It’s amazing how quickly a pleasant evening on the sofa can turn into a ‘Where’s the nearest rusty fork, so that I can gauge out my own eyeballs?’ scenario, when presented with your normally sane, intelligent flatmate bouncing through the door after work and declaring that she has been lent ‘Miranda’ on DVD by her equally sane, intelligent colleague.
If by some miracle/ temporary lapse of sanity, I wanted to listen to an unashamedly overweight woman rant about said weight ‘affliction’, and try to turn a lack of self-control when confronted with a calorie into a joke, I would finish building that time travelling machine I’ve been working on and jet back to the 1750’s when that kind of comedy was actually funny.
I exaggerate, of course. Female comics using self-deprecation as material has only seemed dated since, oh I don’t know, Jo Brand did her second show. Before you start frantically typing an enraged response in the comment section - and I expect there to be a few if I am to slate the gay’s beloved Miranda – let me outline my problem.
Female comics are few and far between, and the decent ones are even more rare. The ones that do seem to get air time; for example Miranda and Sarah ‘My right arm might actually be a size 12′ Millican, seem to base most, if not all, of their material on making themselves look like complete and utter idiots. At the risk of getting a feminist bashing – and a comment like this surely warrants one – I feel the need to say that, well, women aren’t idiots? I pose this as a question because the constant media drip-feeding of TOWIE, wrinkle creams and control pants is starting to make me wonder if perhaps I am an idiot, an empty vacuum which cant find anything other that fat and sex jokes funny. I wish my Masters Degree certificate was in pink glitter. It would match my lack of self-worth so much better.
Were these women to base their weight jokes around the fact that they eat healthily and exercise and yet are still a little squidgy around the edges, then I might muster a chuckle. If their sex jokes were intelligent remarks on sexual culture, rather than a constant assertion that they either don’t get any or are clueless about it when they do, then I’d have some respect. Why? Because then I could relate.
I want to hear jokes from an attractive, intelligent woman. A woman who can make witty comments on society, politics and culture without once mentioning the fact that she sometimes eats an entire packet of ginger snaps in the bath or once farted during cunninglingus. I see these women as a massive step back in terms of sexual politics. Just because they aren’t size 8, blonde and faked boobed doesn’t mean that they can’t contribute to inequality.
And yes, I am aware that there are a handful of attractive, switched on, funny women out there – Zoe Lyons, for instance – but these women do not get the airtime they deserve and are never favoured over women producers think the average UK female will relate to.
Finally, for those of you getting ready to accuse me of not ‘getting’ these women because I have no sense of humour, let me tell you this; my ex was the spitting image of Miranda. Never tell me that I don’t do irony pretty darn well.
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