Contrary to what your gaslighting ex-boyfriend thinks, women are funny. Really funny.
A few years ago, a friend of mine came up to me and said something that I will never forget. She said, “Anna, I would pay to watch you do stand-up.” Thank you, Alice. While I’ll likely never pursue stand-up because I simply cannot imagine a world where anyone would pay money to listen to me ramble about the nothings that float around my head, your kind words have stayed with me all these years.
I don’t really have much, or any, credibility when it comes to stand-up comedy. That is unless you count my love for it as I went from a small child with glasses to a slightly larger child with much larger glasses (likely a result of my time in front of the screen all day). I don’t put much weight into that and you probably shouldn’t either. It’s like letting someone operate your triple bypass because they finished a couple of seasons of Grey’s Anatomy. I digress.
Stand-up comedy is hard; not everyone can do it. It’s truly an art form that combines timing, execution, and improvisation that very few of us can do. I certainly can’t. However, in honor of Women’s History Month, I want us to celebrate four women who really know their way around a mic and a drunk audience.
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Wanda Sykes, Wanda Sykes: Not Normal
Wanda Sykes has been in the comedy business for over three decades and it shows. I spent last weekend watching her Netflix special, Not Normal, and it had me absolutely dying laughing. Sykes has no problem with telling it as it is; from mocking the former presidents to making jokes about menopause, she says what we’re all thinking. And the audience absolutely loves her for it. Her execution? Flawless. There’s really nothing else to say about it.
- Taylor Tomlinson, Quarter-Life Crisis
Taylor Tomlinson is the cool older cousin that you looked up to as a kid. Cool and really funny, but after a while, you think… “Haha that’s all fun and everything but seriously… are you okay?” At the time of the special, she was in her mid-20s and going through a stage in her life that she self-described as a Quarter-Life Crisis. In all seriousness, Tomlinson is the perfect comedian to watch this month if you want to feel like you’re chatting with your best gal-pal, whose jokes can hit a litttleeeeeee too close to home. Tomlinson will have you sitting in your living room thinking, “same, girl… same.”
- Tiffany Haddish, Black Mitzvah
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Michelle Wolf, Michelle Wolf: Joke Show
You can tell that Michelle Wolf absolutely loves stand-up. That’s definitely my favorite quality in a comedian – being able to laugh at their own jokes. She knows she’s funny and her jokes are hilarious. Wolf is fully aware of herself, from making jokes about her voice, to portraying everyone as a millennial woman for comedic purposes. Wolf is unapologetically herself and it’s refreshing to listen to someone who sticks to her points. You might recognize her doing so when she performed at the 2018 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. She made jokes about all parties and despite the backlash she got, she stuck to what she wrote and you can’t help but respect it.
I am so sick of hearing Chad from Apple Beta Pi talk about how “women aren’t funny” or make the annoying repeated poor excuse of a joke that “the F in woman is for funny.” Here are a few words of advice, buddy: If you’re intimidated by powerful and smart women, just say that.