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The Funny Bone in Adam's Rib
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19301 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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6 / 1991 |
2,182 Words |
| Author
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Suzanne Fields
Suzanne Fields, columnist for the Washington Times is
nationally syndicated. She is the author of Like Father, Like
Daughter: How Father Shapes the Woman His Daughter Becomes and
was editor of Innovations, a magazine for mental health
professionals. |
THEY USED TO CALL ME SNOW WHITE ... BUT I DRIFTED
Women's Strategic Use of Humor
Regina Barreca
New York: Viking, 1991
223 pp., $18.95
Is there a woman anywhere who hasn't laughed at a joke she didn't understand? Or worse, a joke she didn't think was funny?
It's hard to forget how you wanted to show that you were knowledgeable, sophisticated, and "with it," but you didn't really want to laugh. You hated yourself for being dishonest, but it was better than being embarrassed. As much as you hated yourself for dissembling, you hated yourself more for not "getting it."
Several questions plague the listener when a joke falls on deaf ears: Why am I so limited in my experience? My information? My worldliness? There's also that brief moment of terror that reveals abysmal ignorance--a sign, a smirk, a naïve glance--that tells everyone that we're faking it.
Regina Barreca, a professor of English the University of Connecticut, believes the experiences of faking laughter at a joke are "gender specific," that women fake it because they are, well, women.
"Women fake laughter for the same reasons we sometimes fake orgasms--to make somebody else feel comfortable by pretending we're comfortable," she writes in They Used to Call Me Snow White ... But I Drifted: Women's Strategic Use of Humor. Barreca claims:
The scene for both sorts of faking works this way: the woman sees that her companion is waiting for her response. She feels that if she doesn't respond as he hopes, he'll feel let down and embarrassed. Instead of allowing him to feel bad, the woman pretends to be delighted spontaneously, and tells herself that it can't hurt to make him happy. But faking a response is just another version of "putting out."
Barreca's interpretation is only a half truth. Surely some women fake laughter to spare the feelings of the joke teller, but so do some men, and surely as many men as women fake laughter to protect themselves. Most of us learn such self-protection at an early age.
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