9.28.2004

Feminism Revisited

I am having a bee in my bonnet about the state of womanhood. I have been conversing with a friend and we have both realized that it's just in the last couple of years that this anger at the situation has been building. That we had both left it behind in our early twenties, but it has reared again, and fiercely. What we as women are contending with as well as the role models we are provided, is, in short, fucked. That was a terrible sentence, but I'm sleepy and the point is just to get it off my chest. I have not perfected it.

Listen, I don't want to get into the global issues, all I want to talk about is my recent sojourns back into the standup comedy world. I don't know if I didn't care before, or if it's because I took time away from it and spent more time in the theatre/improv/sketch world here, but, whatever the source, I am mad. I don't know why it has taken me so long to recognize the straight, white, maleness of the standup community, and the complete lack of interest on the part of the straight, white males to make it any different. You see, a male comedian can dress how he wants, shlubby or stylish, or whatever, and still be thought of as a great comic. But a woman can be smart, funny, wicked, engaging and an all around great comic and not be considered great until she puts on knee high boots, a short skirt and a cleavage exposing top. Now, those of you who know me know I like to look pretty, and certainly like to play up the tit factor, but that's my own business. I don't think it should have any bearing on my talents. Not that I've noticed it yet for my own self, but coming off the Fringe festival, where I have seen so many bold, beautiful, moving and hilarious performances by women, and where I was around so many women, and the improv scene where there are so many women I and our male cohorts respect....then showing up at comedy nights again, and it's really, really different. I am having reservations about diving into it again. I don't like being told by all these boys how it should be done. I guess that leaves it to me to do it my way, though I'm not sure what that is yet. Plus, I'm not sure how to turn this mad into funny. I think I'll ask my dad.

Somehow I thought writing a little of this down would help, but I'm still mad. I haven't even addressed my despair at women allowing themselves to be whorish all over the cover of magazines and the tv. Ich. That's a blog entry for another time.

Power to the People.

Sisters....we gotta get it together.

x
r.

1 comment:

Infidelia said...

I have no worries about being funny, or the audience liking me. That's not really where I'm going with this. It's more the culture that I'm wondering if I want to immerse myself in. And the part where I see men that I like, good men, getting complacent and curmudgeonly by being so immersed in it themselves. And that it never occurs to them to push the envelope and do it differently...that across the board they feel they have to play by the rules to acheive something, too. I think it holds us ALL back. Comedy is so much more, and I wish comedians were the first ones to see it, but we're not. Now I'm going to go tell some lame jokes tonight and feel frustrated that I'm not changing the world.