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| Pushing the boundaries ... not everyone is amused by Margaret Cho. |
These new poster girls like their bras and know how to have a chuckle, writes ANNIE STEVENS.
''The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.'' Dorothy Parker
Women marched across London in December to protest
against a matter of great concern to the female population. They were
defending muffs: big, bouffant ones. The Muff March was against the
pornography-influenced obsession with removing pubic hair and the rise
in cosmetic gynaecological surgery. Some people came dressed in nude
body suits adorned with cheerful patches of pretend pubic hair and signs
that read: ''You've got my chuff in a huff.''
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| Caitlin Moran |
If the spirit of the protest was light-hearted, the
message was not. The event reflected the sense of fun sweeping through
feminism - a subject not often thought to be especially amusing.
Women are no longer burning their bras. As British newspaper columnist Caitlin Moran wrote last year in her book
How to Be a Woman, they like their bras. Moran has become the poster girl for funny feminism.
As she also writes in
How to Be a Woman, ''We
need to reclaim the word 'feminism'. We need the word 'feminism' back
real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29 per cent of
American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42 per
cent of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS,
ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it
freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The
campaign for equal pay?
Vogue by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit get on your nerves? Or were you just drunk at the time of the survey?''
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| Tina Fey |
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In her memoir,
Bossypants, American actor and comedian Tina Fey gives tips on how to be less like her
30 Rock
alter ego, Liz Lemon, and learn how to make it in a man's world. These
include not wearing tube tops or eating diet food in meetings.
Melbourne academic and co-author of
The Great Feminist Denial,
Monica Dux, believes such exuberance is rejuvenating feminism. ''It
cuts through the bullshit and serves it back up,'' Dux says. ''When
you're funny you can get people to listen. When you write about
feminism, you're delivering bad news. What [Moran has] done is say,
'Look, here's a lot of the bad news' but she's done so in a way to make
it accessible and to make women feel good about things that don't seem
good.''
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| Sarah Silverman |
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Germaine Greer wrote in
The Female Eunuch in
1970 that it would be highly unlikely for women to not have a sense of
humour considering what they were up against. Four decades on, little
seems to have changed: the wage disparity between men and women remains,
''raunch culture'' rules and for little girls, pink still washes over
all.
Greer and Naomi Wolf will appear at the Opera House next
month for The F-Word, a panel discussion that poses the question: is
feminism is a dirty word?
Whether there is a ''right'' way to be a feminist remains
a thorny topic. Melbourne comedian and author Catherine Deveny thinks
humour has become the movement's Trojan horse.
''We tried hitting them over the head with it, we tried
burning our bras, we tried engaging in an intellectual polemic and now
we're trying it with humour. We're always attacking in different ways,''
Deveny says.
When she started doing stand-up comedy in the early 1990s, ''there were comedians and then there were female comedians''.
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| Catherine Deveny |
''All [the female comedians] did stuff about, 'I'm so
fat', 'I'm so single', 'Oh my period'. I just thought, 'I don't want to
be thought of as a female comedian, I want to be a comedian.'''
Challenging people with her views on race, gender, beauty
and sexuality is how American comedian Margaret Cho wins over
audiences. For her, feminism is a no-brainer. ''Feminism is my life!
It's who I am,'' she said in a 2009 interview. ''For me, it's just a
logical way to be. It's the way I approach everything. I guess I
approach everything as a feminist first and then I'm thinking about
racial issues and then I'm thinking about queer issues.''
She's not the only female comedian pushing the boundaries of taste. A recent
New York Times
article dissected Sarah Silverman's rape jokes: ''For a certain strain
of stand-up, dating to Lenny Bruce, it's essential to talk about what's
taboo … Ms Silverman belongs to this tradition, under the guise of a
shallow bigot. What she proved is that there are areas of aggressive,
shocking comedy where women could go further than men.''
But does humour have limits in the feminist argy-bargy,
where there are deeply unfunny topics such as abuse and the oppression
of rights and dignity?
''Humour is helping to broaden the feminist message … but
there are some aspects that are pretty hard to joke about [such as]
child sexual abuse, domestic abuse,'' says author and academic Catharine
Lumby.
''They're not funny subjects but then again, when people
who are working in these areas get together, it's fairly uncommon for
them to not find things to laugh about. It's that pressure-valve thing
and there is a resilience there that is sometimes expressed through
humour.''
For Melbourne journalist and blogger Clementine Ford,
humour has not helped her find a voice as a feminist but has delivered
the message in an easy-to-swallow way.
''You have to make your approach palatable to people
because the simple fact is, they don't respond to 'shrieking
feminists','' she says.
''Humour is a way of making indifferent people side with
you, like-minded people laugh and opponents get outraged. I feel like I
gently poke fun at people who can't see the inequalities that exist in
the world. And sometimes I roast them.''
Not everyone agrees.
In an article for the
New Statesman last year,
journalist Julie Bindel wrote: ''These 'fun feminists', who have little
or no idea about the theory or practice of this movement, take
advantage of the benefits that radicals have fought long and hard for,
whilst contributing nothing. In fact, they are damaging to other women
and are destroying progress won by those of us who do not weep when men
disapprove of our views.''
Perhaps the debate ignores that feminism is not a
one-size-fits-all theory. As Dux says: ''Communicating to ordinary
women is how change comes about.''
And far from diluting all that feminism stands for,
making 'em laugh is a powerful rallying cry. If feminism has a new
voice, it is still stroppy, still strident, still passionate. But in
being knicker-twistingly funny, there is hope, there is a fresh sense of
camaraderie and most importantly, there is heart.
The F-Word feminist forum is at the Sydney Opera House on March 4.
There were also lots and lots of "cute" monkeys (read: cheeky bordering
on aggressive) and lizards, and since Langkawi also has a crocodile farm
featuring a lot of deformed crocs (I'm guessing they are a result of a
fair amount of inbreeding), we saw some interesting freak animals
amongst all the cute ones.
