Can Men See Pretty Women As Funny?

Ben Stiller had some interesting things to say about funny women while promoting Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. When asked if he thought that women comedians face prejudice, Stiller replied:

I do think there is and I think it comes from men. I’m surrounded by funny women in my life: my mother (Anne Meara), my sister and my wife. My wife Christine is hilarious. I don’t think it’s true that men are funnier than women. There have been funny women for years like Gilda Radner and Catherine O’Hara. There is no one as funny as Tina Fey just now, male or female. I think that in general, though, there’s a certain ‘men’s club’ sort of attitude about comedy in terms of how men see women. But it goes deeper than that. I think men want to see women in a certain light, it’s subconscious and they’re not even aware of it. It has to do with men’s outlook on women. Hopefully that will change.

This goes back to an article in Marie Claire about women in comedy, which talked about the importance of looks in comedy when it came to women. There seems to be some conflicting ideas about how beauty or lack thereof affects women who are funny. But at the end of the day, the problem seems to be that men are unable to see women as both "fuckable" and funny.

Just yesterday I was reading Rob Thomas's Twitter (by the way, Thomas wrote a beautiful pro-gay marriage piece for the Huffington Post that you all should read), and one of his tweets read: "Things that rock about mari #9 - hot girls aren't supposed to be funny. She is."

Susie Essman from Curb Your Enthusiasm said, "I always wondered if Roseanne would have been accepted by the country, being as strong as she was, if she weren’t fat. Lucy was beautiful. But she played dumb, dumb, dumb."

It's strange. Normally good looks are exactly what you need to get your foot in the door in Hollywood, especially as a women. But ironically once you get there, people don't take you seriously and they don't find you funny. So you're basically supposed to be eye candy or plot devices for the male actors who have complex roles and funny lines. Charlize Theron is an incredible actress who wasn't given the time of day until she "got ugly." A pretty comedian like Sarah Silverman has become successful because she's an attractive woman who talks in a baby voice but juxtaposes that with incredibly crude humor that shocks people.

Article Author: Chris Evans

Chris Evans is a graduate of Marymount Manhattan College, with a B.A. in Communications. He is working on several screenplays and hunting for a media job in this hot mess of an economy.

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