'It's Complaining, Talking About Your Feelings and Being Vulnerable': Whitney Cummings Calls Comedy a 'Feminine Art'
Some male comics would have you believe that the comedian is the most persecuted figure in modern America. Whitney Cummings thinks they need to grow a pair — of ovaries.
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The premier non-porn content creator on OnlyFans spoke to OK! Magazine about her partnership with the environmentally conscious canned water company Liquid Death yesterday afternoon, and Cummings had a lot to say about how she sees today’s comedy landscape, a scene that some comics would have you believe is a battlefield comparable to the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan.
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Cummings claimed that, while censorship and sensitivity are certainly more heightened today than they were when she began her career in the early aughts, the democratization of content platforms and the proliferation of affordable podcasting equipment has helped comics reach their audiences and express themselves in ways that the gatekeepers of the industry would never have allowed pre-social media. Essentially, Cummings believes that comedians have never been able to be as open or vulnerable as they are today — making the medium more emasculative than it’s ever been.
“Comedy is such a feminine art — it’s complaining, talking about your feelings, being vulnerable,” Cummings argued. “Even though it’s mostly been male-dominated for a litany of reasons, much of the time, it’s not a particularly masculine craft.”
Tell that to the discount code I just scored from The Joe Rogan Experience for testosterone replacement therapy.
“It’s always been hard to be a comedian,” Cummings continued. “In some ways, it’s easier than ever because you can build and engage with an audience on social media and don’t have to wait for Johnny Carson or Jay Leno or David Letterman to make you famous.” Through her Good for You podcast and burgeoning clothed OnlyFans career, Cummings has made a habit of bypassing the gatekeepers in recent years.
“The great part of being a comic today is you don’t have to wait for Hollywood to pick you and then censor you; most comics have podcasts and can do what they do without all the gatekeepers,” Cummings posited, before adding, “I think, if anything, it’s hard to be a human in this day and age, in any job.”
On the topic of comedy as a “feminine art” and the status of women in humor, Cummings said, “I’ve always seen a lot of women in comedy — but not all of them have been famous necessarily, so I think it’s more that more female comics are famous so its more ostensible to people not deep in the comedy world.”
“But the bigger thing is that people are buying tickets to see women do comedy, and it is actually now a viable financial option, which just means more and more women can literally and figuratively afford to do it,” Cummings concluded. “Podcasting in a way has been a great avenue for women to build fanbases since the hours are way more reasonable if you have kids, etc. So, I think that’s helped a lot.”
We always thought Bert Kreischer’s place was in the kitchen.
