Michael Eisner, who was the CEO of the Walt Disney Company for 21 years, told an audience this week that “really beautiful women… that are funny” are “impossible to find.” Eisner seemed aware his comments would not be received well, but decided to make them anyway. “They usually — boy am I going to get in trouble, I know this goes online — but usually, unbelievably beautiful women, you being an exception, are not funny,” Eisner said.
Eisner made his remarks at the “Aspen Idea Festival.” But the notion that beautiful women cannot be funny is very outdated idea. So says Elizabeth Banks, a very funny woman:
Stop spreading this bullshit. https://t.co/j1oqdHLsue
— Elizabeth Banks (@ElizabethBanks) July 4, 2015
It’s not just that Eisner’s claim about the dearth of funny and beautiful women is easily disproven. (It is.) The entire premise that the entertainment industry should be seeking out women that 73-year-old men like Eisner find “unbelievably beautiful” is flawed.
No one is lamenting, for example, that male comics like Louis C.K., Adam Sandler and Seth Rogan don’t look like models. Nor is their any clamoring for the next Jerry Seinfeld to look like Channing Tatum.
Amy Schumer addressed the issue head on her Comedy Central show this summer when, in a parody of the classic film 12 Angry Men, twelve men spend an hour debating whether she is attractive enough to appear on TV.
For more on the sexism that female comedians face check out excerpts from a roundtable discussion with Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham, Gina Rodriguez, Ellie Kemper, Tracee Ellis Ross and Kate McKinnon — six very funny women.