The Last Laugh: What Makes Girls Giggle?

“Brains, mmm, braaaaaains…” – Some Zombie

It’s no secret to women that we’re wired differently than men.  We just are.

Even our brains respond to humor differently.  Women use more analytical machinery¹ when deciphering humorous material, so it definitely takes some highbrow shit to satisfy all the smart bitches.  The language processing part of our brains literally lights up when we’re exposed to humor, so it’s no wonder that wordplay, subtlety, and irony are the things that gals’ giggle-dreams are made of.

Women favor storytelling over joke-telling, and use humor to bond with each other, while men use humor to one-up each other.²

When a group of guys gets together, put-down humor is the name of the game.  The funniest, loudest guy in the group is the one getting the most attention.³

For gals, it’s all about shared experiences — humor about situations that we all go through is what unites us.

Case Study: Garfunkel & Oates

Photo Source: GarfunkelandOates.comTake for example, my favorite musical comedy duo, Garfunkel and Oates, and their ditty, “Pregnant Women are Smug.”  In this song, our comedic songstresses milk humor from the tension between traditional and modern female roles.  “Pregnant women are smug; everyone knows it, nobody says it, because they’re pregnant,” the ladies point out, a sentiment that rings true for any gal who’s encountered a pregnant lady that’s somehow managed to make her feel like less of a woman.  Even if the modern, not-pregnant gal “got her novel published [and] helped end gang violence in Mexico,” it’s all trivial compared to the miracle of giving birth.

Whether you’re pregnant or not-pregnant, the truth of the song comes from a quintessentially female experience — balancing the ambitions that the modern world encourages with the essential qualities of womanhood, such as having children, that are so ingrained in our psyches.⁴

In “This Party Just Took a Turn for the Douche,” Garfunkel & Oates demonstrate what truly makes their humor stand out — the use of highbrow references, wordplay, and irony to explore a topic as banal as douchebags at clubs.  As they lambaste the particular brand of douche who’s straight out of a Jersey Shore casting session — the lowest of the lowbrow — they pepper in highbrow references from politics to pop culture, from Bernie Madoff to Arrested Development to sixteenth century poets: “I ain’t your daddy, but I’ll call you son, yeah I get metaphysical like fucking John Donne.”

Since incongruity is the essence of comedy, what better way to tackle the douche portion of the population than with the highest of highbrow jokes?  That’s the kind of shit that gets our brains lighting up like Las Vegas.

Women’s jokes are longer, more anecdotal, more often involve wordplay, and are more likely to be self-deprecatory.⁵  Think about how much mileage female comics get out of self-deprecation — making fun of their age, their weight, their neuroses, insecurities, and flaws.  As a humor technique, self-deprecation puts audiences at ease.  And self-deprecatory humor can be empowering, because it allows the performer to acknowledge and master her vulnerabilities.⁶

When introducing their song, “Handjob, Bland Job, I Don’t Understand Job,” G&O make the adorable admission that they were late-bloomers who never learned to give a proper handjob, an act that befuddles them to this day.  The resulting song is so funny, honest, and chock-full of references, both relatable and obscure, that they’ve mastered their vulnerability by pointing out everything that’s strange and hilarious about the handjob.  By the end, it’s the handjob that seems silly, not them.

Some women tell me that they’re not very funny, or that they don’t get comedy.⁷  Maybe it’s that they have not been exposed to enough comedy that reflects their experiences and sense of humor.  Or maybe there are still some unfunny bitches.  Some.  But this discussion is by no means closed — we want to know: what makes you giggle?

What makes you giggle?  At Comediva, we think of our humor as bold, intelligent, irreverent and vaguely sexual.  How would you describe your sense of humor?

Footnotes & Suggested Reading:

1 Stanford Study

2 In an exploration of humor’s sexual side by Psychology Today, it was noted that the basic difference between male and female humor is that “males tend to use humor to compete with other men, while women use humor to bond with others.”

3 You’ll see this a lot in Los Angeles; this city is a magnet that attracts attention-whores.

4 Mehhh…I think I just ovulated a little.

5 In 1995, Linda Naranjo-Huebl’s awesome study synthesized centuries’ worth of findings from humor theorists and put together a pretty comprehensive look at what is funny to the woman-types.  If you have an hour and a mile-long attention span, grab a cup of coffee, find a comfy spot to curl up in, and read it.  A couple hundred years’ worth of humor theory is no laughing matter.  Talk about highbrow shit.

6 Self-Deprecatory Humor and the Female Comic

7 I recently had an immigrant friend tell me she doesn’t like “American comedy.”  When pressed further about the humor in her homeland, she told me she and her friends liked play on words, and jokes that mixed the intellectual with slang.  I told her that it sounded like she just hasn’t been exposed to “American comedy” with a female sense of humor.