When I first read about this popular Twitter-turned-Web-series I was ready to be all kinds of outraged. I was ready to highlight how that’s a weak rip off from Shit my Dad says. I am still insistent that I don’t recognise myself in these sketches, but I have to grudgingly admit I have encountered women saying such ‘shit’.
Shit Girls Say was thought up by partners Kyle Humphrey and Graydon Sheppard, first as a Twitter and then a web series featuring Sheppard dragged up in numerous short sketches.
The sketches comprise of Sheppard rummaging around in a handbag, absentmindedly eating crisps on a settee and screeching in a bar with Juliette Lewis.
As I watched the short collection of sketches I noticed myself a) being AMUSED (which we all know feminists are incapable of) b) recognising some of the scenarios and c) congratulating myself because ‘I’m not like that’.
Shit Girls Say was thought up by partners Kyle Humphrey and Graydon Sheppard, first as a Twitter and then a web series featuring Sheppard dragged up in numerous short sketches.
The sketches comprise of Sheppard rummaging around in a handbag, absentmindedly eating crisps on a settee and screeching in a bar with Juliette Lewis.
As I watched the short collection of sketches I noticed myself a) being AMUSED (which we all know feminists are incapable of) b) recognising some of the scenarios and c) congratulating myself because ‘I’m not like that’.
But these thoughts led me to my bookshelf and Ariel Levy’s book Female Chauvinist Pigs. This quote was trying to push itself to the forefront of my mind. But I was too busy trying to decide if I was hungry or not so I had to refer directly to the book.
“Attacking femaleness, deriding ‘girly stuff’ and rolling your eyes at ‘women’s issues,’ declaring yourself a ‘tomboy’ who gets along better with men because women are silly or pretty or whatever— these are expressions of internalized sexism. If that’s the way you feel about your own sex you’ll be doomed to feel inferior no matter what you achieve in life.”
Is it ok for me to find men burlesquing women funny? Am I making like Paglia and working a little too hard to separate myself from ‘girly girls’? Am I trying to be some form of honorary man if I am mildly tickled by these sketches?
Filmmaker Sheppard insists the idea comes from an affectionate place, “We both grew up surrounded by women and strong mothers and sisters, and I think that the tone really comes across as kind or as reverent a little bit.”
Of course I can just watch these sketches, find them kind of funny and query why people seem to have taken to saying addicting when they mean addictive. Or, like, when people say reverent when they mean irreverent. Because that's ok, that's what a lot of comedy is about, irreverence.
Being able to laugh at yourself is an asset. I can see calls for a Shit Boys Say feed (TWINSIES!), I hope there is one. Both set ups have been done before and I don’t find these French and Saunders sketches about dirty old men offensive, the humour is in the exaggerated truth.
Of course this isn’t what all women/girls are like, we should be able to smirk a little at this safe in the knowledge everybody is aware women aren’t frivolous little IT Illiterates. Just as not all fat old men are sex crazed.
Shit Girls Say consists of the utterances of people who can’t stand silence rather than people who are members of the female sex.
That’s settled then. If only I hadn’t continued to re-read Levy’s interview with Jimmy Kimmel discussing his old hosting gig at The Man Show.
““What kind of women do you hang out with?” I asked them.
Kimmel looked at me like I was insane,...he said, “women don’t even want to hang out with their friends.””
Sigh. I’m going to end on more Levy, who, for the record, alongside Juliette Lewis I would definitely want to hang out with.
“It can be fun to feel exceptional – to be the loophole women, to have a whole power thing, to be an honorary man. But if you are the exception that proves the rule, and the rule is that women are inferior, you haven’t made any progress.”
Squeamish Kate
“Attacking femaleness, deriding ‘girly stuff’ and rolling your eyes at ‘women’s issues,’ declaring yourself a ‘tomboy’ who gets along better with men because women are silly or pretty or whatever— these are expressions of internalized sexism. If that’s the way you feel about your own sex you’ll be doomed to feel inferior no matter what you achieve in life.”
Is it ok for me to find men burlesquing women funny? Am I making like Paglia and working a little too hard to separate myself from ‘girly girls’? Am I trying to be some form of honorary man if I am mildly tickled by these sketches?
Filmmaker Sheppard insists the idea comes from an affectionate place, “We both grew up surrounded by women and strong mothers and sisters, and I think that the tone really comes across as kind or as reverent a little bit.”
Of course I can just watch these sketches, find them kind of funny and query why people seem to have taken to saying addicting when they mean addictive. Or, like, when people say reverent when they mean irreverent. Because that's ok, that's what a lot of comedy is about, irreverence.
Being able to laugh at yourself is an asset. I can see calls for a Shit Boys Say feed (TWINSIES!), I hope there is one. Both set ups have been done before and I don’t find these French and Saunders sketches about dirty old men offensive, the humour is in the exaggerated truth.
Of course this isn’t what all women/girls are like, we should be able to smirk a little at this safe in the knowledge everybody is aware women aren’t frivolous little IT Illiterates. Just as not all fat old men are sex crazed.
Shit Girls Say consists of the utterances of people who can’t stand silence rather than people who are members of the female sex.
That’s settled then. If only I hadn’t continued to re-read Levy’s interview with Jimmy Kimmel discussing his old hosting gig at The Man Show.
““What kind of women do you hang out with?” I asked them.
Kimmel looked at me like I was insane,...he said, “women don’t even want to hang out with their friends.””
Sigh. I’m going to end on more Levy, who, for the record, alongside Juliette Lewis I would definitely want to hang out with.
“It can be fun to feel exceptional – to be the loophole women, to have a whole power thing, to be an honorary man. But if you are the exception that proves the rule, and the rule is that women are inferior, you haven’t made any progress.”
Squeamish Kate
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