Jenna and Jessie watched the Amy Schumer Leather Special together on a couch in Jenna’s dorm room. This is their reaction to the show. Enjoy!
Jenna
About a week ago, I tried to convince Jessie to watch Amy Schumer’s new Leather Special. Although I had already watched the special a couple week before with my mom, and I knew it was good, Jessie was apprehensive.
Jessie
When I was younger, I liked Amy Schumer, but as I got older and her style changed, I began to find some of her content offensive and just not funny. I thought that this special would be much of the same white feminist humor. It got totally panned, so I thought it was probably terrible and had no interest wasting an hour on trash comedy.
Jenna
So, when I finally got her to sit down and watch it, I was incredibly excited. Although I had just seen it a few weeks prior, I had fallen in love instantly, and I couldn’t wait to see it again. I’m not the world’s biggest Schumer fan, but her set was provocative, empowering, and hilarious. It’s no secret that there are far more male comedians than female, and, even worse, the female comedians who are out there are far more censored and more harshly criticized than their male counterparts. What I loved about Amy is that she doesn’t give a f***.
Regardless of what other people would think, she brought some raunchy and relatable comedy to the stage, and she made it hilarious. As a woman, I enjoyed hearing about her funny sexual experiences. And, Amy had no shame—Amy was her unique crazy self, and she didn’t try to censor herself to get people to like her. She didn’t care about being ladylike. She brought up how difficult it can be to be a woman in the spotlight who doesn’t fit into societal norms, and she made me feel comfortable. Amy poked fun at things that women are often insecure about, and she reminded me that I need to take things a little less seriously.
Jessie
What stood out to me most about her comedy special was that she was doing male stand up. It came across to me as satirical male stand up comedy, which largely focuses on sex and women’s bodies. I thought what she was saying was pretty funny, because you don’t often hear female comics talk about sex really at all, and especially not in the raunchy style of male stand-up comedians. What some people interpreted as perpetuating negative stereotypes about female heterosexual sex, I saw as making fun of those stereotypes in a critique of male comedy.
There is an expectation that female comics have to be incredibly smart, and their comedy has to be witty and nuanced all the time. As far as I can tell, male comics are not held to any kind of similar standard. Some of them are witty and nuanced, but some really famous comics just get up on stage and tell a bunch of sex jokes. And that’s fine, and people pay to go see them because they think it’s funny. I don’t see anything inherently wrong with that, even though I personally find it offensive and objectifying. I thought Amy Schumer did a clever job of flipping this comedic stereotype on its head. I thought her jokes were surprisingly funny, and political. She spent a couple minutes being serious about gun violence prevention and making jokes about people who are against it. I found that hilarious, and daring considering that the basis of this segment was that there was a shooting targeting women at a midnight screening of her movie Trainwreck.
Jenna
After watching Amy kick some butt up on stage, I felt proud to be a woman. And, I felt less ashamed of myself, my body, and my actions because Amy reminded me that I am a woman, and there is no wrong way to be one. I scoured the web to look for other reactions to the show, and what I found was disheartening. Amy’s Special was panned. Its Netflix ratings barely averaged over one star. How was that possible? A little more digging, and I found that the hate being thrown at Amy was the work of an angry alt-right group. Amy was being shamed for being a woman who spoke out about women’s issues and gun rights. She was being shamed for being a woman who is funny.
Regardless of what the ‘critics’ say, we were blown away by The Leather Special. If you’re looking for a girl-power, feel-good comedy special, you can’t go wrong with Amy’s latest special.
Image credits: Giphy.com