women, comedy and competition: it can happen, but no ugly chicks allowed

Think of men competing.

What do you think of? Sport? Number of women bedded? Alcohol consumption? ‘Crass’ bodily functions? It’s celebrated. The few examples of men’s competition getting needlessly dickish in the public sphere are silenced before you can say ‘emotional response’. They’re usually written off as bad sportsmanship—Letterman losing The Tonight Show to Leno (who he didn’t know was a contender), or Ewan losing The Beach to Leo (who he didn’t know was a contender).

Now think of women competing.

Do under-represented women’s sports spring to mind? Probably not. Women are encouraged to compare our bodies, but only to the end of attracting a man and fitting into designer garb. Outside the realms of sex and spending, competition between women is characterised as back-handed, ‘bitchy’ or conniving. Culture treats us like there’s an upward quota of 10% female representation in everything we do, and the only worthwhile way of getting in, is to be have a Body Mass Index in the 10^th percentile.

In every kind of media, we’re instructed to keep fixating on our bodies (and the food we put in them). Comparing our ability to ab-crunch and diet, we can be kept with one foot in the kitchen, the other on a treadmill. We are in stasis, quite literally advancing nowhere.

In contrast, making each other laugh is a form of competition rarely sanctioned in young women. Cathy Welsford ran the biggest women’s comedy festival in the Southern Hemisphere. She believes we’re told there’s nothing funny about our sexual bodies. There’s nothing funny about our periods or orgasms. The funny things are the saggy boobs and ‘chicken wings’ we’re mortified of embodying in old age. Back to your bicep-curls!

We grow up with boys being funny. We’re expected to laugh jokes about their excretions, and the excretions themselves. But they have no imperative to laugh at ours. They grow up with no need to find humour beyond their gendered experience. And from there springs the idea that women aren’t funny. Women shouldn’t be funny. Women should be polite and sincere. Women should be too scared about what their arse looks like to joke about the shit that comes out of it.

Women who dare to be funny are torn down regularly, especially if they try it in view of men. If they’re funny enough to get famous for it amidst Hollywood’s conception of the ‘ideal’, without having that perfect form, just hear the raving. They’re not only unfunny, they’re so old, ugly and fat you’d think Seinfeld was Steve McQueen and Michael Cera was Taylor Lautner. Oh, and they’re probably lesbians. Only women who have no interest in men would do something that alienates the patriarchy so brazenly.

There are always hilarious women around. From French and Saunders to Roseanne; Whoopi to Carole Burnett. And lately, there’s an amazing influx of them. On the telly we have our Feys and Poehlers; down under you can add twentysomethings Jess Harris and Laid’s Celia Pacquola. Since the second wave of feminism, a larger number of parents are happy to let their daughters compete, to let them make each other laugh. Even the ones with genetically predisposed and exercise and diet-induced ‘ideal’ bodies are in on the action. And of course, Hollywood loves them.

So, Fox has taken on the task of ensuring women will keep competing over how they look rather than what they can do. Apparently, ‘Anna Faris, Mila Kunis and Olivia Munn all combine funny bones with bangin’ bodies’. Awesome! I can always do with a cackle and the more, the better.

Hold on. ‘For women, frump isn’t funny any longer. The new female comedian has to be the sexual aggressor, sexually provocative, dominant and successful’. Damn, shame we forgot only one type of person can be successful at a time.

But I still don’t know who exactly Anna Faris and co., should be competing against. Help me with some much maligned public figures, Hollie Mckay!

‘Rosie O’Donnell and Janeane Garofalo will be relegated to playing the female versions of Chris Farley. Hollywood doesn’t want a woman that is not sexually enticing like Rosie; it wants the sexual alpha female.’

Women can now compete, even to make each other laugh. So long as the (hetero)sexual alpha is winning what Fox paints as a vicious battle among women, I guess we can all be happy! We can laugh and be aroused! Women can be encouraged to keep tormenting their bodies, while Seth Rogan and Jonah Hill can continue being friends, average looking, and employed at the same time.

The sad thing is, this article was meant to be a profile of Carrie Keagan, host of a program on VH1. She thinks ‘trying to be sexy is pretty damn funny’, and her quotes have nothing to do with comparing her ‘bangin’ body’ or ‘funny bone’ with other women.

Of course ‘Funny women who aren’t all that sexy may struggle in the new comedy landscape’. Women who aren’t ‘sexy’ struggle in every landscape. The ones who are have their own struggles—like ‘sexy’ being touted as their key personality trait. For Keagan, that means an article about her talents being spun into her looks.

But hey, the body police need to have their say, so the rest of us can keep fixating on our frumpy, frumpy crimes.

– Sarina Murray

(Image credit: 1.)