Over the last few months, I’ve repeatedly headed to Tiger Beatdown, hoping to find something new from Sady Doyle. There never was.
I’d worried that she had stopped writing for some reason — job, depression, burnout, any of the usual downers. Gladly, it turns out the opposite is true — she’s found places to pay her for words.
In These Times, Rookie. Sady links these and others on twitter.
My favourite of her recent articles is about women in comedy:
They’re comedians; being pretty and nice is not their job.
What makes comedians transgressive, from Lucille Ball to Ken Jeong, is their willingness to look bad in public. Women have never been encouraged to cultivate this fearlessness. There are exceptions – Ball or Joan Rivers come to mind – but they tend to prove the rule. Lady Loser Comedy opens up the game. Women who have the profane deadpan of McCarthy, or the cool prickliness of Fey or the off-rhythm intensity of Wiig: They’re not excluded any more. They embarrass themselves, they’re completely inappropriate, and that’s fine; it’s comedy.