After watching Margaret Cho, who I had only seen brief clips of before, I began to question the gender boundaries of female stand-ups. Admittedly, I haven't seen many women stand-up comedians. Cho's stand-up did remind me of one of the few others I have seen: Sarah Silverman.
Both of these women depend on the boundaries of gender stereotypes in order to be funny. Without the stereotypes that women are supposed to be shy, docile, and quiet, neither of these "shock" comedians would have a show.
Cho's humor depends upon taboos about women's sexuality and female body issues. Her jokes about women's relationship with weight, experimental sexual clubs, and her period all depend on a certain image of a what a woman is supposed to be. As Cho herself says when talking about the images of stick-then models, "If that's what a woman is supposed to be, maybe I'm not one." This same theme is at the heart of her entire performance. Without the preconceived notions of femininity and female actions, her act would not be funny at all.
How much, then, does her act really push the boundaries for women? I'm not necessarily saying that it's supposed to, or even that comedy has that responsibility at all, but there does seem to be a role for comedy to perform a sort of social policing. Comedy can be used to question stereotypes. So, for the sake of argument, let's say that female stand-ups want to question the stereotypes about women. Does depending on those stereotypes to be funny break them or reinforce them? Does it depend on who's watching? Cho seems very aware of her audience, constantly referring to the different factions who may respond differently to certain parts of her performance (such as when she says the gay men are plugging their ears at the talk of her straight sex life). How does this knowledge of audience expectation play into the stereotypes she is using?
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