Comedienne?

This past month the Kennedy Center awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor to Tina Fey, an extraordinary writer, comedian and performer. Starting at Chicago’s Second City Improv, Fey later joined the writing team of Saturday Night Live. She was promoted to head writer in 1999 (the first woman to ever occupy the position) and added to the cast the following year. Fey left SNL in 2006 to start her TV show “30 Rock,” but made brief return to play vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Her Palin impersonations (and uncanny resemblance to the political figure) increased her popularity, making “Tina Fey” a household name.

Why the biography? Fey’s success is far from typical for female comedians. A (misguided) belief persists in American culture that women are simply less funny than men. A Google search for “female comedians not funny” (I know, my Google grammar is poor. So sue me.) returns a slew of results supporting that statement, while the same search with “male” finds articles on why men are better comedians than women.

Clearly, this isn’t true. Contemporary comedians like Amy Poehler, Margaret Cho, Ellen DeGeneres, Sarah Silverman, and, of course, Fey, play to adoring audiences. Writers like Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle,” “When Harry Met Sally”) enjoy critical success. Going back further, literary wit Dorothy Parker amused readers in the mid twentieth century, and comedy legend Lucille Ball created and starred in the wildly successful sitcom “I Love Lucy.”

Despite these luminous examples, there are far more successful men on the comedy circuit than women. Fey’s accomplishments are made more notable by her gender, but, as she said in her acceptance speech for the Mark Twain Prize, after being the first woman to do things, hopefully soon we can “stop counting at what number [women are achieving] things. Dated stereotypes about female comedians exist in force, but examples like Fey bring comedy to a more equal balance.