Comedian Arden Myrin Talks Sexism & Misogyny in Comedy

[scriptedending]

Hard for me to write but necessary. 💖https://t.co/yLK0e5OML2
- Arden Myrin (@ArdenMyrin) July 12, 2018

• You might not know Arden Myrin by name, but she's an actress and comedian who starred in several seasons of MadTV and Chelsea Lately, and she's one of those actresses that has popped up in guest spots on everything from Shameless to Fresh Off the

Comments

[wormsinthedirt]

I used to do comedy and left mostly because the culture was so hostile to women. I did improv and at least while I was involved, like 95%+ of the women on prestigious house teams were hot. Comedy is like inherently an unsexy thing (in terms of being willing to make yourself look like a fool) so being a woman and juggling trying to be funny with still remaining fuckable just sucked.

Plus just the general frat boy, “nothing’s sacred” culture. I have friends who are still involved in comedy and that part seems to have improved. But in terms of comics who have “‘made it” that I knew or were familiar with, the guys ran the gamut in terms of looks, but all the women are hot. It sucks.

[wormsinthedirt]

Also (Sorry, I have feelings) literally ALL of the funniest people I’ve known have been women. But the comedy world tries to force women into a very small number of acceptable “woman in comedy” roles, or women self-select out. Like we don’t want to be involved in 20 minute “bits” at the bar.

I’ll never forget how when I first signed up for improv lessons, my boyfriend at the time, who I made laugh constantly, said “Why? You aren’t funny.”

[scriptedending]

Jesus, that's depressing. Glad you're no longer with someone who clearly undervalued you! :/

I absolutely love improv, but when I took my one and only improv class, I couldn't help but notice that the men (who outnumbered the women) often talked over the women, got up first for exercises, and generally dominated the scenes. It was close to the same deal in the sketch writing class I took, too. I enjoyed both classes and learned a lot, and while I don't think most of the men who participated were trying to be dicks, they all could have benefitted from taking a breath every once in awhile to see what other people had to contribute.

[wormsinthedirt]

Yeah, I don’t mean to be too negative, like my time in the improv community was one of the most fun/happiest times of my life. But it was like all of the gender bullshit that exists in life turned up to 100. Men being super aggressive/confident, women setting the men up for hilarious lines/action (but the women rarely being recognized for this), etc. and like there were a few women who thrived but idk I just got too woke for it lol.

[dropdeadpirate]

JFC @ that introduction, I'd be so mad. She's right about misogyny behind irony too. It's still misogyny and I'll probably look down those type of comics even more, because it's basically just a way of insisting even more that if you don't find it funny you're uptight, or that you don't ~get it~ when the butt of the joke is still women.

Eliza's tweets are excellent too. The onus is always put on women to correct men's behavior and I'm fucking sick of it beyond measure.

I'm not super familiar with either of these two because I tend to steer away from comedy in general (can you guess why) but I think I'm going change that now, they both made great points and I want to see more from them.

[allmylines]

i also think the misogyny behind irony thing is fucking awful because you KNOW they realize what they're saying is fucked up (hence needing to "hide it" behind a veil of irony), they just pretend it's ~a bit and ~just a character. ugh.

[wormsinthedirt]

What’s wrong with Middleditch and Schwartz? It was always my impression that they dated girls way out of their league (so there’s a shallowness factor) but I never knew of anything really nefarious, on the level of Miller and CK.

[wormsinthedirt]

Ugh wtf that’s disappointing. Could you direct me to the essay, or tell me the ex’s name? I tried googling and couldn’t find it.

[bellwetherr]

she's really great and i was so happy to see this go up

most men in comedy are fucking nightmares

[beysactingcoach]

I want to read because I love her but I don’t want to read because men make me fucking sick.