![]() ![]() Tina Fey, Lena Dunham, Mindy Kaling, Abbi Jacobson, Ilana Glazer, and their ilk certainly aren’t the first women to have wildly popular TV shows based entirely around their own funniness. On one hand, we live in the golden age of female comedy. Men might say, “I would love to have a girlfriend who would make me laugh.” But for men, that’s a luxury, not a necessity. But I maybe make a man laugh once every other month. (Major adversity, we smother in smoked meats.) Given three adjectives to describe me, most of my female friends would list “funny” as one of them. I come from the kind of family that deals with minor adversity by making relentless fun of the petty tyrants responsible. Mickes’s story triggered the familiar shot/chaser of recognition and unease in me. I have a great time with my female friends.” “I thought, ‘maybe I’m not that funny,’” Mickes said. In every single discipline, male professors were far more likely than female ones to be described as funny. ![]() A recent graphic made by Ben Schmidt, an assistant professor of history at Northeastern University, analyzed the words used to describe male and female professors across 14 million reviews on. Mickes realized that university students didn’t seem to welcome, or even notice, the wit of many of her female colleagues. When she collected her professor evaluations at the end of the year, she was startled by one comment in particular: It was a weighty subject, so occasionally she would inject a sarcastic comment about her own upbringing to lighten the mood. Sign up for it here.Ī few years ago, Laura Mickes was teaching her regular undergraduate class on childhood psychological disorders at the University of California, San Diego. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday.
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