Comedy in the past hasn't spoken to women because it wasn't written by women, and male writers don't make women three-dimensional characters. Too often, women just facilitate the man's comedy: they're not crazy; they're not funny. But women are as vulgar as they are elegant, as stinky as they are smelling of eau de parfum.
I think women have always been funny. But when Tina Fey became head writer at 'Saturday Night Live,' the culture shifted, and women gained a bigger voice in comedy. It's not as if Hollywood producers are feminists. It's more that Hollywood said, ''Bridesmaids' made us so much money, all we want now is funny women.'
Also, it was a cultural moment that wasn't being represented in terms of women who were successful and had choices they didn't have before. They needed a show that they can watch that they felt like represented them.
When women are seen on TV being crass or funny or making jokes or undercutting someone, then you feel it's socially acceptable for a woman to do that. More women are growing up feeling, 'I can speak my mind and say what I want.'
I hate that there's such an emphasis on women in comedy. Are women OK? Are they just as funny as men? Yes!
I so often heard from women that they saw this beautiful fashion, but it didn't always work for them - whether it was cultural reasons, lifestyle reasons, body type reasons. So it seemed like in my mind there was a gap there, that women really wanted to be able to customize items to fit their needs and their tastes.
Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.
I think women are different, and I think having them in the room is crucial to a family comedy, ensemble comedy, television comedy, where half the eyeballs on your show are women.
The American audience has really opened up to women being A.) funny and B.) kinda crude. 'Bridesmaids' is R-rated, and I think it was a major coup for women to have an R-rated comedy that did really well. Same as 'Bad Teacher.'
I didn't see many female politicians on TV. I didn't see women in history textbooks, so I did geography, and art and English literature. But I know I must have been affected by not seeing women represented.
I think it's really important that we see women represented properly in TV, and that's a multi-dimensional person: a real human being who's flawed, who's weird, who's awesome.
I've always loved independent women, outspoken women, eccentric women, funny women, flawed women. When someone says about a woman, 'I'm sorry, that's just wrong,' I tend to think she must be doing something right.
There have always been funny women. But in some ways, it takes a while for there to be women who were watching women on television for years and then grow up and think, 'I could do funny stuff.'
It's interesting when you read the debates in parliaments between MPs about whether they should give women a vote. It's a lot of fear; it is fear of change. It's fear if women get to vote, family structures will break down. Women will stop having children. Women won't vote for war.
I feel that the internal worlds of women are not that well represented by society. It is not an immediate thing people think about - the imagination of women or women's philosophy.
He feared me as many men fear women: because their mistresses (or their wives) understand them. They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.