Christopher Hitchens famously wrote an article in Vanity Fair where he declared that women weren’t funny. Of course, he was wrong, but by writing it he inspired this guy to write a blog post for Details that explains the truth—-it’s not that women aren’t funny, it’s just that a whole lot of men punish you for it. (Hat tip to Will B for sending this to me.) It’s not sexy to upstage the fellas, and when women rely so much on their fuckability for social acceptance, the tamping down of humorous behavior is going to happen. Which is kind of what Hitchens was saying anyway, when he suggested that only women he finds unsexy can be funny, before he spun off on unintelligible speculating that our dirty woman parts make us too ashamed to crack jokes.
What I don’t get is where these guys are getting the idea that funny women must drift around unloved and unwanted. I don’t know if that’s ever been true, but it’s certainly not true now. Which I’ll return to in a minute. But first, let’s quote this rancid and schoolmarmish blog post.
There’s a moment in nearly every decent episode of The Simpsons when Homer and his alcoholic pal Barney are sitting around Moe’s Tavern and the latter lets out a belch so powerful that the wind causes his lips to flap like two pieces of raw bacon draped over a Vornado. This is funny for two reasons: (1) Someone is unleashing a monster burp on national television and (2) that someone is a man.
Actually, he’s a cartoon character. I’d suggest that the element of surprise would make it even funnier if it was a woman, and the existence of the gross-out sisters-in-law on the show demonstrates that the show writers agree that gross funny is perfectly within a female character’s realm. Sure, the comical ugliness of it would be the antithesis of sexually endearing, but then again, it’s not like anyone’s clamoring to fuck Barney either. This guy’s argument, I’d say, is not that it’s not funny when women indulge in rude humor, but that it makes his dick go soft.
Actress Eva Mendes, reminiscing once about a 2005 trip to Nepal during which she shared a hotel room with Cameron Diaz, ruined what could have been the greatest male fantasy since Denise Richards and Neve Campbell got it on in Wild Things by revealing that “Cameron is a big old belcher, but I can’t belch.” She added, “One night I had a heavy dinner, so I combated her belching with something I could do. We were in side-by-side beds—her disgusting bodily function versus mine. It was an Eva-Cameron fart-belch-off!”
It’s a definitional issue. Declaring that these women aren’t funny is all wrong. It’s that they are funny, and Seller is a big weenie who can’t handle that. But where he really fails is that he makes the common error of trying to justify his personality flaws by projecting them onto all men.
This knowledge makes it impossible for any man to enjoy watching 2 Fast 2 Furious ever again.
I suppose if you’re the sort of loser who enjoyed that movie in the first place, sure. Interestingly, I think that a) having no sense of humor and b) actually watching movies like this renders a man a lot more unfuckable than a farting Cameron Diaz. Physician, heal thyself of gross unattractiveness.
It would be one thing if these female Shreks were cut from the same cloth as Roseanne Barr or Rosie O’Donnell. But the trouble is they’re all smoking hot. It’s their job to primp and preen and push stuff up to look sexy—what’s the point of putting in all that effort if you’re only going to undermine the whole operation with gruesome behavior? “You’re talking about a group of women who are constantly being told how hot they are and that they can do whatever they want,” says E! Online columnist Marc Malkin. “Putting on this act says, ‘I’m not this unattainable person—I’m normal just like you!’
May I suggest an alternative reading: The notion that women are striving to be more attainable presupposes that hot women don’t get hit on all the time by guys shooting way out of their league. Quadruple that with the fact that Diaz has the uncomfortable knowledge that she’s featured routinely in the sexual fantasies of wankers worldwide. She’s highly motivated to discourage that.
Or in the case of Diaz, an even more pedestrian explanation: She would have been just another pretty and forgettable face if she hadn’t staked a claim in the gross-out humor department. By smearing semen in her hair until it stood up, though, she made a lasting career for herself.
Or maybe she just thinks it’s funny, and doesn’t really care what some dude at Details magazine thinks. I know—-blasphemy! Women, care what all men think about you all the time. Well, what are you waiting for?
Interestingly, except for a dig at Sarah Silverman, Sellers completely avoids the topic of women who I’d classify as professional comedians like Amy Poehler or Tina Fey or the queen of mocking the expectation that because she’s hot she should be preening all the time, Amy Sedaris. Probably because such women lay waste to his theory that being funny, even you indulge in humor that makes you look ridiculous or ugly, is this big turn-off. After all, Amy Poehler engaged in snotty and often gross humor, and it landed her husband Will Arnett, who is last I checked, one million times more desirable than this Sellers whiner. I can’t imagine what a sad shadow of a love life I’d have had if I was careful not to make raunchy jokes in front of dudes, a strategy that runs off the guys you’d actually want and attracts morons that read Details. And hey, Sarah Silverman is fucking Matt Damon!
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Must be all the fresh veggie platters I sling in front of them- we’ve got cukes, celery, broccoli, carrots and 2 colors of peppers right now on the coffee table…
He’s right; I’m selling my 4-disc Platinum Collection edition of 2 Fast 2 Furious back to Vulcan Video this very night, and I’ll probably accept whatever price they decide to give me. Hopefully they haven’t seen the post on the Details blog, but what are the chances of that?