When Christopher Hitchens penned a laughable article last year on "Why Women Aren't Funny," the public response not only eviscerated the gaping gaps in the essay, but provided a litany of proof-positives that humor is hardly relegated to the Y chromosome. I mean, Lucille Ball! Fran Leibovitz! Carol Burnett! Tina Fey! Amy Poehler! Julia Louis-Dreyfus! Estelle Getty! Bea Arthur! Ellen DeGeneres! Gilda Radner! Rachel Dratch! Dorothy Parker! Maya Rudolph! Jane Krakowski! Diane Keaton! Wanda Sykes! Samantha Bee! Margaret Cho! Amy Sedaris! Jane effin' Austin!
If my pinky didn't hurt from hitting the shift key for all those exclamation points, I'd go on and on.
Well, now Vanity Fair--which published that Hitchens essay--now features Alessandra Stanley's article, headlined "Who Says Women Aren't Funny?" (One's tempted to respond: "Um, you do, Vanity Fair.")
Stanley's essay is very, very good. No, not just because I like its stance; it gives such an entertaining and nuanced narrative on of what it means to be a female comedian--and how that meaning shifts depending on if your medium is television, stand-up, improv, writing, or something else.
Not only has the women-aren't-funny argument been made for ages, but Stanley notices trends I hadn't: how funny gals in stand-up had to rely shitcks of self-loathing or guy gossip for decades; how the physical goofiness of Lucille Ball and Phyllis Diller, and even the everywoman style of Keaton, Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, has vanished in favor of a young and beautiful standard for comediennes; and how Fey and Poehler's upcoming buddy comedy with two women leads is remarkably unusual.
On brighter note, Stanley celebrates that rather recent phenomenon of popular comediennes who write their own material.
Annie Leibovitz contributes portaits of female funnywomen to the Vanity Fair piece. Hear directly from many of these women here.
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