I Applaud Your Lady Balls, Ladies

In front of millions of viewers on The Oprah Winfrey Show last week, celebrated Saturday Night Live cast member broke one of the oldest rules of common courtesy: she spoke ill of the dead. The dead and beloved, to be exact.

In a stinging reflection on the days in which she was best known as “Jane, you ignorant slut” and for ripping open her blouse on Weekend Update, Curtin had this to say about fellow cast member, writer, and her constant foil, John Belushi:

“They [female writers] were working against John, who said women are just fundamentally not funny. So you'd go to a table read, and if a woman writer had written a piece for John, he would not read it in his full voice. He felt as though it was his duty to sabotage pieces written by women.”

What followed the comments was awkward to say the least; Chevy Chase attempted to defend the dearly departed comedian while Curtin held firm in her assertions. But there to save the day from turning into musings on misogyny in the 1970s, as she is there to save many a tragedy with a touch of comedy, was Wonder Woman Tina Fey. Consider this part two of my Feyism manifesto.

Tina Fey is hilarious, and this is a fact. She can work the funny bone from just about any angle, be it political, maternal, physical, nerdy, or Bieber-related, and she does it without being spiteful; her wit has some mysterious warmth that allows even those it pokes fun at to get in on the joke, as evidenced by the appearances of both John McCain and Sarah Palin herself on the 2008 election editions of SNL in which Fey impersonated (or, depending on how you look at it, mocked) the female vice-presidential candidate. But Tina Fey can do all of this because she has an audible voice in comedy, a voice that she and the comediennes before her fought hard for. Women have had a notoriously hard time achieving gender-equal success in comedy—Jane Curtin is certainly not the first to point this out. In Bossypants, Fey herself admits that even her beloved Second City had a hard time accepting that women could be funny by themselves, and she understands the working definition of Hollywood to be, “a woman who keeps talking even after nobody wants to fuck her anymore.” The atmosphere for women in comedy seems to range from lukewarm to hostile, especially as bromances and stoner flicks rule the box office.

Understanding this, it seems like a woman looking to succeed in comedy would have two options: 1) Accept that she will only get jobs writing niche “girl funny” and commit to a life of period jokes, or 2) Accept that the only marketable type of funny is “guy funny” and commit to a life of penis jokes. Tina Fey did neither and, despite the obstacles abound, has achieved undeniable success and is our current Queen/Gender-Blind Master of Comedy. She became the first female head writer of SNL ever in 1999, was part of the first all-female hosting duo of Weekend Update in 2004, and, perhaps most significantly, wrote Mean Girls.

Pictured: Victoria Gotti The film that changed the face of comedy

Mean Girls is more than just the last good movie Lindsay Lohan may ever make, it was an experiment in the appeal of female-driven comedy. With a cast led by five young women and Tina Fey herself, the movie explored the perils of teenage girlhood with a hilarious bent. That may not be anything new, but the response to it was; Mean Girls was immediately #1 at the box office and drew in an audience of all gender and age demographics, a feat for a comedy written and starring women. Because of Tina Fey’s inexplicable genius, the movie appealed to a diverse base beyond high school girls and became a lasting part of our cultural zeitgeist even seven years later. No one would argue that the message of the movie was female empowerment, but its success did newly empower women in Hollywood. With Mean Girls, Tina Fey proved that female-driven comedies could be bankable and broad in their appeal, and it is because of this that we get movies like Baby Mama and Bridesmaids in which women are more than just nagging girlfriends or spunky little sisters of comedic leading men. The increasing diversity of the comedy landscape is something we owe to Tina Fey and all the other women writers/actors/directors/stand-ups who were willing to push beyond personal success and toward changing the game itself.

One of these women who deserve special mention is Amy Poehler, Tina Fey’s intellectual and comedic equal. They both started at Second City, made up the all-female Weekend Update anchor team, went on to star in their own female-led quirky sitcoms, and do the best political impersonations SNL has ever seen. I wish I could explain why my natural affinity is more for Tina Fey—perhaps it’s the fact that we both wear glasses and have brown rather than “yellow” hair—but Amy Poehler is just as fantastic and integral in what I call the lady balls of comedy movement. Other members of note, though certainly not the only ones: the late great Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Aubrey Plaza, Paula Pell, Kristin Wiig, Rachel Dratch, Jane Lynch, Amy Sedaris, and Chelsea Handler.

To end, a quote from Amy Poehler on what her work means to her. I think that, besides giving women equal opportunity in comedy, this is the main goal of the work all these ballsy women do:

“I get worried for young girls sometimes; I want them to feel that they can be sassy and full and weird and geeky and smart and independent, and not so withered and shriveled.”