COMEDY

94 THE BODYWomen have been systematically denied the power to be funny for anumber of cultural reasons. First, there is the often-repeated opinionthat women are not as naturally funny as men due to the belief thatcomedy is boisterous and aggressive and therefore temperamentallyunsuited to women. A product of this is the perceived ghettoization ofwomen’s comedy and the belief that female comedians only discuss‘women’s’ themes—relationships, shopping, and menstruation, forexample—whereas male topics are thought to be unbounded andtherefore to have universal appeal. Second, if women are seen to befunny, then this is thought to be a function of the genre rather than thequalities of the performer; as Leslie Ferris says, ‘the moresymbolic…“woman” becomes, the less she herself is and can beculturally creative’ (Ferris, 1990:29). In addition, female roles incomedy are limited and limiting and are often misinterpreted asevidence of the limitations of female humour. Most pervasively,comedy is culturally associated with a degree of sexual opennessdeemed inappropriate for women. Regina Barreca, who writesextensively on women and comedy, remarks that,In communities throughout the world…women who tell jokes areregarded as sexually promiscuous. The connection betweenhumor and sexual invitation is made up of many links, amongthem the thought that it takes a certain ‘fallen’ knowledge to makea joke. Women in some Greek and Italian villages, for example,are considered less than virtuous if they so much as laugh aloud inmixed company. Only old women—or women who are somehowoutside the sexual marketplace—are permitted to make lewdremarks.(Barreca, 1991:50)The laws of deportment, etiquette, and sexual propriety, therefore,traditionally discourage woman’s humour as it gives cause to suspecttheir virtue. Not only is the intimation of forbidden knowledgeworrying, the effect of laughter upon the body is a contributing factor tothe equation of women’s humour with sexual threat as it dissolves goodposture, contorts the face, causes physical abandon, and produces a loudnoise. Laughter shatters the illusion of women as quiet and poised andreveals them as fearfully bodily and biological creatures. The horror ofthe exposed female body threatens to debase the ideals of beauty andromance transposed onto women by men, as in Jonathan Swift’s poem,‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’ (1730), where the voyeur Strephon cannot