DeGeneres when she recently
received the presidential medal of
freedom by President Obama this past
fall when she was given the award for
truly being herself President Obama said
L encounters in society what too often
divides us and binds us together with
the counts that countless things that
divide us inspires us to be better one
joke one dance at a time so we have
these female comedians who are changing
the face of being pigeon-holed they’re
teaching us that you can be two
different things that you don’t have to
care about what other people say in
order to be funny you can simply just be
funny I mean look at ourselves how are
we pigeon holing other people what are
we forcing people to do to be to be
funny to be anything are you pigeon
holing yourself I mean look at Furman
guys we have a category a name and
identity for every single thing we do on
campus our chemistry majors spend way
too much time in the lab and our music
majors don’t have a social life our
Barbara jacket and beans boots bean
boots keep us warm in the winter and our
giant t-shirts and nike shorts keep us
cool in the summer I’ve seen way too
many north face backpacks and
birkenstocks around campus we are so
busy and have enough free time and I’m
so tired we have a category and identity
that we must fit is there a way to break
out of this is there a way that you
don’t have to be just yourself you can’t
just wear j.crew you could wear lily and
you could wear bohemian clothes you can
be whatever you want to be you don’t
have to be put into a pigeon hole I
think if we start with ourselves start
telling us that we can be any identity
and the idea of what we want to be we
can do that I don’t have to be over
masculinize or overly feminized to be
funny I can simply be funny I’m trying
slowly but surely this pigeon is flying
out of her hole
thank you
you [Music]