So unless you live under a rock or were busy drowning in final exams for the past few weeks, you’ve probably heard something about Ali Wong. Ali Wong is a stand-up comic who has made a name for herself as one of the fearless and funny writers of ABC’s Fresh Off The Boat. But this past Mother’s Day, she took over everyone’s Netflix feed with her hilarious stand-up performance entitled Ali Wong: Baby Cobra. And yes, she was also seven months pregnant when it was filmed back in September.
The number one reason why EVERYONE should tune in to this hour long stand-up performance is that it bundles up humor, feminism, and the journey of marriage and motherhood into one 4’10 package. In her sketch, Wong discusses how she “snatched” her handsome, Harvard Business School graduate husband and what it’s really like to be a woman in her thirties.
Wong brings an entirely new perspective to comedy, turning the tables on stereotypes and preconceived ideas of “female humor”. Make comedians have run the game for so long and Baby Cobra is a nice break from the typical monologues that center around the white cis-gendered male point of view. What makes Ali Wong unique from other female comics is that she is unwaveringly authentic and isn’t afraid to make fun about her dating history (which may or may not have included confusing homeless men for hipsters) and her love for kinky backdoor play in the bedroom. She gracefully transcends the belief that women aren’t funny while at the same time cleverly pointing out her life as an Asian-American pregnant woman who simply wants to shit in the peace of her own home.
Throughout the segment, Ali Wong completely annihilates the stereotype of the submissive Asian wife and brings up issues that real women face on a daily basis. She unabashedly shares her experience living with an STD, having a miscarriage, and the reason that girls are afraid to let their guy put it in the butt, birthing (not literally) fresh points of view into the world of stand-up comedy. She tells the world, yes I may be pregnant, married, and secretly have aspirations of being able to retire early as a housewife who gets to watch Ellen all day, but I am strong and I am a boss bitch.
Wong literally uses her pregnancy to fuel her fire and the most powerful part of her performance is that even though she may be with child and literally staring motherhood directly in the face, she is unapologetically filthy, provocative, and at times downright vulgar. She tells Elle Magazine, “when you’re pregnant, you’re hungry, tired, and fat, so you have this ‘I don’t give a fuck’ attitude that lends itself really well to performance. You let go of all dignity and shame, and it’s beautiful.” Ali Wong isn’t afraid to say what every woman is secretly thinking and she also let’s women know that it’s ok to be an atypical feminist. When asked by fellow female comics why in the hell she would want to give up her freedom and take on the reasonability of having children, Wong of course approached the situation with a comedic edge, noting that all Asian women live to be one billion years old and that she’ll get lonely when her friends and family is dead. Yet through her “I don’t give a fuck” performance, she is really telling these women that she doesn’t need to give up who she is when she has a family and that she isn’t anti-empowerment by wanting to have a domestic life. Wong proves that there is more than one type of Asian-American female, more than one type of pregnant woman, and lastly more than one type of boss lady. Even though Wong may be a successful comic who has technically made it by industry standards, she still stands up for her rights to want to having a husband who can take care of her and her longing to be traditional in the sense of putting child before career. She shows audiences that motherhood and getting older as a woman doesn’t make you any less of a badass and that mothers deserve a hell of a lot more credit in our society, both from men and feminists alike. Feminism is meant to be an intersectional web of differing perspectives and identities, and it is time that we start approaching the double standards that our society puts on motherhood and female maturity.
51% of our population is female and 4 out of 5 of those women will eventually carry children (a radical jump from the 9 out of 10 women with children of the 1970s), yet the amount of female mothers accurately represented within the media is seriously out of balance. Our media likes to cast women almost exclusively within the 18-30 age range, capturing only a small snippet of female experiences. Sure, we have all seen a million television shows about the struggles of a hot white chick in her twenties yet how many shows really dig deep on the raw and unfiltered experiences of motherhood and life past 30? It’s no secret that men have been portrayed in every respect from action stars to the “good dads” of network television, yet women are downplayed in the media as either sexual objects or domestic do gooders, of which the two cannot overlap. The fact that a pregnant woman getting real about her pregnancy can be described as “revolutionary” is pretty disturbing seeing as it is 2016 and women have been having babies since literally the beginning of time. And if you think that the media doesn’t play a huge role in how women are portrayed in society, get real and wake up to the fact that millions of women carry insecurities based on what they see and hear. If the whole world is telling women that mothers are supposed to be submissive, quiet, and domestic, they will believe that this is the way that they are meant to behave for fear of being shamed or scrutinized. But Ali Wong and many other women in the entertainment industry think that it is time to cut the bullshit and show women that they don’t need to loose a part of themselves when they have children. That they can be funny, filthy, fearless, and fabulous even while seven months pregnant and that even in motherhood doesn’t mean that the rowdy spitfire side of ourselves does not need to be silenced.
Still not convinced that Ali Wong: Baby Cobra is a must watch? Check out her trailer and be prepared to be instantly hooked.