A Female Comedian looks to her self-image...

@twistedlilkitty

I've followed @twistedlilkitty for ages on twitter, she's a grand sort who's dipping her toe into comedy at the moment. I read this on her tumblr, and I really think it deserves to be read by other women here.

A BITCH OF A NOTE.

Last night I did my fifth stand up comedy gig.
Five.
Which is weird.
I think if I’d left it at one I would have thought that I was a good stand up comedian with potential to be great. Now I feel like a mediocre stand up comic realising how much work goes into actually being great.

I’ve been changing my set subtley trying to find my voice or at least put aspects of myself into it, I’m not there yet. I find being on stage somewhat uncomfortable, the glare of the lights meaning you can’t really see the audience, the uncertainty of how close the mic should be to your mouth. While in my head I’m trying to remember my set without it being obvious on my face that I’m trying to remember a series of jokes.

I don’t do it without paper or notes on my hand because it’s odd when people read things from notes when they’re also trying to trick you into thinking this is the first time they’ve said it.
I’ve been trying to not squirm or mess up my hair or look to the ceiling.
Stand up comedy is hard and I’m doing it for free and I’m not looking at it as a career. I’m probably crazy.

So, for my fourth gig, that’s when I tried to be more of myself and it was difficult, I’d not prepared that much and although I got laughs I was incredibly unhappy with how it went. Previous to this I’d been to a comedy drop in which helped me understand that it has to be you or at least the unique elements of yourself at play. It’s incredibly hard to do, so I tried. And to be honest it wasn’t great.

At the same gig another female comedian did a set, she didn’t do well, the crowd weren’t great and it just didn’t work for her. In a moment of realising that she was bombing she said ‘Well this is stand up comedy, not glamourous and incredibly lonely….’ or some to that effect. Which stuck a cord with me. Yes, it wasn’t very funny but it was true.

She was in the audience for my fifth gig, she made no movement to say she recognised me and she and another well known Irish female comedian sat near us. I offered one of them a vacated chair. I did my set, it went ok I think. It’s the next day, hard to analyse in that space but I can certainly do better, I’m not running around high-fiving anyone. But as I came off stage I saw that the female comedian who I’d seen previously had written on an A4 sheet in HUGE letters.

YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO SUCCEED.

And passed it to the second as I was returning to my seat. In plain view and of course my eyes were going to look down and see it. Now you could say that a) She was writing it as a hilarious note to herself or b) she was writing it to the second comedian. But the size of the lettering, the timing and the fact that she’d seen me before at a gig where I’d seen her bomb make me doubt that.

That small moment took some of the joy that I should have gotten from being on stage from me. I should have been upset, I might have cried but I just got angry. A saving grace that happened between that moment and my leaving during the break was watching Megan Nolan ( @Megaroooo on Twitter) perform, she’s 20, ten years my junior and the way she delivered her material was so intelligent and unique that it made me think.

I can do better.

Now when you read that you’ll think, what an incredibly bitchy thing to say but when I say I can do better. I mean only better than myself. When I saw the female comedian bomb I didn’t think ‘At least I did better than her’ well I did a little, at first. But there’s no point in thinking that. The only person I can do better than is myself, I’m the reason I’m not brilliant at comedy and piling myself up to my neck in a pit of worse comedians won’t change that.
Megan Nolan made me want to do better. That talented bitch.
I’m not great at dealing with women who are funny. I’m not conventionally good looking, I’m tall, wear glasses, have a weight problem so I thought that funny was a unique selling point. When I meet someone who is funny and female I’m threatened.

I’m threatened by women a lot. Not in a walking down a dark alleyway and hearing high heels behind you but just by other women. I was bullied, big surprise right? But as much as guys would call me names it was the subtle things that girls did that hurt most.

The first person to call me fat was a girl, I was 4 and I was waiting outside class and she pointed out I was fat, I wasn’t even that fat then but it’s a memory that sticks out.

A girl I thought was my friend wrote ‘Maria is a fat cow’ on my desk, I was 8.

Another stole my pens. This went on and on. And what got me is the way that girls could be nice to your face but do some awful stuff behind your back, I used to have nightmares about that false niceness, it’s like someone smiling at you but they’re actually just showing you how sharp their teeth are.

The thing is, I didn’t understand, I was shy in my own way, introverted but I loved to talk when talked to, I was smart and artistic. I didn’t have a lot of friends. I gave up on boys for the most part, if someone tells you that you’re ugly enough times you believe it.
I was threatened but I didn’t see myself as a threat to anyone. But maybe I was.

I compare myself to other women. If I feel fat, I feel better if I see a woman fatter. If I feel ugly, I feel better if I see a woman uglier. Which is horrible but I do it.
If male friends of mine get girlfriends I’m threatened because I feel the girlfriend won’t like me and will take my friend away.
If a girl talks to my boyfriend I feel like she’s going to take him away.
And if a girl is funnier than me, it takes the validity of me calling myself funny away.
So much competition like being female is Highlander and there can be only one.

This need to somehow scrape some self esteem for myself from the bones of other women. This goes for bitchiness too, I’ve said things about women to make myself seem better
‘Well at least I don’t wear that….’
‘Well at least I don’t sleep around’
‘Well at least I don’t talk incessantly about shoes and handbags….’.
More competition. Women have been trying to be equal to men but mostly I’ve just been trying to be better than other women and at the same time trying to keep them the **** away from me and everything that’s precious to me, as if they’re going to ruin it all.

The thing is there are times when we band together not to bitch about each other. Women have comforted me over broken hearts, stupid decisions, problems unique to women, the fear of being approached alone at night and the fear that I’m a terrible person for being threatened by women.
So, maybe that note was for me, and I was angry and hurt because suddenly I was back in school where these things happen and are meant to stay but at the same time, I understand why she did it. She picked me as a moment of bitchiness to bond with another women because maybe she felt threatened by me. But I’m not her, I’m not trying to be better at comedy than her, I’m trying to be better at comedy than myself.

I will always be the person I disappoint the most.

sambuka41

That's really insightful, I love the line "So much competition like being female is Highlander and there can be only one." Brilliant!!!

Where/when does this insane comparison start??? I try (consciously) not to compare with anyone but it creeps in without me noticing sometimes:o

And yes I think its very important to note that women's bullying is in a way far worse than guys. I worked with kids and teenagers, it was easy to spot and sort out the lads bullying cause it was straight forward but the bitchiness of the girls was very subtle. Everyone I think child or adult has dealt with some kind of bullying behaviour.

Morag

It's not just the competing it's the bullying to make sure that you take part.
So that opting out of all that shíte isn't an option in you want friends.
If you are in any way different you get shunned until you conform or at least attempt to.

Eve_Dublin

I'm friends with an Irish comedian and most of the insults I've seen written about have been about her phsyical appearance and not her comedy and they've all been almost exclusively from guys.

I posted a thread about the lack of solidarity among women maybe a year ago and it was interesting but recently, I suppose I've come to understand it more. Women make b****y comments about other women, usually because they feel threatened. I do it myself although I conciously try not to.

Most of the insults I've received in my life have been from men and they weren't any less hurtful because they came from a guy's mouth or because they were said straight to my face and not behind my back (as if that's better in some way). I've always been surrounded by great women. My own friends are fantastic...I chose well. I suppose when I hear about other women being picked on by other women, I can't really empathise because that hasn't been my experience. That's not to say men are in any way more b*****y than women, just that I can't relate to this kind of thing necessarily as it hasn't been my own personal experience. I hear about girls getting a hard time from their "friends" and I blame them for not choosing their friends with a bit more care.

To be honest, I've changed my mind a lot in the last year. I think this supposed competitive b*****ness amomg women is blown out of proportion. You'll be a victim if you choose to get mixed up with that kind of crowd and I can personally spot those kinds of girls a mile off. If I'm in that kind of group and I hear those kinds of comments, I immediately walk away. Many women don't and presume these types of women are the norm. They're not. Most women and most men mean well. We all get insecure on occassion about our looks or are sense of humour or our intelligence and I think it's human (men and women) to compare yourself to others and I wouldn't beat myself up over it....it's just those who are vocal about it that are the problem and they're really in the minority. Stay away from that kind. That's the solution.

Giselle

I went to an all girls boarding school and its got to be the most fertile ground for bitchiness and isolation in existence. The 'mean girls' at the top of the food chain dictated who had a good or bad day, who was allowed hang on to their self esteem. Luckily my self esteem wasn't that dependent on their opinions, and for that they hated me, and they tried all the harder. In some basic way I understood that it was their self esteem at stake, not mine.

I told myself I didn't care, but deep down I would have liked to be one of the crowd. But instead of being focused on boys and my social life, I was quiet and swotty and I had a vague plan of where I wanted to be and was just trying to get there.

I was very isolated, but I didn't mind the isolation as much as a girl who might have been less focused would have been.

Its still taken its toll though, as a big lump came to my throat and won't go away after reading that last line, and feeling the familiarity of it.

I will always be the person I disappoint most, too. And that hurts.

PK2008

Women have serious self esteem issues

Giselle

PK2008 wrote: »

Women have serious self esteem issues

No, some do.

Seriously, we all aren't as one with the same issues and opinions. Is that very hard to understand?

Silverfish

PK2008 wrote: »

Women have serious self esteem issues

Please read the charter of this forum before posting again.

Acoshla

I dunno, I think a lot of girls/women take too much notice of others. I went to an all girls school, of course there were the class b*tches, but I just ignored them. I used to get picked on, well, they tried to pick on me, when they realised they didn't bother me they gave up. I knew just because they might have said I was weirdly tall (I was back then), chubby, whatever the insult du jour was, it didn't mean I actually was any of those things, it just meant they were trying to get a reaction out of me. My mother very helpfully pointed out that yes, I was tall, but the only reason I seemed weirdly tall is because the head "mean girl" was incredibly short, she didn't like it when I pointed that out to her

Bottle_of_Smoke

YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO SUCCEED

That's pretty outrageous. Suggests jealousy or intimidation to me. Poor girl. Wouldn't have expected that kind of thing would be tolerated in stand up circles.

premierlass

Bullying by girls isn't necessarily worse; it's just more effective because they are socialised more intensively and far earlier than boys. I have the feeling that boys tend start punishing those who stand out from the teenage years onwards.

YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO SUCCEED

That's pretty outrageous. Suggests jealousy or intimidation to me. Poor girl. Wouldn't have expected that kind of thing would be tolerated in stand up circles.

You're right, that sounds like a bully who is trying to eliminate the competition - very subtly.

Ambersky

I think the story in the OP is just awful and it does sound like a classic case of bullying.
Good on the author for being determined not to let it distroy her and to try to see it for what it is.

Ive heard women talk about the bitchiness and competetiveness between women but to be honest I havent really experienced it.
Ive only really seen it in operation a few times but dont think of it as a general way of being for women.
Maybe, and I dont know this for fact or anything, but maybe there are differences between how lesbian women relate to each other and to straight women, and the way straight women relate to each other.
Im just putting the idea out there.
Ill give you an example of an occasion that made me think this.

I was doing an introduction to belly dancing years ago with a group of women who were complete strangers to me.
At the end of the class the teacher did a demonstration of belly dancing for us.
I saw the other women look her up and down and heard comments like "look at that figure, the bitch!" it sounded half joking and half in earnest.
I on the other hand was just blown away by what that woman could do with her stomach and found the dance mesmerising so I started clapping.
The teacher smiled and came over and danced in front of me and I just watched smiling and clapping.
I had a completely different reaction to the dancer and the dance.
It wasnt that I fancied her, I simply admired her, no competition.

When class was over the teacher suggested we all go next door for a drink which most of us did.
At one point in the night the teacher came over to me and sat in front of me on a stool and asked "so how long have you been lesbian" and I just burst out laughing.

Im not usually in the kinds of groups of women that talk competitively about one another, they wouldnt want me, so I dont know how much it goes on.
Sometimes I wonder if the statement women are so bitchy is a kind of self fulfilling prophecy.
I dont doubt that women experience it and are hurt by it but sometimes I think that the women who say it all the time dont actually like women.

Publicdiservice

YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO SUCCEED

While i'm sure that the woman in question has experienced bullying of sorts if the above was written by one comedian there may be an alternative meaning.
Woody Allen used to utter the above mantra before a performance he would do that. I've heard of other comedians doing similar for Motivation.
From my experiences on the Irish comedy scene, the majority of people are very well meaning and actively encourage each other and if the girl has experienced that reaction from peers, female or otherwise that is very unfortunate.

RodVelvet

Apparently the author of the blog post above has spoken with one of the two comedians involved regarding the "YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO SUCCEED" A4 sheet that she saw. It was not directed at the on stage comedian so it appears she picked up the wrong end of the stick.

Since stand up is such a solitary volition you would imagine that stand ups would be supportive of each other. I wonder is dying on stage a cathartic experience. In essence you bear your soul for the approval of others, a tremendous buzz i'm sure if it goes well. Tragic and comedic results are never far apart.

Clarification by Blogger is in Link Below:
http://twistedlilkitty.tumblr.com/post/6907499731

Ambersky

Its still an interesting issue though, even if and maybe even because the author thought the message was aimed at her.

Eve_Dublin

Ambersky wrote: »

Its still an interesting issue though, even if and maybe even because the author thought the message was aimed at her.

I thought it was too bit*hy to be true. Obvioously the author's paranoia is heightened because of previous experiences. Really, when do you hear such extreme situations like this as adults? For this to be taken as an example of female-female ADULT relationships is not realistic. I think there's a solidarity and kindness and a gentleness and and an empathy to female relationships when you remove the superficial layer of insecurity and catiness. You just have to rise above that and realise everyone has their moments and most of the time it's not personal, it's just projection of that person's own self-perception at that time. I wouldn't change my gender for the world.