Female Comedians Are Finally Getting Their Moment

For years, comedy was strictly a men-only club. But there’s a new wave of women dominating the scene and shaking up punchlines. We take a moment to celebrate the ladies making us laugh.

- Nell Frizzell, Elle McClure

I have seen many things on comedy stages over the years: fights, sweat, a fully naked man rigid beneath a spotlight with a whole lemon in his mouth, fibreglass heads, people miming cunnilingus, guns, melons, testicles, keytars and a man with a rucksack full of ice. But when Hannah Gadsby announced during her show Nanette that she was no longer doing self-deprecating jokes, I was shocked. I felt uneasy, surprised and strange.

It is a simple enough statement, on the surface: no self-deprecating jokes. No more easy pickings about your appearance, your hair, your outfit, your disastrous Tinder chat, what a mess you are in social situations. How you’re crap (or lazy) in bed, your weight, your voice, your gender, your leg length, your accent – your general, total failure in all aspects of life. Gadsby is not going to play that game anymore. She is no longer going to surrender her status, denigrate herself or undermine her talents, simply to put the unenlightened members of her audience at ease. This was renegade. This was pretty near pop-on-a-beret-and-chug-on-a-cigar revolutionary.

“Using self-deprecating humour has an effect – on you and on the audience,” says Rachel Parris, comedian and star of the improvised comedy play

Austentatious. “It’s become too common, too expected for women, for gay people, for people of colour, for anyone whose status is already lowered by the society we live in, to self-deprecate on stage in order to put the audience at ease.” She continues: “What happens if these comedians are, instead, powerful? Confident? Unashamedly smart? If you look at how London Hughes, Suzi Ruffell, Harriet Kemsley or Lolly Adefope use status, they all do it differently, and that’s what feels hopeful.”