There’s a section of Esquire called “Funny* Joke(s) From Beautiful Women” that bothers me. It isn’t the topless women in lingerie—it’d be silly to begrudge the men’s mag of its staple editorial food. It’s not even that they forgot to include Sarah Silverman for good measure.
What gets me is the asterisk in the section title: the one after “funny”:
*Esquire cannot guarantee that this joke will be funny to everyone.
What is Esquire saying? Are they pulling a Christopher Hitchens on us? Is this a nod to the notion that beautiful people don’t need to be funny? In one retrospective of the series, they describe the women’s comedic stabs as “bold attempts at humor.” (Read: “Look how darling they are when they try.”)
Granted, many of the jokes are, well, not so good. For instance:
- Son: “Dad, what’s the difference between confident and confidential?”
Dad: “Hmm. You are my son, and of that I am confident. Your friend Timmy is also my son. That’s confidential.”—Aimee Garcia - Question: How can you tell the dumbest actress working on a movie?
Answer: She’s the one sleeping with the writer.—Moon Bloodgood
- A cruise ship passes a small desert island. Everyone watches as a ratty-looking bearded man runs out on the beach and starts shouting and waving his hands.
“Who’s that?” asks one of the passengers.
“I have no idea,” replies the captain. “But every year we sail past and he goes nuts.”—Jessica Stroup
- What do you call a lesbian dinosaur? A lickalotopus.—Anna Friel
Esquire is, ostensibly, just covering for their judgment of what’s funny. But isn’t it a given that humor is subjective? And would they have added the same disclaimer for, say, a profile of Zach Galifianakis? (Answer: no.)
I’m torn in writing this post because A) it potentially shows a complete lack of humor on my part—yes, I’m a woman—and B) because maybe Esquire just wanted a cheeky way to stuff some more beautiful people between their virtual covers. So I concede that perhaps I’m just reading far, far too much into this.
But then again we live in a world where Vanity Fair can publish a statement like this:
There are more terrible female comedians than there are terrible male comedians, but there are some impressive ladies out there. Most of them, though, when you come to review the situation, are hefty or dykey or Jewish, or some combo of the three.
So help me out, readers. Is Esquire condescending more than usual? Or is this just my “bold attempt” at social commentary?
Photo tiroltourism/Photobucket
Isn’t this supposed to be “The Good Men Project?”
Then why is it that nearly every time I come to this website, I see nothing but people complaining about men? Am I supposed to be “henpecked” into becoming a “good man” by coming here and reading about how bad we are from the writers here?
Trust me…this is the 21st century; we don’t need any help in being told how horrible we are today.
You can’t talk about men without talking about women. We’re interchangeable. We go hand-in-hand. You also can’t talk about women without talking about men. Fighting for gender equality, fighting to erase stereotypes, inevitably leads to talking about how these stereotypes also affect the other sex. By Esquire publishing what they did, they’re the ones that put men in a bad light; not this article. This article merely brings to light that Esquire, written by men, for some reason seems to believe through outrageous scientific studies that pretty women can’t be funny. Or have no reason to be funny. Pretty is… Read more »
I didn’t see this as attacking men at all, unless you are generalizing the aforementioned columnist in Esquire to all men who have ever existed anywhere.
And I’d have to say that it’s not only beautiful women who are held to this bias, but also beautiful men (if we’re speaking of “beautiful” in a topless model sort of sense, which it seems we are). So, there, Demosetcetera. Women are horrible, too.
Going to have to say… a lot of pretty women make it big based on looks. It makes sense to me, because I’m a dude who understands why dudes go to comedy shows where the comic is a hottie. Something in the back of our head says, “She may be pretty, but somehow you’ll make eye contact, and since she has a sense of humor, she’ll pick you, probably, not really, but maybe, less than likely, but see if it does.” The numbers of attendance are what sells…