person:harriet nelsons

  • Why Do So Many Pretty Female Comedians Pretend They’re Ugly ? - The Atlantic
    http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/08/why-do-so-many-pretty-female-comedians-pretend-theyre-ugly/261510

    via @misspress sur Twitter

    Diller’s reign as the frumpish, clumsy queen of the underbrag was groundbreaking on many levels. She did, after all, prove that women with bad hair, bad cooking, and loud mouths could be America’s sweethearts, too. She was an iconoclast, a refreshing antidote to the June Cleavers and Harriet Nelsons that had been dominating pop culture in the years prior. But Diller’s trademark brand of hapless, self-deprecating, ugly-girl humor was based an invented set of shortcomings she didn’t actually have. Which highlights a weird glitch in the system that still plagues women in comedy today: Why can’t funny women be hot? Or accomplished? Or smart? Why do so many women with these otherwise highly valued traits have to downplay them to get laughs?

    Diller was one of the first to disguise her sex appeal for the sake of her comedy, but she wasn’t by any means one of the last. Many beloved female humorists, both
    now and in the past, have made the deliberate choice to highlight their un-sexiness in the interest of being funny.

    And there’s a disturbingly simple explanation for that. “You can’t have people look at you and listen to you at the same time,” says Gina Barreca, a professor of English literature and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut, with a laugh.

    According to Barreca, young, attractive female comics in the stand-up industry have always been targets of sexualized heckling. Even today, “They still have people screaming at them, ’Take your clothes off!,’” she says, “or”’Shut up and show me your tits!’" Realizing this, Diller cleverly diverted masculine attention away from her looks by making herself ugly. “She took herself out of the sexual marketplace,” Barreca explains.

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