On Friday night, Jenny Slate performed standup comedy at the ever-so-famous Goldstein Auditorium in Schine Student Center, with Aparna Nancherla as an opener. Both women had the audience laughing the entire time, providing genuine, relatable and unapologetically authentic content with their acts.

Slate and Nancherla are incredibly successful within the comedy field, which is already difficult enough for women to get into. What I found so great about these two acts is that both comedians used their experiences as women to their advantage. They talked about situations they’d been in which the patriarchy dominated, and they turned these situations into performance content.

For example, Aparna talked about once being on a date where a guy said something like, “You know, I’m really funny. I could totally do stand-up.”

Other than using their identities as women to shape their acts, they used their individual personalities to really shine. When Nancherla first came on stage, the first thing I noticed about her was her voice, and I really grabbed onto it. The audience could tell that she was being her genuine self — she wasn’t playing some character, although throughout her performance she did do some impressions.

Slate was also unapologetically herself — not that she should ever apologize for being herself, Jenny, I love you — in her performance. Throughout her routine, she made jokes about situations she’d like to die in and mimicked her parents’ voices and mannerisms.

By retelling situations that occurred throughout her life and turning them into something that an entire audience can relate to and laugh at, Slate succeeded in captivating the entire room for the whole performance.

When asked by an audience member if she had any advice for women who wanted to get into comedy, Slate answered first by saying that your female perspective gives you a unique outlook on life. She continued by saying that, if other people don’t respect this outlook, then they are trash, and that it’s not really your womanhood that makes you funny but your nature.

Let’s face it: being a woman is funny. Not in a way where it’s like, “Haha, you’re a woman!” but more in a way where the situations that we find ourselves in as a result of a patriarchal society and our monthly bodily functions can be pretty funny when looked at by a person with an overall funny nature.

Every woman has a story to share about being a woman: maybe it’s the first time you got your period, or maybe it’s the first time someone catcalled you, and you had to decide if you should run away, be flattered or call back. Slate and Nancherla shed light on the trials and tribulations of womanhood during their routines and used their comedic personalities to make the stories they told enjoyable for all.

Annabeth Grace Mann is a sophomore film major. Her Humor column appears biweekly in Pulp. She can be reached at agmann@syr.edu.

Published on February 10, 2018 at 1:05 pm