Tom Shales Is So Right, Beautiful Women Are Terrible At Comedy

"Two new women who will have the status of featured players -- Jenny Slate and Iranian-born Nasim Pedrad -- will join the cast [of 'Saturday Night Live'], not as replacements for anybody, Michaels says, although cute Casey Wilson and glamorous Michaela Watkins have concurrently left. Watkins may have been just too classically pretty to be hilarious."

- Tom Shales, Washington Post

As I was home alone, skimming blogs, being fat and ugly, I came across Julie Klausner's post on Tom Shales's recent take on "SNL"'s hirings and firings. It was hard to read, not because of the content, but because the boil on my left cheek has started to obscure my vision. As a woman in comedy, I understood his point: Being "classically pretty" works against you. I mulled this idea as I wiped ice cream from my mole hair, "This must be why Marilyn Monroe was so terrible in 'Some Like It Hot,'" I thought, rubbing my hump, "and why Tina Fey never made anything of herself after SNL."

I picked up a copy of the "Washington Post" and was relieved that the newsprint that rubbed off on my hands covered my psoria-eczematic wounds, but couldn't find any further thoughts on his brilliant theory. So I again returned to my cave and searched on the Internet, finding this:

"I thought Ms Watkins looked like a model; very elegant, quite quite pretty. It seemed like maybe comedy is too messy a business for someone like her. I couldn't see her letting herself get messed up for laughs -- not that there's much slapstick any more, it's just that comedy is by its nature indecorous, if there is such a word."

How true! The only reason I find messiness comfortable is because I live a troll-like existence using debris and refuse to shield me from the taunts of the outside world. How Lorne would love me! It's not as if beauty works to a comedienne's advantage. Sarah Silverman, Aisha Tyler, Chelsea Handler, Amy Sedaris, and Kristen Wiig are all gorgeous and massive disappointments. Maybe "Saturday Night Live" will pay me double now that my goitre is almost the size of my head.

Follow Alex Leo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HuffPostComedy

Comments

[rockyersocksoff]

I'll toss in a leg-hump for Maria Bamford...

[stevefromkelso]

Jamie Presley is hot and funny.

[Kebric]

So what we have here is a critic writing about who he finds funny and who he finds attractive and then a blogger disagreeing, followed by three pages of comments consisting of the same thing. Who people find funny, who they find attractive and why the person who wrote the comment below them doesn't know what they're talking about. Wasn't this somehow supposed to be about the ridiculousness of judging people by their looks. Didn't take long to evolve into a bunch of top ten lists.

[Jilly Gagnon - Huffpost Blogger]

The only reason you folks ever let me near the comedy section was that, grinning wildly at the chance, (an expression which squishes up my smaller, lower-placed eye until you can hardly see it at all) my gappy, yellowing teeth, the important players chipped or missing entirely, proved for once and all that this was a career for which I was destined.

[FoxIslander]

I think it works for men too. Name a single "good looking" male comic. The funnier you look the funnier you are...plus funny looking kids are forced to hone there comic skills in order to survive.
I do agree however that men are way funnier than women. *shrugs*

[candidpsychiatrist]

Amy Poehler.
Need I say more?

[Dan Garfinkel]

Judy Holliday, Madelyn Kahn.

[SayBlade]

There's a whole batch more attractive comics who rule and who either are from Canada or got started here. So it is universal that attractiveness doth not make a woman unfunny.
Just to name a few:

Jenny Jones
Gilda Radner
Jessica Holmes
Andrea Martin
Catherine O'Hara
Sandra Shamas
Elvira Kurt
Geri Hall
Nikki Payne
Carla Collins
Samantha Bee
Carole Robinson (rest her soul)
Penelope Corin
Linda Kash
Janet van de Graaf
Tracy Dawson

[jackstpaul]

Radner, Jones (funny?), O'Hara, and Martin. And then 12 no one in the US has ever heard of.

[SayBlade]

Oh! I get it ONLY gorgeous AMERICAN women are NOT funny.

[SayBlade]

Augh! How could I forget Mag Ruffman???

[Dan Garfinkel]

Lucille Ball, Katherine Hepburn, Goldie Hawn, Leslie Mann.

[Dolmance]

I don't know about that. I have a tape of The Three Stooges with Lucille Ball when she was 18. And she was amazingly beautiful.

[BlackJAC]

You forgot Cobie Smulders, Jennifer Aniston, Christina Applegate, and Tina Fey.

[Ohioan730]

For the record, I think Kristen Wiig and Jason Sedakis as "The Two A-Holes" is one of the funniest sketches of the newer seasons.

[GrumpyOldGeek]

Yer write..

Whenever I look at a beautiful woman, funny or not, I drool.
Wiping up the spit disturbs my funny bone.

[Malkin72]

None of the women mentioned in this article are particularly funny OR attractive.

Tina Fey, Wanda Sykes and Sarah Haskins (if she writes her own stuff) are the only funny women in comedy.

Only Tina Fey could be considered attractive and when she was side by side with Sarah Palin, she didn't hold up.

[Lordsuhn]

Ellen Degeneres, Whoopi Goldberg, Alex Borstein, Janeane Garafelo, Paula Poundstone.

All extremely funny. And those are just the ones off the top of my head.

[Malkin72]

Ellen is terribly unfunny.
Whoopi is funny 1 out of every 50 jokes.
Alex is great as Lois but that's because Seth and Co. put the words in her mouth.
Janeane is maybe the least funny person on earth.
The funniest thing Paula Poundstone ever did was to get accused of molesting children. And, there is obviously, nothing funny about child molestation. Do the math.

You are funny, though, to offer that list in order to try to refute my statement.

[MauriceBendix]

Wait, was this post supposed to be funny?
Kristen Wiig is funny. Sara Silverman, though I would
like to like her, is just not funny. Amy Sedaris is not
attractive. Kathy Griffin is brilliant as are several other
comediennes.

[Lordsuhn]

Again, I disagree, I think Amy Sedaris is attractive and Sara Silverman is funny.