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Exploding The Myth That Women Aren't Funny
The door doesn't truly seem to be open to new female comediennes, and it could all be down to cliched differences.
The other day, a flyer fell out of a local listings magazine advertising a comedy club. Of the 24 events being profiled on this flyer, only one featured a woman.
This in itself isn’t news. The absence of funny women on TV screens and on the comedy circuit is well documented, with a recent resurgence of articles about this (including my own). Yet still there are no conclusive answers as to why female comics are continually being overlooked.
The trite answer could be, well, women just aren’t very funny. But that’s not true. If it was, Victoria Wood, Sarah Millican, Miranda Hart, Jo Brand, Catherine Tate, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Shappi Khorsandi, Ruby Wax, Rhona Cameron etc would have been forced to sign on a long time ago. As comedienne Kate Smurthwaite confirms: “There is a long, long history of awesome funny women: Lucille Ball, Hattie Jacques, Joan Rivers… But the truth is sexism in comedy is getting worse, the door doesn’t seem to be truly open to a new Victoria Wood, Jo Brand or French and Saunders.”
And they’re only a few of the women who have made it as comediennes.
While comedy is of course subjective, I think we can agree that of the endless male comedians doing the rounds, many of them simply aren’t very funny. So are they there just because it’s safer to have an unfunny man than a funny woman? Are comedy bookers and TV producers threatened by intelligent and witty women, so much so that it’s easier to book Russell Howard again and hope for the best?
“It’s such a shock”
Comedienne Josie Long, who says if she talks about sexism she’s accused of “moaning”, opens up about the problem in this YouTube clip. Josie says: “[We’re] brought up to believe you’re on a level playing field, and as an adult you’re suddenly brought up to date with how much you’re going to be affected by sexism, and it’s such a shock… About once a day, someone says to me ‘There aren’t any funny women’, or ‘Women aren’t as funny as men’, or even, ‘I like you but I don’t normally find women funny’. Something to say they’re judging men against women in the arena of comedy, which is ridiculous.”
[We’re] brought up to believe you’re on a level playing field, and as an adult you’re suddenly brought up to date with how much you’re going to be affected by sexism, and it’s such a shock…
Chris Coltrane is a stand-up comedian whose biography lists these three things among his loves: comedy, socialist politics and feminism. So Chris seemed like someone to ask what he thought was behind the lack of women on the comedy circuit – and his answer backs up what Josie says: “The interesting thing is the amount of self-denial people have. I always hear female comics tell stories of audience coming up to them after a gig to say, ‘I don’t like female comedians, but I like you’, as if that female comedian were somehow an exception, a blip that science can’t explain. Rather than just judge each individual person on their merits, they’ve decided they don’t like all women comedians, and then are surprised and astonished when they’re proven wrong. But even when they are proven wrong, they won’t adjust their beliefs. They’re like True Believers in that respect, and that makes it incredibly hard to reason with them to prove them wrong, because for the True Believer, no amount of evidence can change their mind.”
However, Steve Lount, who runs The Comedy Box club in Bristol, disagrees that there are many funny women to choose from and says that if more existed, he’d gladly book them: “There are so few female acts out there, and fewer still who are any good in my opinion. Promoters and club owners want to see good acts on their bills and they also want to offer variety, so it isn’t in club owners’ interests to deliberately avoid booking female acts – although anecdotally I have heard that some audiences don’t respond well when a female act is announced onto the stage. But that has never been the case at any of my shows. We have never set out to create some kind of anti-female mentality in our venues.
“Stand-up comedy is a meritocracy. Yes, some personal taste does come into who you book and there are plenty of male comics who I also avoid booking. But my aim has always been to book the most interesting and best acts my budget will allow, disregarding their gender, disability, race or creed.”
‘It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy’
One of the two stock answers from anyone trying to defend the dearth of female comics is that women aren’t very funny. And Chris thinks this attitude extends to many in the audience, too: “As you say, the number of people who genuinely think women aren’t funny is shockingly high, and you can imagine that illiberal club owners will run their booking policy accordingly. Of course, this means it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. So that then raises a new question, of whether clubs should always cater to the perceived desires of their customers, or whether they have a responsibility to try to liberate their minds and make them less sexist. I’m sure you can guess what I think!”
Josie stresses: “There’s not fewer women than men. If you go to open spot clubs, it’s at least 50/50. It is, it really is. If you go to workshops it’s half and half. Then what happens is I think people genuinely get ground down, and in my own experience I’ve had jobs that I didn’t get but then a model or a presenter does get. If you look at a panel show, it’ll be male comedian, male comedian, female presenter… If you look at Mock The Week, the people who got really famous off that were all men. And all the people doing arenas now are men. The only person who’s touching that is Sarah Millican, or possibly Shappi Khorsandi. There’s not that many women who’ve been allowed to break through in the last few years.”
If you look at Mock The Week, the people who got really famous off that were all men. And all the people doing arenas now are men. The only person who’s touching that is Sarah Millican, or possibly Shappi Khorsandi.
Kate, however, thinks that the culture of high street misogyny has a lot to answer for: “It might sound strange but I think the so-called lads’ mags have to take some of the blame. They’re just soft porn, but in order to get themselves off the top shelf they had to present themselves as ‘men’s lifestyle’. But what the hell is that? There are already tons of sports mags, gardening mags etc so they’re about ‘funny stuff’. So this perpetuates the myth that funny is a male preserve, and of course the two get mixed together, so now funny equals sexism in a lot of cases.”
The recent C4 Mash Up of 8 Out Of 10 Cats with Countdown (broadcast on January 2) showed that the all-male comedians from 8 Out Of 10 Cats desperately struggled with the idea of the two intelligent Countdown women, so instead the men quickly resorted to sexually objectifying the women to belittle their obvious intelligence and put them in their place – as totty. It was embarrassing to watch, for the men who were shown to be nothing more that misogynistic cowards. But it did add some weight to my thoughts that men are frantically clinging to their funny bones as some kind of power struggle – as if by allowing women a platform to make others laugh, then women will make even more headway towards one day achieving gender equality. It’s pathetic.
‘There is absolutely no shortage of funny women’
The other stock answer in defence of why there are so few successful comediennes is that, apparently, there just aren’t as many women as men trying to make it as comedians. Something Kate, who teaches on a stand-up comedy course, disproves: “There is absolutely no shortage of funny women. At workshop and open mic level there are honestly more women in comedy than men. When I teach, I often have classes with only one or two guys in.”
But what about the promoters and TV producers who mostly book male comedy acts? “There are definitely promoters out there who will only book one woman per night,” says Chris. “I’ve heard people say that the reason some clubs deliberately book less female comedians is because they don’t think the audience will react well to more than one female comedian, as if the audience will patronisingly let one woman give it a go, but no more than that. I can actually imagine that this is true, sadly.”
Comedy promoter Steve is less convinced that female comedians face as many barriers as have been suggested, and he believes it’s more down to many women being less suited to the lifestyle of a professional comic. He explains: “There is no bar to female stand-ups at club level. Female acts decide themselves if and when they want to perform, in exactly the same way a male act will. But, as with live music, I don’t believe live stand-up is that appealing a lifestyle to female performers, which can be quite a lonely and depressing existence – lone writing, travelling and hotels.
There is no bar to female stand-ups at club level. Female acts decide themselves if and when they want to perform, in exactly the same way a male act will.
“Whereas there is a surplus of female talent in acting, dance and comedy improvisation, I also believe there might be a more equal representation in sketch comedy. But what do these other performance arts have in common over stand-up? Human and group interaction, which females are generally better at than their male counterparts. This might explain why you see more females at comedy classes and open mic nights. These events are a lot more sociable than actual professional nights. But this is just a theory and probably not worthy of academic scrutiny.”
Kate can identify a deeper sociological problem behind the gaping void of women performers: “We’ve always bewailed the dull, repetitive stand-up pointing out the difference between men and women. But even ‘cutting edge’ acts like Chris Rock do it. And there are a huge number of comedy shows that are marketed on it: Men Behaving Badly, Two and Half Men, Rules of Engagement, Friends, Coupling, How I Met Your Mother… all of those shows are more or less EXCLUSIVELY about jokes about men and women and their cliched differences. The men are always horny, the women easily shocked. Speaking as an unshockable horny woman, I don’t get it!”
She continues: “But also it perpetuates itself. If the clubs book lots of male acts doing sexist material, then they’ll attract audiences who appreciate that. Comedy does become something that is generally perceived as by and for men. It’s tough to challenge that: clubs will lose audiences in the short term if they buck the trend, but in the long term they’ll benefit because more women will want to come and there’ll be more variety among the acts and more great talent to choose from. I think to be honest, some of the guys currently doing well are very, very afraid of clubs booking more women because they’re not sure they’ll be able to compete.”
Promoter Steve adds: “There aren’t that many female stand-ups who I think are worth booking but I’m always on the look out for new talent. No good promoter/producer worth their salt would stop looking for new people.”
“The fact is we do book female acts”
The Comedy Box in Bristol is the comedy club I’m referring to in the opening paragraph: the club with only one female comedian on the 24 in its programme (and only one woman headlining a show until May, according to its website). The club is run by Steve Lount, who tells me: “The fact is we do book female acts. Last week, we had Sally-Anne Hayward, next weekend we have Mary Bourke, the weekend after we have Katherine Ryan, a couple of weeks after that we have Nat Luurtsema. Our print always features the headline acts or touring shows plus support or guests, which we don’t name. As it happens, this season we only have one female headlining act, which is Isy Suttie.”
Steve adds: “There are only a few female acts that I think are worth headlining. Headliners at The Comedy Box have to be experienced at doing 45 minutes plus and yet we do book female acts who are capable of doing these ‘extended sets’. These acts we have booked in the last 12-18 months include Josie Long, Jo Caulfield, Sarah Millican, Zoe Lyons, Shappi Khorsandi, Lucy Porter and Andi Osho. Recently, we tried very hard to book Roisin Conaty who we think is an act who is definitely one to watch but she wouldn’t take the booking.”
There are only a few female acts that I think are worth headlining. Headliners at The Comedy Box have to be experienced at doing 45 minutes plus and yet we do book female acts who are capable of doing these ‘extended sets’.
I contacted Off The Kerb Productions, too – which also runs the aptly named Laughing Boy Comedy Clubs. Off The Kerb is one of the biggest comedy promoters in the UK, and after more than 30 years in the business it boasts acts as huge as Jonathan Ross, Michael McIntyre, Dara O’Briain and Alan Carr on its books. But despite having just under 40 artists listed on its website, Off The Kerb promotes just three (THREE!) women: Jo Brand, Shappi Khorsandi and Suzi Ruffell. I asked Off The Kerb for a comment, and they replied to say someone would get back to me… but nearly a fortnight later I’m still waiting.
Conclusion
It’s impossible to reach a conclusion to this big issue in one blog post, but the volume of interest and range of theories expressed about the dearth of women on the professional comedy circuit does prove this is an issue that inspires a lot of emotion and demands more attention. As Kate Smurthwaite says in her closing comment below, if you see a good female comedian doing a show – email your local comedy club and ask them to book her… create the demand!
Kate concludes: “The good news is clubs are all about their audiences. If you see a great female act, please, please contact your local comedy club and request them by name. Just a 10-word email might make the difference between getting that spot when that TV producer happens to be in the third row that changes the face of comedy forever… ideally to mine!”
What The Frock! a comedy night for women comedians is on Friday 18 May, Arnolfini, 16 Narrow Quay, Bristol
You can buy tickets here
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COMMENTS
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/01/hitchens200701
I did my first open spot in 1993 and 19 years later I'm still making an extremely good living from stand-up. I headline gigs, if I so choose I could fill every weekend of the year with work. It's been this way pretty much since I learned the basics of the trade and got good at what I do. I've never felt the need to moan about not getting the same telly breaks as male comedians for two reasons. One is that whinging doesn't change anything, and two it's not true. I've had wayyyyy more breaks than 90% of my straight, white, male counterparts. Within 2 years of my first gig I had my own tv series that ran for a year encompassing over 40 episodes. Over the years the number of women doing stand-up has exploded, when I began there were about 5 of us, there's plenty more than that now. As for the moan about only one woman on the bill, well you rarely get two gay comedians or two black or two Asian comedians either. It might not be PC, but personally I like not having to worry about the act ahead of me touching on similar topics the way my male comedy chums do. If you're not happy about the way it is, change it. Open your own gigs, develop your own panel shows, do something positive, but for fuck's sake please stop moaning!
Hi JoJo, thanks for commenting. Just to say, I am running my own women's comedy nights now as a result of all this. The first is on May 18 at Arnolfini, Bristol. The second will be in early July as part of Ladyfest Bristol. The nights are called What The Frock!, tickets are on sale now, and more info on the twitter feed @WRFrock_Comedy and website whatthefrockcomedy.co.uk. Thanks, Jane
you'e ruined your point by trying to claim Shappi Khorsandi is funny..... hahahaha i'm a women hahahaha I'm from Iran hahahaha
like countless myths that exists about women, even today it is perceived that women cannot be funny. I agree with you J-Mo, thats loats of awareness need to happen. And JoJo Smith you have raised a very valid comment.its time for action ! http://pinkvox.com/why-funny-woman-is-not-an-oxymoron/
What will it take? Becoming funny would be a start.
this is all very well, but Sarah Millican's not actually that funny, is she ?
Out of all the women touted as great comediennes - even listed in the article - half of them are crap. Have you actually seen Joan Rivers live? its embarrassing. French and Saunder couldnt cut it as stand ups. Victoria Wood was bland comedy for over 40s northerners. And Jo Brand? really? The number of funny female stand ups can be counted on a pair of hands - the thing is, its not sexism - Chris is correct - If they want to be considered funny they should be funny for a start not cry about sexism when their joke fail
Caught 3 mins of Sarah Millican show. Total shite.
Exploding women aren't funny?
Dobby out of peep show is piss funny & clever. Not just in Peep Show, on the radio. In sort of a Pam Ayers way. But funny.
French & Saunders DEFINITELY weren't made for stand up comedy, but thank god Peter Richardson found them because putting them in The Comic Strip showed everybody how brilliant they can be as comic actresses and then Jennifer as a writer. They're silly and not scared of mocking themselves and making themselves look hideous and I think that's what really works. Most women are too vain to touch certain subjects or be characterised in a certain way. And the ones who aren't end up trying too hard. Jennifer and Dawn just don't seem to care, and that's part of their charm. They were given the chance to develop a sketch show (which today just doesn't happen, can you even begin to imagine the amazing talent we're overlooking?) and in time they created something that is superb, even to this day. I can't write about Vicar of Dibley, because it wasn't written by any of them, but Ab Fab was/is also brilliant in every way. The observations, the slapstick, the mean-spirited gags, it's something a female comedian very rarely achieves. I think women need more time to figure out what exactly they are good at, because comedy isn't something quite as natural in women as it is in men. People seem to think if you're a comedian you need to be funny in everything you do, but that's not the case. Stand Up = Jo Brand. Sketches = French & Saunders. Scripts = Jennifer Saunders and Ruby Wax, Music = Victoria Wood, etc, etc, etc. In these particular cases they can definitely be much better than many of the male comedians out there. Women also tend to be a lot more cautious and end up being too PC or too bland, which might explain why most female comedians trying to break it get lost along the way. The only comediennes who seem to have the whole package are Jennifer Saunders and Victoria Wood. Jennifer seems to be arguably better equipped because she has definitely been influenced by male comics such Ade Edmondson and RIk Mayall, Peter Richardson and Nigel Planer, she's a huge fan of the Pythons... The more recent Miranda Hart seems, to me, to be a pale imitation of a mix between Jennifer, Dawn and Victoria. Most current female comediennes do. That's another problem, instead of creating something of their own they tend to copy what others have done before them, forgetting that who they are copying have done it a lot better. And that's about it, sorry for the long post.
"this is all very well, but Sarah Millican's not actually that funny, is she ?" - No she isn't, or at least she's made me raise a smile unless you count the one after I've switched her off. But that hasn't stopped the BBC shoe-horning her onto every R4 comedy panel show it broadcasts at some point or so it seems. Or maybe a Comedienne, Of North East heritage/accent, who's a relative newcomer and a certain age helps the BBC tick a few quota boxes, perhaps?
There are many female comics who are very funny, especially the ones you speak of. French and Saunders and Victoria wood. The ones of old are the best. In my view however Sarah Millican is not funny in the slightest and now she has her own show, which is a complete waste of air time. I sometimes wonder who commissions these shows. Maybe it is like you say, the BBC fulfilling a quota and ticking a box. Shame on them for this. It is because of shows like hers and that jumped up Simon Cowell, that I only watch a couple of hours of TV a week and most of that is football. Bring back Red Dwarf thats what I say.
How ironical, that in a discussion about sexism you call Josie Long a 'comedienne'. She's a comedian. If you don't believe me, ask her.
In my opinion it isn't that women aren't as funny at all. It is simply that a lot of women stand ups treat being a women as being in a minority. A lot of their material is about being a woman. It often is funny material but it is aimed very much at women, so men are less likely to find it as funny. Where as few of the top male comics do their material specifically about being a man so it is more likely to be found funny by the whole audience. You can have 3 generic white male comedians in a row and have a greater chance of a variety of topics for material. Where as 3 women are more likely to have overlapping material.
It's interesting how many people will counter the argument that women can be funny with "but isn't funny". (See various posts above mine.) That's like saying because you don't like *one* black comedian, that black people aren't funny, and given that no two female comics or black comics are alike, it's quite obviously a ridiculous position to take. And yet there are dozens of white, male comics who they might not find funny, but very few people would consider writing off all white, male comics on the basis of, say, not liking Michael Mackintyre. As it said in the article, it's the refuge of the person who already made their mind up. "I don't think women are funny and I don't like Jo Brand, so that proves my point. I like Josie Long, Sarah Millican and Victoria Wood, but they're different." Unfortunately there are still a lot of idiots in the world.
Agh, some of my text got stripped. First bit should read ..."but _insert_name_of_some_female_comic isn't funny" ...etc.
I really like the even-handedness of this article and am surprised and heartened to hear of the propensity of women in workshops and open mics. But really disappointed with the over-simplified 'reasons' offered by various commenters. Particularly alarming are comments like "comedy isn't something quite as natural in women as it is in men." The only way this is remotely true is that girls from birth are not encouraged or 'allowed' to be funny in the same way that boys are and this may be at the root of the problem. One of the few fantastic things about stereotypically male culture is the humour, pranks and jovial teasing amongst themselves. Girl's are encouraged to be ''soft' and 'sensitive' and the most popular comedy is rarely sensitive (although some of the best is, Whoopi Goldberg's standup is some of the best I've ever seen). Marmiteowls comment about too many female standups material is about being a woman raises an interesting question. Why should men be inherently less interested/entertained by comedy about being a woman. The success of most black standup comedians revolves around their skin colour and cultural identity but white and black audiences enjoy it alike (white audiences may even arguably enjoy it more) so why don't men enjoy hearing standup revolving around being a woman? Inherent and deep grained sexism would be my gut answer. As for JojoSmiths comment, that women equally funny to men getting more tv breaks may well be true, but ignoring the issue of under-representation and dismissing it as "moaning" (x2) and "whinging" just perpetuates the negative attitude to equality in stand up comedy and exactly what the article mentions Josie Long (and I imagine many other women in comedy) are afraid of. Pointing out that rarely do two gay men, or two asian men get put on a bill exactly disproves your point. Homosexuals and non-white ethnicities are a huge minority in this country but probably get about the same representation in the stand up circuit as women. Last time I checked wasn't the male to female ratio in this country roughly 50/50? The largest ethnic minority in britain is around 2%.
Women are not funny, get back in the kitchen and make babies.
humor/comedy is relative, otherwise, Doug Stanhope should win a Nobel Prize, he has surpassed mere "stand-up" comedy...
Amy Schumer is a very funny comic
If that had been mrs. Controversial that had wrote that comment I would have said at least there is 1 woman who is funny but alas I'm afraid none of them are.
I have to say that try as I might I just don't find most female comics all that funny. Maybe I find it difficult to relate to the topics they discuss, I don't really know. There just don't seem to be any female corollaries for the likes of Doug Stanhope, or Louis C.K. or even for that matter Sean Lock. Sorry, it's probably just me.
Male stand up comedy appeals to both men and women. Female stand up comedy appeals to women. This is largely in part due to every female comic's routine largely being based around her being a woman, which for men, simply is not funny. Women yearn for equality and then pigeon hole themselves. If women want equality in comedy, they need to write jokes that are appealing to all.
@ Jenny Landreth - Josie Long is a comedian? Really? She's about as funny a heart attack and looks woefully out of depth on every panel show she is shoehorned in on. I saw Andi Osho at Jonglers, you could have heard a pin drop. The fact that Patrick Kielty had everyone in stitches (to be fair he was funny, relevant, current - all things Osho was not) shows you that it was not a hard crowd. There is no myth to be exploded about women not being funny, the truth is that there are less than a handful of funny female comedians and they live in the US. It's not just Killinghall1.
Joan Rivers, Whoopi Goldberg and Tamsin Greig are just a few women i find very, very funny. However, having said that.... the beginning of this short QI clip definitely sums up why I DO NOT find BLOODY JO BRAND funny http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chug6f0tnFg
Also lets not forget that as soon as most boys become teenagers they simply have to learn how to make girls laugh or they will never get laid. Women really dont ever have this problem. Also, men not finding jokes told by women, about women-related topics, funny, is not 'deep grained sexism'. If a man stood up on a stage and talked about a bunch of stuff i couldn't relate to (E.g, football) i wouldn't find that funny either. Some people need to stop being so trigger-happy.
Very good point Kiran. Most girls will say its important to have a guy that can make them laugh, very few guys will say the same about girls. Also boys generally sit around talking shit and having a laugh to socialise. 99% of my emails from guy mates are us taking the piss out of each other. Girls just don't do that to the same extent.
There's an unfortunate tendency every time a man makes a statement about women in anything but a positive light to label it as sexism, but when I've previously said that I don't typically find women to be funny, it's been based on a lot of experience rather than 'one comic I didn't like'. There are women such as Caitlin Moran and Kate Fox who have made me laugh out loud with their writing, but the reason they're held up as exceptions is because that's the case. I don't find most of my female friends funny, I don't particularly like female writers and I don't get excited when I hear of a hot new female comic. This could be as suggested in the comments above because female comedy is rarely presented for both sexes, or it could simply be that funny women are the exception. Such a suggestion isn no more sexist than the suggestion that most of my male friends aren't particularly in touch with their emotions and have less qualms about farting in public. The two sexes are different; comedy's just one area where it shows up.
...and yet when a male comedian is unfunny (so so many of them, at least 100:1) this woeful trait is never attributed to their gender. So many men believe 'funny' has been encoded into their DNA since birth YET THEY ARE FUCKING ATROCIOUSLY DULL.
None of the female comedians you listed are funny. Females aren't funny. So put the kettle on,milk no sugar. That is all.
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