A few weeks ago, I posted a story on my Instagram that simply said: “funny guys are hot, sexy, cool, Seth meyers. funny girls are men named Jim and three rats in a Trenchcoat. Food for thought.” The lack of response to this was…. underwhelming, to say the least. What I thought was a funny, intelligent, Charles Busowski-esque (or any other pretentious writer) observation that made perfect sense, was just a story that my followers would look at for .2 seconds, chalk up as another one of my misplaced attempts to be vague and mysterious, and skip until they landed on Emily Ratajowski’s most recent story. The post came after a riveting discussion between me and my best friend that concluded with us almost screaming through our tears because we realized we have no sex appeal.
While this seems like a drastic and damning statement to make, it was the result of many conversations we had about what it means to be a funny woman. Now, suspend your disbelief for the next few minutes at my unabashed narcissism in coming out with the fact that I believe I am a funny woman. This statement has been backed up throughout my life, mainly by my mother’s middle-aged friends who have told her, “Neena, your kid is a firecracker.” Firecracker. Riot. Witty. These are all words that sounded like a sweet, magical symphony to a smug seven-year-old me who ate up these compliments. I was funny. And so, I leaned on that.
Contrary to what it seems, I wasn’t the coolest growing up (shocker, I know). I was weird and awkward with kids my age. I had weird tastes and tried way too hard to seem like I didn’t try at all. So, when I found out that adults found me funny, it was like I finally had a way out. Eventually, I grew up, and so did my humor. I got a job at Trader Joe’s and started practicing jokes and anecdotes on unwilling customers, gleaming as I made my way to the backroom after a customer interaction ended with them laughing over a poor rendition of something that happened earlier that week. I was a performer, and the grocery store was my stage. I loved making people laugh, it inflated my ego and as a bonus, made an 8-hour shift go by quickly.
However, growing up also came with another realization. Guys didn’t like funny women. They THOUGHT they liked funny women, but the way men and women define a “sense of humor” is very different. Rod Martin, a co-author of a study published in the journal of Evolution and Human Behavior said, “In our research, women said they wanted ‘someone who makes me laugh,’ and men said they wanted ‘someone who laughs at my jokes.’”
The male gaze is a woman nodding and laughing at a man telling the same boring, demeaning jokes and never having a quip to add to the conversation. I have quips. Quip is my middle name.
I’ve been seeing TikTok after TikTok of somebody making an observation like “have you noticed that funny guys always have a girlfriend, but funny girls never have a boyfriend?” This phenomenon is perfectly summed up in one of my favorite shows, “Sex Lives of College Girls.” One of the characters, Bela, is hooking up with a guy and says, “I told him he reminded me of David Beckham, and he told me I reminded him of Larry David.” I am Larry David. Except for the whole rich, white, male aspect, obviously. But Larry David is not exactly what comes to mind when you think about sex (sorry Larry).
While there are a bunch of other reasons I can be categorized as being undateable (to list a few: I use big words that I don’t know the meaning of, I never remember passwords, I’m sexually attracted to Conan O’Brien, etc.), it hit me that my humor cemented my place in the feared “friend zone.” I never thought my biggest superpower would be my downfall. I loved being funny, but I also wanted to be wanted.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge feminist, I read the plot summary of The Ethical Slut on Wikipedia last month and yes, I know I shouldn’t be so stressed out about what men think of me but I’m also just a hormonal teenage girl. I don’t want to have to choose between my femininity and my humor. I’m not trying to start fifth-wave feminism, I just want to get a few laughs.
It’s hard to feel comfortable with my confidence. Writing this article itself, half of it was deleting and rewriting sentences where I boldly state I am funny. I unintentionally try to make myself seem smaller, and more palatable. Unfortunately, I might just be too loud to keep under wraps.
But I’ll stay hopeful. I’m a romantic after all. And hopefully, someday a guy is going to laugh at my jokes and not think of Larry David when we have sex. Or maybe not. Either way, I’m sure I’ll write something funny about it.