Attack of the female comedians

Miranda Hart’s surprise sweep at this year’s British Comedy Awards, including Best New Comedy Act, Best Comedy Actress and the People’s Choice, shines a light on one of Britain’s greatest achievements: the triumph of the female comedian, rising above the constraints of a male-dominated profession. And the twist? That she managed to pull all that off despite the fact that no member of the general public, no group of students poring over the outtakes on the Internet, and not even one undersexed and overstimulated teenage boy pilfering from the top shelf of the newsagent have seen Miranda Hart’s boobs. That’s right ladies; despite vast amounts of evidence to the contrary (see Kelly Brook, approximately 75% of female Big Brother contestants and Katie Price), in the pursuit of her success, Ms Hart didn’t even have to ‘get them out for the lads’.

Instead, we see in Miranda a new wave of comedienne; someone who takes her sexuality, or her perceived lack thereof, into her own two hands and makes it into something spectacular; a kind of inverse sexualisation. Miranda’s attitude to her appearance takes me back to the late Nineties, when I used to watch the raucously successful Smack the Pony comedy sketch show, which also reversed traditional female representations of sexuality; the show consisted of the antics of three beautiful women who weren’t afraid to renounce their feminine trappings, who didn’t shy away from making themselves ugly in front of millions and who were probably a few years ahead of their time, all in the name of expressing themselves.

Stateside, women in comedy promote themselves rather differently. Chelsea Handler, the E! Entertainment Channel’s runaway success comedienne was on the December 2009 cover of Playboy, channelling her most tanned and blonde inner Playmate, marrying her comic personality and her sexual personality – maybe personalised to Handler, whose brand of comedy runs towards blatant sexual ribaldry of completely indeterminate sexuality boundaries and working very hard to convince her audience that she’s never seen the letters P and C anywhere near each other.

That said, Handler is just one example of a comedienne who acts as a role model for modern women in that she is sexual, rather than sexy. The two are increasingly considered synonymous with each other. Take five seconds to think about it, and ‘sexy’ is a display concept, a titillation traditionally for the eyes of men; ‘sexual’, however, is far more empowering. With the advent of Cosmopolitan and Holly Willoughby and Philip Schofield perusing horrendously gymnastic sexual positions on This Morning, acceptance of women actually enjoying sex and the pursuit of it is becoming increasingly widespread (regardless of what Stephen Fry might have to say on the matter). Miranda propagates this – a key plot point of the show is her budding relationship with revoltingly dishy male love interest – Miranda’s character believes that the flaws in her personality are what make it difficult for him to see the light and fall head-over-heels in love with her (which of course, he does); that she is not conventionally attractive is acknowledged, but is clearly secondary to her being an idiot.

Christopher Hitchens wrote in a 2007 feature for Vanity Fair that woman comedians lean towards being either ‘hefty, dykey or Jewish’. No doubt fellow feminists will balk at such a generalisation, but in this at least, Hitchens isn’t necessarily incorrect. Dawn French, half of inimitable duo French and Saunders, has had a long and highly-publicised struggle with her weight, and Hattie Jacques, of Carry On fame, carried the ’25-stone’ label with her for almost the entirety of her career. On the other side of the pond, comedic giants Wanda Sykes and Ellen DeGeneres are both lesbians in public committed relationships, and a healthy chunk of Chelsea Handler’s material is based on her Jewish upbringing. But then, isn’t having a ‘schtick’ part and parcel of being a modern-day stand-up comic, male or female? Michael McIntyre is unabashedly upper-middle-class, Omid Djalili is a posh Arab, Rhod Gilbert is a self-proclaimed sheep-shagger and Jo Brand is fat. Honestly, this smacks of a gender equality within the industry, rather than the sexist inferiority Hitchens suggests.

But, for every comedienne with a gimmick around which her act is based, there are so many more utilising genuine wit and intelligence to make the general public laugh. Tamsin Grieg’s work in Green Wing was considered by many critics to be the weight in the scales which took the programme from ‘great’ to ‘brilliant’. Shappi Korsandi and Andi Osho make pithy racial commentary, playing into stereotypes and challenging us to laugh at the inequality still existing in the 21st century.

In a constantly evolutionary yet often disappointing entertainment industry, British and American comedy is going from strength to strength, particularly thanks to our comediennes. And so, in the words of possibly one of the greatest female wits of the last decade, I would like to salute Tina Fey, writer of Mean Girls, who might be the only woman on earth who could actually make ‘fetch’ happen. And more power to her for it.