Women and the Sitcom

Women can be funny.  That’s what a new generation of actresses and comedians is setting out to prove, and they’re succeeding.  It didn’t always seem this way.  For a while, men dominated television comedy.  Sure, there were female characters, but if you look at who was pulling the comedic weight, it was the guys.  In most cases the females seemed more accomplices than ringleaders.

Parks and Recreation and New Girl both lean on lead women.  And these shows are legitimately funny.  Amy Poehler and Zooey Deschanel represent the perfect torchbearers for this new movement.  They’re charismatic, positive, and hilarious.  What makes these shows effective in terms of dispelling stereotypes, however, is that they don’t shove feminism down your throat (*ahem*, Girls, ahem*).  Leslie Knope (Poehler’s character) and Jessica Day (Deschanel’s) don’t conform to modern feminist requirements.  Yet the incoherence, in my opinion, lies in feminism, not in these shows.  These two characters aren’t women who act like men to be funny.  They’re women and they’re funny.  They bring a different type of humor, and that’s OK.  Too often, I think, feminism tries to turn women into men.  If you get married, you’re conforming to traditional gender roles and essentially surrendering to sexism.  Knope is ambitious, driven, and married.  Day depends on her male roommates for certain things, but she also provides things for them that they need.  Attempting to change the natural inclinations of men and women isn’t the solution.  Men and women are different. And that’s okay.

Poehler and Deschanel prove what women are capable of without beating you over the head with some Betty Friedan narrative of feminine liberation.  And they don’t try to solve all of the gender inequality in the world all at once.  Yet they chip away at it with each passing laugh.