FEMINIST FRIDAY: Emmy-Nominated Female Comedians Explain Why Men Aren’t Funny

It’s Friday, queens, so you know what that means. It’s that time of the week where we bring you another Feminist Friday video round up of what we have been watching and loving! And if this is your first time checking out our FF series, we want you to submit your videos using our Contact page because it has become a great way for us to share what people in our community and promote the projects some of our readers are creating!

It’s a feminist win-win!

Before we get into the video featuring female comedians flipping the script on the tired mantra of “women aren’t funny” and making it about men, we want to share some awesome videos from our readers who have submitted these to us recently.

The first is from Toronto-based singer-songwriter Farahri, who has just released a music video for her song ‘Take Me As I Am’. It is a beautiful piano ballad, taking the listener through the inward reflection of self-discovery and being confident enough to tel the world “take me as I am”. With it’s strong message of positivity and self-esteem, it’s one of those songs you can listen to on your best or worst days.

If you haven’t yet heard of Faharari and don’t know much about her music, get familiar by going to her website where you can check out more of her music and follow her on social media. For now, here is ‘Take Me As I Am’:

The second video comes from one of our writers and a true survivor, Amy Oestricher. You may have read her previous piece where she shared about her ordeal with a near-death health emergency, as well as overcoming the trauma of sexual abuse and an eating disorder.

Amy is nothing short of inspiration, and lives to tell her story. She recently gave a powerful TEDx Talk at Syracuse University titled ‘Follow Your Detour, Find Your Flower’. In this talk, Amy explains why being a “Detourist” has inspired her to transform obstacles in her path into opportunities for growth by finding the “flowers” from her detour, using all aspects creativity – music, art, writing and theater – to heal and find the positive.

Amy is a PTSD peer-to-peer specialist, artist, author, speaker for RAINN, writer for The Huffington Post, award-winning health advocate, actress and playwright, eagerly sharing the lessons learned from trauma through her writing, performance, art and speaking. Amy’s “beautiful detour” inspired her to create the #LoveMyDetour movement, a campaign inspiring people to flourish because of, rather than in spite of challenges.

Life is full of detours and opportunities to test our strength. Watch as Amy talks about her journey in a bid to encourage others who are struggling right now to keep going and never give up:

And finally, since the Emmy’s are upon us, we couldn’t NOT share this hilarious video made by People Magazine, featuring comedic badasses like Samantha Bee, Tracee Ellis Ross, Kate McKinnon, Allison Janney and Nene Leakes. Each of these women are nominated for an award in a comedy category, and to promote this, People decided it would be quite the coup to get these women to poke fun at what has been an insult in the female comedy world previously.

Based off of the ridiculous Vanity Fair article by the late Christopher Hitchens in 2007 who felt the need to explain to masses of people “Why Women Aren’t Funny”, it has become a call-to-arms for many women in the biz to prove him wrong. It is just a shame he isn’t around anymore to see the likes of Amy Schumer, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Leslie Jones, Jessica Williams, Margaret Cho, Mindy Kaling and countless others killing it both the stand-up comedy world as well as in TV and film.

It often takes a gender-flipped scenario for some people to realize just how silly it is to keep insisting women aren’t capable of doing something that traditionally men have been dominant in.

“When I think of stories about men, I think … kitchen,” said Tracee Ellis Ross, star of ABC’s ‘Black-ish’.

“It doesn’t feel possible to me. And their voices are so shrill. Like their voices are weird to my ears that when I hear a man say a joke, it feels grating,” said ‘Full Frontal’ host Sam B.

“Personally, I haven’t seen it,” said CBS’ ‘Mom’ star Allison Janney, on the elusive “male funniness”. This video is amazing and the perfect way to wrap up another Feminist Friday edition. Stay tuned for next week’s installment, and don’t forget to submit your videos if you want to be featured!