Why I Started An All-Female Stand Up Comedy Show

I co-host an all-female stand up comedy show called The Ladies Room. It’s run by two women, and we only book women.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise when I say this, but a few times, men have asked to be booked on our show. We have to tell them that we’re sorry, but we just don’t book men.

Somebody once asked how angry I’d be if found out the reverse; what if there was a show with an all-male lineup that intentionally excluded women? I thought, I would be angry, and in fact, I am angry. Because you can literally go to any club in any city at this exact moment and find one. Shows like that are not only the status quo, but almost the entire history of comedy.

That question reminded me of something that was once posed to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when she joined Sandra Day O’Connor as the second female Supreme Court Justice. A reporter asked her how many female Supreme Court Justices would be enough, and she said, “Nine.”

People were initially surprised by this answer. An all-female supreme court? It sounded absurd; if you didn’t first consider that it wasn’t only the status quo, but the entire history of the supreme court to have All. Male. Justices.

These kinds of things have always been so normal to us, that we don’t even realize how illogical our reality is.

There’s a lot to correct. There’s a lot we’re up against. And that’s why we started an all-female show.

Jessie, my co-host, and I had an early conversation about how we’d maneuvered around sexism and sexual harassment in comedy ourselves. The first solution we both admitted to each other? Have a boyfriend, or pretend you have a boyfriend. It’s bullshit, but as beginning comics, we’d felt that the only way to gracefully slide away from unwanted advances from guys who would be able to give you spots or opportunities was to tap-dance and tiptoe around their egos. It was simply the easiest way.

At one point, I stopped doing jokes about being single because I realized it was opening me up to unwanted conversations afterwards by comics and by guys who booked shows.

So many female comics dread the unwanted, “Hey great set tonight,” message on Facebook after a show. Why? Because so many times its inevitably followed by the “We should get a drink sometime” message that you’ll have to squirm out of politely.

And you know what also sucks about it? That you did have a good show. But now, in your head, you second guess that it wasn’t actually a good show. You think, “He didn’t actually mean that, he was just saying that because he wants to sleep with me.”

And on bad days, or after bad sets, that sentiment can easily turn into, “I am not actually good at all.”

You spend so much energy on this. So much time. So many conversations with your girlfriends about how disillusioning it is. For example, I don’t even want to be writing this right now, but I feel like I have to get it out, while male comics get to be writing new jokes or out performing them and getting better at stand up comedy.

They say it’s like learning how to play an instrument. You’re only going to get better if you constantly practice. Practice means telling jokes in front of an audience. But the undeniable truth is, practicing comedy is simply much easier when you’re a man. As a man you can comfortably befriend people and and network and get put on shows and not worry if you’re sending the wrong message, or worry if you’re safe with a person alone in a room. You can leave a dark bar at 1:00 am after an open mic is over and not have to dread walking to your car. And most of all, you can look back on all the comedians who came before you and see so many people in your own image who were able to do it, which in it of itself is SO POWERFUL.

Once, online, a comedian anonymously wrote about me, saying, “This is the kind of chick in LA who I never see at an open mic but somehow gets booked on three shows a week by guys who want to fuck her and women who just put each other on their shows.” I don’t really know what I did that angered him so much (Oh I remember, he thought I wasn’t funny!) but I remember thinking, this is who my peers are. These are the people coming up with me. Who I practice with. These are the people who leave the bar or the venue with me at 1:00 am, when I thought I was only supposed to be wary of the people outside the bar as I walk to my car. It makes you want to quit.

I once quit an after school sports program because the coach made me uncomfortable. He would hug girls and rub their shoulders and the girls would whisper about how it felt like he was always touching their bra straps. That was enough for me. I quit, but I didn’t tell my parents why. I was embarrassed. I thought I was being a baby. But I ended up being right about him.

I don’t want to feel like I have to be the one to quit. We don’t want to feel like we have to be the ones to quit.

So logically, more women have been drawn to “practicing” with other women. And now, more than ever, there are so many opportunities to do so. There are more female-run shows, there are more all-female shows, there are female-run mics and all-female mics and all-female comedy networking meet ups. Women are carving out their own spaces where they don’t have to worry about the inevitable post-show message that’s a proposition disguised as a “Hey good set.” Or where we simply just don’t have to worry about being in a room on a stage, wondering if there’s somebody there who doesn’t think you have a right to be.

We call the show The Ladies Room for exactly that reason. If you’re not a lady, let me let you in on a little secret, there’s something kind of magical that happens in the ladies bathroom. It’s this place that acts as a great equalizer where women who don’t even know each other become fast friends. You can count on a gal to tell you if there’s toilet paper on your shoe, or that your skirt is tucked into your leggings, or that your lipstick is amazing, or even warn you about creeper hanging at the bar. Powerful stuff actually happens in there, because we can let our guards down and just laugh and remind each other that we’re all in this together. That’s what we hope our show is doing.

Most importantly, I’d like to think, it’s a place where we showcase women who have something to say — for women who want to hear it. It’s not just women in comedy who are underserved, but female audiences who are. We all deserve better, and now we’re demanding it.

You can support us by liking us on Facebook here!

By following us on Twitter here!

And watching and subscribing to our videos on youtube here!