Throw Back Thursday or Totally Today?

Yes this video is from last summer, but unfortunately the content is still relevant. In this sketch, Sasheer Zamata –comedian and member of all black female improv troupe Doppleganger– picks apart street hollering in the laughiest of ways. 

The best/worst part is that by the end of the sketch, she ties it to the way women are actually treated and expected to act on dates. Y’all know how it is, If I so much as smile or be nice, people take that as warrant to disrespect me and sexualize me. And y’all know if these dudes were cat-calling each-other this way they would beat each-other up.

Luckily, comedy has the power to get people thinking about issues that they would never usually want to talk about by getting them to laugh about it first. Unfortunately, not everyone takes advantage of that power as well as this sketch. When Hawa and I did improv, festivals and competitions wowed us with how white and male the shows were- it revealed assumptions underlying the way they played their characters and what people laughed at, us feeling excluded from those assumptions. Shout out to Sasheer and the whole Doppleganger crew (Nicole Byer & Keisha Zollar) for providing alternative role-models in the comedy scene and using funny to show what isn’t funny.