Women’s comedy featured

Milan Public Library is inviting history buffs and comedy fans to “Pretty/Funny: Women Comedians and Body Politics with Linda Mizejewski” from noon to 1 p.m., May 13, in the Milan Thomas R. Olak Community Room, 19 E. Church St., according to a news release.

Women’s comedy has long been a prime spot for women to talk back and break taboos in mainstream popular culture, but women in comedy have traditionally been pegged as either “pretty” or “funny,” the release said.

Attractive actresses with good comic timing, such as Katherine Hepburn and Lucille Ball, have always gotten plum roles in romantic comedies and television sitcoms, according to the release.

In contrast, women who write and perform their own comedy have been far fewer as stars, and most often, they’ve been successful because they were willing to be funny-looking — Fanny Brice, Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett — or have made femininity itself the butt of the laughter, as in the case of Mae West, the release said.

This talk is an overview of women’s comedy beginning with West and ending with the new generation of women comedians such as Tina Fey, Wanda Sykes and Ellen DeGeneres who flout the pretty-versus-funny dynamic, according to the release.

This program is free and open to the public.

Mizejewski is a distinguished professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the Ohio State University.

She has published six books on women in popular culture, including a book about the romantic comedy “It Happened One Night.”

In her 2002 book “Hardboiled and High Heeled: the Woman Detective in Popular Culture,” she analyzes the female investigator character in cinema, television and best-selling novels.

Her most recent two books are “Hysterical! Women in American Comedy” (2017) and “Pretty/Funny: Women Comedians and Body Politics” (2014).

Mizejewski has been a Fulbright lecturer in Slovakia and Romania, and her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies.

In 2004, she was a winner of Ohio State University’s Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award.

SUBMITTED Milan Public Library is inviting history buffs and comedy fans to “Pretty/Funny: Women Comedians and Body Politics with Linda Mizejewski.”