Why I Hate The Word 'Comedienne'

It’s only a word, it’s only a little thing. But since you can only eat an elephant in small bites (as the saying goes), let’s take things one mouthful at a time.

And one of the little things that gets my goat is the use of the word ‘comedienne’ to describe a woman who makes people laugh. It implies that the originally male word ‘comedian’ is superior, and therefore anything else is a poor substitute. It implies a sense of otherness with a female comedian, a sense of second best, it gives a hint of frailty, and suggests that a woman telling jokes is somehow different to a man telling jokes. Which is balls.

I run an all-female comedy night called What The Frock! Comedy. Not because I want to be mean and exclude all the boy comedians from the fun, but because for so long most of the women comedians have been excluded from the comedy circuit (on average, only 4% of all acts booked on comedy nights in the UK will be female. It’s 2013!).

Because I make this deliberate gender distinction in my booking policy, I inevitably spend a lot of time reading cuttings about my acts that refers to them as ‘comediennes’. Now don’t get me wrong – I am DELIGHTED when anybody writes anything about my events, I am over the frickin’ moon. But, given the opportunity, I do find myself saying to journalists who contact me: “I don’t want to be annoying, and I’m not going to ask to approve the copy… but please call the acts ‘comedians’ and not ‘comediennes’. It’s about what comes out of their gob, not what their gob looks like.” On the whole, they listen.

But last week the word seemed to come up a lot. Maybe that was because What The Frock! put on a big show that generated a lot of press – in print, on radio and on the telly box. Wooh! But in every instance, at some point the acts were called ‘comediennes’. Even by female journalists (journalistas?).

But why? You don’t get the same gender distinction in a lot of other professions. You don’t get male dentists and female dentistas; you don’t get male lawyers and female lawyerettes; you don’t get male accountants and female sumsticians. For one thing, they’re all really ugly words. For another thing, they’re all really stupid words. And for a third thing, they’re all made-up words. Just like ‘comedienne’.

Every single one of the 100+ acts I’ve worked with to date refers to herself as a ‘comedian’. Some make a point of saying they actively distance themselves from the word ‘comedienne’, while others say they don’t like the word but they’d rather somebody wrote something about them than nothing at all.

Which leads me to say that the language used to describe female acts also baffles me sometimes. For instance, we had Lucy Porter on last week, who was variously described in the local press as “sweet voiced”, “a familiar funny maker” and “sweetly demeanored”, while previously Tiffany Stevenson was said to provide “amiable and chatty banter”. All phrases to imply maternal hugs or bland giggles. There’s an interview with Bridget Christie in the current issue of Vogue with the headline “Pretty Funny” (not only would that headline never go with a piece about a male comedian, but it also implies that Bridget’s appearance is somehow relevant, and that it is surprising that she should be amusing. Being a laydee and that).

I know there are bigger things to worry about, but when we are still giving the same job different words depending on the gender of the person doing it, we still need to think about how much further we have to go in the equality battle.

Women typically get short shrift in the comedy industry – thanks to venues that will only book a maximum of one woman a night, panel shows that ignore them altogether, and stadium tours populated almost exclusively by the boys. And don’t get me started on how few female comedians are able to put out comedy DVDs.

And if people keep on calling them ‘comediennes’ rather than ’comedians’, things aren’t going to change any time soon. I’m not for a second implying this is the only problem women face in the comedy industry, far from it. But the nuances implied by a distinctively lesser word, one that is feminine and dainty in its sound and appearance, suggest that a gurl comedian is going to be a disappointment. When, frankly, that’s just poppycock.

Here’s a top ten of my favourite comedians right this minute. What do they all have in common? (Clue – none of them are shit, none of them are dainty):

• Aisling Bea
• Amy Poehler
• Bridget Christie
• Jayde Adams
• Jennifer Saunders
• Katherine Ryan
• Luisa Omielan
• Sara Pascoe
• Tina Fey
• Vikki Stone

Fifty Shades of Subtlety

Just as you don’t need to be talented to be celebrated these days, you don’t need to be any good at writing to be a bestselling author. This was increasingly in evidence throughout seven instalments of the Harry Potter books (though I forgave JK Rowling, owing to the millions of children in whom she inspired a love of literature), and is painfully on show in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy.

I’ve only read one of EL James’ three books, by the way – Fifty Shades of Grey. Life’s too short for the rest of the series, and my brain was numbing up. More than my exhaustion from reading the shoddy writing, I simply didn’t give a phlegmatic cock what happened to the implausible characters.

But I’m still glad I read Fifty Shades of Grey, if for no other reason than it’s a pretty funny book. And here are my top ten reasons why:

10 – On page 26 of the book, anti-hero Christian Grey goes into the HARDware shop where the object of his lust, Anastasia Steele, works. What does he do in the HARDware shop? He buys cable ties and masking tape while COCKing his head in the SCREW aisle. Subtle.

9 – Anastasia falls head over heels in lust with the mysterious Grey. He charms her with his good looks, immense wealth and mysterious ways. Here’s a genuine sentence from the book describing how she sees him: “His voice is warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel… or something.”

8 – We are told – on no less than four occasions throughout the book – that Christian smells of “freshly laundered linen and some expensive body wash”. This much-repeated phrase conjures up an olfactory image of Bold 2in1 and Java by Lynx in my mind’s nose. Sexy. (See also: “Oh my… Sweat and body wash and Christian. It’s a heady cocktail. So much better than a margherita.”)

7 – The night before Christian finally seduces virginial Anastaia, she goes out and gets steaming drunk, and calls him from the stinky toilets of a bar. Being her knight in shining armour, Christian comes to rescue her from the toilets… and she thanks him by vomming all over his expensive shoes. Yet still he boffs her the next night and buys her a laptop. Romance is not dead.

6 – EL James has a fascinating choice of adjectives at her disposal. For instance, we learn that Christian talks “phlegmatically” and that he “quirks” his eyebrows. My favourite metaphorical moment in the whole book, however, is when Anastasia blushes “the colour of the Communist manifesto”. That’s literature that is, right there.

5 – Despite his wealth, none of Christian’s clothes fit properly. Throughout the book, we are repeatedly told that his grey linen trousers are hanging off his jutting hips “just so”. Doesn’t that make you want to mother him?

4 – During the sexy bits, an extraordinary amount of page space is devoted to the removal of each other’s Converse trainers and socks. I’m not making it up.

3 – When the characters (aged 21 and 27) choose to listen to music, they listen to such contemporary artists as Snow Patrol, Bruce Springsteen and Kings of Leon. It’s like EL James rang my dad (73) and asked him to name drop a few bands that the young people like these days.

2 – Without the Fifty Shades of Grey series, we would never have met Anastasia’s inner goddess. I like to think of the ever-present inner goddess as a Tinkerbel-lite figure… ie, if we all believe in her, she WILL exist. Even better, her inner goddess is constantly at war with her subconscious, meaning that we have three female heroines for the price of one. But which would win in a fight?

1 - However, the best sentence in the entire book is this one: “My heartbeat has picked up, and my medulla oblongata has neglected to fire any synapses to make me breathe.” I’m not making it up. I promise, hand on heart, that that is a genuine, unadulterated sentence from the book. In fact, EL James is so pleased with her use of the term “medulla oblongata” that it’s not long before it cracks a second mention. (Medical ignoramuses will be turned on to learn that the “medulla oblongata” is the part of the brain that controls breathing and vomiting. It’s true. I checked on Wikipedia.)

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Of course, I’m being flippant. Fifty Shades of Grey is badly-written, populist tripe that’s benefitted from a great marketing campaign. And just as Oasis became famous because everyone bought their records when they heard everyone else was buying their records, people are buying Fifty Shades of Grey because they don’t want to be left behind. Hell, I only read it because everyone else was, so who am I to talk? Exactly.

PS – I’ve deliberately avoided mentioning the many reasons why this book is a feminist’s worst literary nightmare. The contracted ownership, coupled with the stalking, mental and physical abuse, and more… it’s appalling to see the mainstream acceptance of such behaviour in 2012, at a time when we should be further ahead than ever in putting an end to this degrading treatment of women. But there are many other people, far better qualified than me to speak on such matters, who have already written about this so well in relation to these books.