Last week, at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in Los Angeles, six of the funniest ladies in entertainment sat down to talk about the art of comedy. The evening was called “A Conversation With Ladies Who Make Us Laugh.” Lily Tomlin, Margaret Cho, Carol Leifer, Caroline Rhea, Bonnie Hunt and Elayne Boosler sat comfortably in sofas and club chairs on a stage in front of packed audience to discuss what made them funny and how the landscape of comedy changes more often than Apple upgrades iPhones.
The women spoke candidly and complimentary toward one another and credited much of their accomplishments to their fellow peers for continuing to knock down walls and open windows for one another.
Elayne Boosler gave special notice to Lily Tomlin saying, “Lily… she’s her own category. There’s all of us funny girls, and then there’s Lily.”
Margaret Cho later added, “It’s an interesting phenomenon how many successful women in comedy are gay.” Immediately after hearing that I thought, wow, that Margaret Cho is just brilliant and so very astute. And then I thought, am I only praising the wisdom of Ms. Cho because I am a lesbian and she is doling out some seriously high praise for “my peeps”? Nah, this is definitely not a case of my pride talking. There is concrete evidence that some of the most successful women in comedy also happen to be gay women, and burden of proof is an easy one to take on with names like: Tomlin, DeGeneres, Sykes and O’Donnell serving as case closers.
The only way to further establish how right Cho is would be to prove that this ‘lesbians are funny’ thing isn’t just a generational fluke; that an even newer/younger generation of women is keeping up the funny.
Here then is SheWired’s selection of six young female comics (40 & under) who could very well find themselves sitting on a couch at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in a few years talking about what makes them so funny. These women are proving that lady-loving-ladies are the ladies that make us laugh the most.
Gloria Bigelow:
Liz Feldman:
Fortune Feimster:
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Erin Foley:
Jackie Monahan:
Tig Notaro:
We limited ourselves to six; tell us who think should also make the list.
