In high school, most of our All Student Body (ASB)
executive team was made up of guys. You would get the occasional female on the
team, but that was usually because she was extremely popular. It frustrated
because a lot of my qualified female friends who had such big and great plans
for the school would run, but would never be voted in. Most of them knew by
running that they would not win because my class would only elect the funniest
speech and everyone in my class believed that girls just simply are not funny. First
of all, this whole process is ridiculous because we should not be voting in the
funniest person, but we should be voting in the person who will put the most
effort into their job. During my freshman year, we voted in Jason. Although I
grew up with him and he is one of my good friends, his entire speech was on the
downfalls of being Asian with “tiger parents.” Apparently, this kind of humor
appealed to my predominately white class. I believe the Superiority Theory of
humor was at work in this scenario. He had no plans for the future of our high
school, but his self-deprecating humor landed him as the President of our
entire high school. I wonder how he felt when he realized that he truly only
got votes by making fun of his race, family, and heritage. Probably not too
good. The fact that my class thought this was even remotely close to okay is
beyond me. The second part of the ASB process that frustrated me was that all
of the men in our class constantly commented on how females “just are not
funny.” Excuse me! Amy Schumer, Amy Poehler, Sarah Siverman, Ellen DeGeneres,
Mindy Kaling, Melissa McCarthy, and Kristen Wiig just to name a few of the
thousands of funny and brilliant women that have blessed this world. A group of people judged someone on not
being funny before they even got to the podium. If they were a female, they
were automatically not funny and no one listened to what they had to say. The
saddest part of all of this is that even some of my girlfriends fell into this
mindset and would discount a female classmate because she just was not funny. I honestly felt like I would have been a good candidate, but I was too
scared to run because I knew that people would only judge be based on my gender
and ability to make people laugh. When did humor become about gender and why do
we have the perception that men are funnier than women?
We should never have to tear-ourselves a part or be a
certain type of person to get people to laugh and like us. Humor should be
about inclusiveness. Humor should be about bringing a large group of people
together to relate to something. Humor should never be used
to segregate. As much as my high school taught me and prepared me, it was a
community of segregation. Boys were “popular” based on if they could make
people laugh and girls were “popular” based on their looks. Humor is unique to
the individual and thus should not be used to determine the status of one
person to another. Men are often portrayed to be the “jokesters” of the class,
but when did we stop telling girls that they cannot be funny too? Women have always
been told to be polite and indirectly this has come out as us not speaking our
minds and being funny will offend others. I often laugh more at females anyways
because they often use humor and do not offend anyone in the process. This is
why I respect female comedians because they have penetrated a world where they
are not theoretically meant to be funny. From now on, can we please just tell our daughters that they have every right and the ability to be just as funny as the boy sitting next to them in class?
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