You’re funny. You know it, I know it. So why do I hear this so much:
“It looks amazing, but…I just fear I’m not very funny. What if I don’t make people laugh?”
I mean this says it all, really. When I suggested to some of the brilliant creative women I know to come along to the second ever HERlarious night. “I mean it looks amazing, but “I just don’t think I’m funny”. And you know what? I was exactly the same. I remember professing just how not funny I thought I was.
Why do we, why do women – because I’m referring specifically to women here – do this? It’s almost as though we’re scared to think we’re funny. Of all the things that incite imposter syndrome in women, the prospect of openly admitting that we might be funny seems to be one of the most powerful triggers. I mean, what if we make a joke and someone doesn’t laugh?
If you were to say to a comedian: “Go on then, tell us a joke!”, they’d shit themselves (likely before punching you in the face). Because that’s not what being a comedian is. That’s not what being funny is. It’s just something you are. And women? Women are seriously funny.
And yet for a lot of women it remains a terrifying thing to claim.
Why? Because for so long we’ve been told that we’re not meant to be funny. We’ve been told that we’re not meant to be emotional. And I think that’s bullshit. The fact that only 1% ads show women having a sense of humour is bullshit. We know it’s bullshit. We’ve always known it’s bullshit. And yet over the years, it’s barely changed.
And I can’t help but wonder if in part it hasn’t changed because, when it comes down to it, we don’t actually trust that we’re funny. I mean, we’ve all been there: “Everyone’s laughing, but I don’t find that funny. It must be me. It must be that I don’t have a sense of humour. It couldn’t possibly be that it’s not actually funny in the first place.
Perhaps if we had the confidence to not only think we’re funny, but to own the right to be, that things might start to change. Perhaps if there’d been a woman in the room, or a woman with the confidence to call bullshit on an entirely misfired attempt at ‘humour’, this campaign could have been funny rather than laughable (not to mention contrived, insulting, ignorant of the target audience – I could go on…).
And that’s why the team here at Funny Women created HERlarious.
To give women the confidence to make things change.
To stick two fingers up to the 1% and show just how damn funny women really are.
To give them the tools to express their ideas more confidently and freely using some of the tricks of the comedy trade.
To put brilliant creative women in a room with brilliant comedy professionals who can share advice on how to ‘perform’, write great copy, bring ideas to life and develop techniques that will allow you to communicate more effectively.
You choose the workshops that suit you, how you participate in them, how involved you’re comfortable to be. If you want to share your ideas and test your material, you can do that. If you want to ask questions about issues you’re facing at work that you think the facilitators can help you address, you can do that. If you want to sit quietly in the corner and observe in silence, you can do that. I just don’t think you’ll want to.
And remember, this is comedy for creatives, not creativity for comedians.
We’re not expecting you to provide the comedy. Although who knows, maybe you’re funnier than you thought…
HERlarious – Comedy & Confidence for Creatives takes place on Thursday 9th May from 6.00pm to 9.30pm at Twitter UK HQ in Central London. For more information and to book tickets click here!
