A woman doing stand-up comedy isn't exactly a new phenomenon. Gilda Radner was one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live, and Joan Rivers started her career as a guest on The Tonight Show in 1965. But despite their attempts, and many other women's, to infiltrate the industry, comedy has remained a very malecentric space.
Recently, however, it feels as if a shift is occurring. So many women have exploded on to the scene in the past number of years that I'm beginning to wonder if some "Can men even be funny?" think pieces might be published in the not so distant future.
From Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to Kate McKinnon and Kristen Wiig, women comics have begun to dominate the headlines, but none has made such a visceral impact as Amy Schumer.
Inside Amy Schumer first aired in 2013. The show, with its skits featuring an exaggerated version of "Amy", was perfectly placed to take advantage of the YouTube generation's predilection for short videos that could be easily shared on social media. The most successful of Schumer's vignettes usually explored feminist issues, such as "Last Fuckable Day", in which women actors over a certain age discussed when and how Hollywood decided that they were no longer sexually viable; two excellent skits skewering rape culture, "Friday Night Lights" and "A Very Realistic Military Game"; and the masterly "12 Angry Men" episode, a furious takedown of the male gaze and the sexualisation of women.
With her sharp, hilarious and unapologetic brand of humour, Schumer was fast becoming a feminist icon, with Time saying that she "gets guys to think feminists are funny", Vogue declaring her an "amazing feminist" and, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Schumer herself saying, "I don't try to be feminist. I just am . . . Feminists are in good hands with me."
Schumer was everywhere: on TV, in magazines and then on cinema screens, with the release of Trainwreck, the hit movie she made with Judd Apatow in 2015. But when details of her book deal made the press in September 2015, and it was reported that Schumer had received an advance of between $8 million and $10 million for her memoir, the backlash that seems to blight all women in the public eye began.
There were mutterings about her problematic take on racial issues, with clips of her appearing to mock Mexicans surfacing online. Schumer argued that she was parodying the dumb-white-girl stereotype, but the damage had been done.
She has also inadvertently been forced into a scandal involving a writer on Inside Amy Schumer, Kurt Metzger, who vehemently defended a fellow comedian accused of rape and called the alleged victims liars. Schumer has been pressured to take an unequivocal stand and to prove her commitment to the feminist cause by firing Metzger, but this is something she seems reluctant to do.
The furore around Metzger has been threatening to overshadow the publication of The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, which is a shame, because the book is infinitely readable.
I'm a huge fan of Inside Amy Schumer, and I had expected a similarly laugh-out-loud experience when reading her collection of essays, so I was surprised to find it a much darker affair.
There are humorous moments, such as when she writes a love letter to her vagina; a chapter called “Athletes and Musicians”, where she describes an attempt to have sex with a hockey player who has an unusually large penis; and one called “New Money”, a joyously vulgar look at the perks of earning vast amounts of money, from flying in a private jet to leaving considerable tips for waiting staff.
The excerpts from her journal – at the ages of 13, 18, 20 and 22, with footnotes from 2016 – are witty and cleverly create a sense of Schumer’s burgeoning feminism, as well as giving the reader an insight into her family life as her parents decide to divorce and her father’s multiple sclerosis is diagnosed.
But it is when Schumer is exploring bleaker material that the book comes into its own. The essays dealing with her father’s struggle with his illness are often difficult to read, as Schumer watches a once vibrant, handsome, charismatic man reduced to accidentally soiling himself in public.
I was very close to tears when reading of how, at 14, after watching her father lose control of his bowels at an amusement park, she experienced “the saddest realisation I’ve had in my life . . . that my parents are people. Sad, human people. I aged a decade in that moment.”
In “The Worst Night of My Life” she writes about an abusive ex-boyfriend and how he damaged her self-esteem to a degree that made her unable to leave him, as she thought no one else would love her. When I read the lines, “I’m telling this story because I’m a strong-ass woman, not someone most people picture when they think ‘abused woman’ – but it can happen to anyone”, I thought about the inordinate number of women who are trapped in abusive relationships and hoped that a copy of this book would find its way into their hands.
Similarly powerful is the essay in which Schumer explains the unconsensual way in which she lost her virginity. “Sex is something you share,” she writes. “My first time didn’t need to be perfect, but I would have liked to have known it was going to happen. Or have been part of the decision. Instead, he just helped himself to my virginity – and I was never the same.”
The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo isn't the funniest memoir written by a comic that I've ever read (take a bow, Tina Fey), but it's a brutally honest, poignant look at issues many women face, issues that we are all too often discouraged from talking about. Schumer's narrative voice is incredibly strong, and her insistence on being completely, unashamedly herself still feels exciting and radical for a woman in 2016. Although it's not perfect, the book is moving and worthwhile, and I suspect it will bring more readers to tears than to laughter.
Louise O'Neill is the author of Asking for It and Only Ever Yours
