It’s a fact that being funny is an evolutionary trait, developed by the unattractive to entice the very good-looking to mate with them. Yes, that is a fact, and no I won’t look it up. And therefore it is not OK for attractive people to also be funny. And I don’t think that I’m going too far when I say that comedians being hot is a crime against nature.
I use the word “hot” intentionally. Beauty is ineffable. It can be found anywhere and in anyone. Hotness is different. It’s playing the game of society’s beauty norms and winning. Although, by spending any time playing, you have lost (like golf). I’m not ugly, but I’ll never be hot. I simply don’t have it in me. The effort! The commitment! The other day I went to a wedding and thought to myself: “I really like this couple, maybe I’ll shave above the knee.” A hot person would have probably already been professionally hairless, and, if not would have booked in a wax ASAP.
Many US comedians these days are celebrity-level hot. Hot by normal people standards, not just by comedy’s traditionally low bar. I think I know why. If you are a woman with any visibility, there will inevitably be a response online to your looks. If you are in any way not meeting normative beauty standards, it will be pointed out to you. A lot. If you can attain hotness, you may think that you become more bulletproof – that you will be judged on your jokes and not your looks. That’s what I think has happened with comedians such as Nikki Glaser, who did an incredible job of hosting the Golden Globes, but did so looking as polished as any A-list actor.
It wasn’t always like this. I grew up looking up to Wanda Sykes, Rosie O’Donnell, Dawn French and Jo Brand. Now to be clear, these are attractive people – no one wore a velvet tabard dress/top in the early 00s like Dawn French, and no one ever will – but they weren’t trying to be hot. They talked about beauty standards and they often addressed how they differed from the norms, but they never felt the need to meet them.
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Of course, when I say “hot comedians”, really I mean “hot female comedians” – because there is obviously more pressure on women to be hot. There is still room for the schlubby, basketball-shorted Adam Sandler everyman comedian. But for the new generations of comedians, it seems that similar pressures are now affecting men. Matt Rife angrily refuted claims he’d had plastic surgery recently, claiming that he just can’t help being gorgeous. “If anything,” he said, “as a comedian, it actually made shit harder.” I agree, if by “shit harder” he means “much, much easier”.
No good can come of this new standard. I’m not saying all comedians need to be ugly, but I am worried we’re getting to a point where all comedians need to be hot. Please. No. Think of us, the happily hairy thighed, and let us be as non-hot as we like.
