Marni Newell
Arts Journalism: Marin Heinritz
3/16/09
After the all the male staff members of CollegeHumor hire interns who are “hot”—that is, slim, long-haired, and tightly clothed—instead of qualified to work at a website, the men find themselves doing all of their work plus running errands for the interns. So begins both the hilarity and the gender stereotypes of CollegeHumor’s second episode that aired on MTV in late February.
A few scenes after hiring the “hot girls,” three of the men are gathered in a stock room looking for a three-hole-punch and an ink cartridge when they hear footsteps.
“Quiet, I hear a hot girl coming!” one shouts, and they all lean against the shelves stiffly in an effort to look cool and non-chalant. When their female coworker Sarah Schneider walks in, they all bust out laughing. Confused, she laughs and asks what they’re laughing about.
“We thought you were a hot girl,” one of the men answers and Schneider’s smile vanishes
This is just the beginning of jabs at Schneider’s looks in comparison with the interns along with the failed efforts of the men at the office to strike up a conversation with the “hot girls.”
When one lanky male employee, Patrick Cassels, wants to work up the courage to talk to his intern, he solicits the help of stout coworker Sam Reich to play the part of the intern while he fumbles out a conversation. Even the simulation ends badly, however, and an irritated Reich, still impersonating an intern, returns to texting instead of listening to Cassels.
With that, it’s evident the CollegeHumor show is making fun of more than just Shchneider and playing with more than just the ridiculous standards to which women are held. Unfortunately, as shown by a comment by MTV.com user “freduardo,” it goes over some of the veiwers’ heads. Under the video of the second episode, “freduardo” writes, “WTF happened to the days when ‘hot girls’ had to have boobs?” Apparently, the slim “hot girls” CollegeHumor hired weren’t hot enough.
In the end, when all laptops are closed and packed up, it’s the images of “hot girls” and not the jokes about the guys that have a lasting effect.
Not surprising, perhaps, to anyone who’s been to the CollegeHumor website. With a click of the mouse one can access an entire page dedicated to “girls” which has every “Cute College Girl of the Day” for the last few months. These user-submitted photos show mostly young college women in bikinis or making pouty faces hid behind long hair and skin tinted orange from product or tanning booths. Next to these photos, there is a short interview asking sometimes-condescending questions to make the women even more of an object.
Cosmopolitan.com shows an interesting contrast to this. The site—devoted mostly to women—also has a drop-down menu specifically labeled “hot guys.” There, women can compare boyfriend pictures, check out the Cosmo bachelors, and scan through naked pictures of muscular men. However, the overall feeling of these pages is starkly different—down to the chef-themed nude photos of men. Even with their personal bits blocked by mixing bowls and aprons, the men are smiling and laughing instead of sporting the “sexy” gaping-mouthed and pouty-lipped look the women on CollegeHumor do. Not to mention the rest of the site, as well as the magazine, is almost entirely dedicated to ways to “please” men intimately as well as toning and weight loss tips for women.
Why, then, do women play into unhealthy situations like CollegeHumor’s search for the “Hottest College Girl in America” (they’ve narrowed it down to 64 and are awaiting user votes) and, by extension, society’s impossible standards of physical beauty? The answer is subjective, a grab-bag of insecurities: a need for acceptance, low self-esteem, because Billy Princeton called you “braceface” in middle school, the list goes on.
So, why is CollegeHumor so popular, starting off with just a stupid website and working its way up to a television show? The answer to that, is simple: because it’s funny.
The ugly truth of the nearly impossible standards women are held to by most college men—tiny waists and large breasts—is easier to swallow when it comes as a joke.
When the Phantom of the Office—an employee with a top hat, mask, and operatic voice—is a guest on Bleep Bloop, CollegeHumor’s short videos about current videogames he lists off his favorite childhood games in his melodramatic vibrato, “Hoop stick, drown the cat, drown the rat, caged rat, bald rat, I liked Beat the Greek, Hobble the Goat, oh, and Frogger.” His stupidity makes up for his earlier sexist comment when he tells Schneider to “ask her thighs” why he gave her Diet Mountain Dew instead of regular.
Moments of pure humor without nearly-exposed breasts and glamour shots of women hoping to be named “cute” by these very average-looking CollegeHumor employees shine through on the website and in the television show. Amidst videos entitled “POV: Hot Girl. Get inside her. Deep inside her,” are videos like “Sarah’s Birthday” which show the men of the office forgetting the words and the tune to the birthday song. They each give their attempt at remembering it after one of the men says “I’m thinking the first word isn’t ‘happy.’” What ensues are, “Birthday, birthday candles on your cake,” and “You’re older than you were before sha na na na” before they all break out in a barbershop rendition of “Baby, it’s your birthday” that leaves Schneider in angry tears. After she storms out, claiming they’ve ruined her birthday, they all gather and sing their barbershop version together as an entire office, and the last scene shows Schneider, her arms crossed, wearing a birthday party hat and grimacing.
Even if CollegeHumor showcases women attempting to fit ridiculous standards of beauty and the average-looking men who are trying to enforce the standards, it also produces videos goofy enough to laugh at. Currently, the habit of scrutinizing women’s bodies is generally accepted as normal and websites like CollegeHumor are part of a vast collection of men objectifying women. Fortunately, there’s a bigger habit, one that has been popular since before the internet and will still be around long after which somehow eases the pain of the insults and distracts from the constant comparisons to women with “hot” bodies and that is, simply but powerfully, the desire to laugh.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Whatever, it's funny
I know this was supposed to be an article, and I'm sure I can find an article about women and how they're not as hot as they used to be or some BS like that, but I feel you all should know how funny CollegeHumor can be.
Also, before I get to that, have you heard of Jocelyn Wildenstein? Check this out, although I agree with some of what Lionel says, his tone as altogether too accusatory and deprecating toward women. After all, why do women get plastic surgery? I don't think it's to look good for other women, but maybe I'm wrong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1609D9jr7-w
Ok, but now for some hi-larious stuff, here's an original video from colleghumor that I've watched too many times to admit. It still makes me giggle.
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1901719
Sadly, it was hard to find one that didn't make fun of girls in some way. Whatever.
Also, before I get to that, have you heard of Jocelyn Wildenstein? Check this out, although I agree with some of what Lionel says, his tone as altogether too accusatory and deprecating toward women. After all, why do women get plastic surgery? I don't think it's to look good for other women, but maybe I'm wrong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1609D9jr7-w
Ok, but now for some hi-larious stuff, here's an original video from colleghumor that I've watched too many times to admit. It still makes me giggle.
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1901719
Sadly, it was hard to find one that didn't make fun of girls in some way. Whatever.
Monday, March 2, 2009
CollegeHumor Final
Marni Newell
Arts Journalism Final
CollegeHumor
3/1/09
After a coworker hires a skinny, long-haired, tight-clothed intern to help him with extra office work, his colleges set out to find their own intern.
“The interns we hire should be skinny,” the short, pale one says.
“But not too skinny,” his equally pale bespectacled coworker adds.
“Just super hot,” the last closest-to-handsome coworker adds.
So begins the infiltration of the “hot” female interns to the offices in Mtv’s CollegeHumor Show’s second episode. Eventually, these skinny, long haired text-fiends overrun the working space, leaving the male workers shut up in walled offices, scared to emerge. The running joke of the episode, beside the unsuccessful attempts of the men to talk with any of the “hot girls,” is senior writer Sarah Schneider’s—the only woman in the workplace, and of average build and self-described “Holly Hunter thing going on”--attempts to show her coworkers how useless the “hot” interns are and the jabs at her image that ensue.
At one point, three men are in the stock room looking for a three-hole-punch and printer ink when they hear footsteps. “Quiet, I hear a hot girl coming!” one shouts, and they all lean against the shelves pretending to be cool but when Sarah walks in they burst in laughter. Confused, she laughs, too, and asks what’s so funny.
“We thought you were a hot girl,” one says. She stops laughing and points out how they’re doing the work the interns should be doing.
“Oh my G,” one says, as if it hits him, but he says instead, “You’re so jealous!”
The rest of the 30-minute show has countless nearly-identical jabs at Schneider and more instances of the male CollegeHumor writers doing both their jobs and the “hot” interns bidding while the women sit in their boss’ chairs and lick lollipops or text friends.
Before they had a regular spot on Mtv, CollegeHumor.com found a loyal audience with popular original videos featuring reoccurring characters like Jake and Amir, a straight man-funny man relationship reminiscent of Abbot and Costello but contemporary, and the Phantom of the Office, an office worker not much different than most, but with a mask, top hat, and operatic voice.
Perhaps that’s why the television series comprised of a compilation of already filmed original videos and a new scripted narrative of life at the CollegeHumor offices seemed so jarring as it continuously mocked Schneider’s appearance in all three episodes; just perusing the most-watched videos of CollegHumor.com could result in stupid-humor that had little to do with women’s appearance.
That’s not to say that the website is free from the exploitative user-submitted photos of college women in bikinis with their mouths hanging open to be named “Cute College Girl of the Day” or videos entitled “POV: Hot Girl. Get inside her. Deep inside her,” but the videos that don’t include bouncing breasts and shower scenes are funny, actually funny and have no hint of sexuality.
In one video, the men of CollegeHumor present Schneider with a birthday cake and attempt to sing “happy birthday,” but they have all forgotten the tune and the words. They each proceed in giving their version of the birthday song which includes, “Birthday, birthday candles on your cake,” and “You’re older than you were before sha na na na” as Schneider waits angrily for the actual birthday song. They end in a pseudo-barbershop rendition of “Baby it’s your birthday” with one of the men playing a keyboard. Although Schneider is upset, claiming their bad memory has ruined her birthday, the rest of the office gathers to sing and dance to this new song and the end shot is of Schneider grimacing in a cardboard party hat with her arms crossed.
Short videos like this one are put at the beginning and ends of each episode, but the episodes are also interrupted by ads for the new movie Miss March, about a high school girlfriend “a solid seven” according to one of the characters, who grows up to be a Playboy Bunny. “Do you think she’s still a virgin?” her ex-boyfriend asks his friend who’s peering closely at a picture in Playboy, “Nope, I’m afraid not.”
The saddest part of the series is the viewer comments of each episode on Mtv’s website. The comment at the top of the board for the episode “Interns” says, “WTF happened to the days when ‘hot girls’ actually had to have boobs?” According to “freduardo” who posted this, the “hot girls” CollegeHumor found weren’t actually hot enough, which begs the question, what exactly does it take for a woman to be attractive? The episode had enough painful moments of the men of the office attempting conversation with the “hot girls” to make the point clear that they weren’t “hot” enough men for the women, but, thanks to “freduardo” the “narrow definitions of beauty” as Schneider called them keep getting narrower. All the while, college women are taking flattering, or in some cases just hypersexual, photos of themselves in an effort to be named by these gawky, pale, unattractive men as one of the “Cute College Girls of the Day.”
In the March 2008 issue of Glamour, Gabriel Olds wrote an article about the women he’s dated who have had surgical enhancements and his reactions to them. After relaying awkward epiphanies of his partners’ breast augmentations and rhinoplasty, Olds decided the “surgical enhancements” were a sign of insecurity, “it didn’t seem like a celebration of beauty, but a scrambling attempt to fix something...It was as if something purchased to say, ‘Hey, check me out’ actually said, ‘I don’t like myself very much’” The article tried to spin this as positive by generalizing that all men want natural beauty, but the quoted men at the end of the article are counterproductive. Lee Cohen from Portland said, “I love the way fake breasts look—they’re a turn-on. But I couldn’t see myself getting involved with someone who’d go through that just to turn into a fantasy.” There you have it, women should be stick thin with large busts, but it needs to be natural or no dice. It’s all becoming so clear and manageable now.
Gabriel Olds is a semi-attractive, slightly chubby, very average-looking man as are the men at CollegeHumor, and probably all the men quoted at the end of the article yet these are the makers and enforcers of women beauty standards. Put as bluntly as this, the power seems to be in the hands of women now, why do they submit to these judgmental and unrealistic standards?
Arts Journalism Final
CollegeHumor
3/1/09
After a coworker hires a skinny, long-haired, tight-clothed intern to help him with extra office work, his colleges set out to find their own intern.
“The interns we hire should be skinny,” the short, pale one says.
“But not too skinny,” his equally pale bespectacled coworker adds.
“Just super hot,” the last closest-to-handsome coworker adds.
So begins the infiltration of the “hot” female interns to the offices in Mtv’s CollegeHumor Show’s second episode. Eventually, these skinny, long haired text-fiends overrun the working space, leaving the male workers shut up in walled offices, scared to emerge. The running joke of the episode, beside the unsuccessful attempts of the men to talk with any of the “hot girls,” is senior writer Sarah Schneider’s—the only woman in the workplace, and of average build and self-described “Holly Hunter thing going on”--attempts to show her coworkers how useless the “hot” interns are and the jabs at her image that ensue.
At one point, three men are in the stock room looking for a three-hole-punch and printer ink when they hear footsteps. “Quiet, I hear a hot girl coming!” one shouts, and they all lean against the shelves pretending to be cool but when Sarah walks in they burst in laughter. Confused, she laughs, too, and asks what’s so funny.
“We thought you were a hot girl,” one says. She stops laughing and points out how they’re doing the work the interns should be doing.
“Oh my G,” one says, as if it hits him, but he says instead, “You’re so jealous!”
The rest of the 30-minute show has countless nearly-identical jabs at Schneider and more instances of the male CollegeHumor writers doing both their jobs and the “hot” interns bidding while the women sit in their boss’ chairs and lick lollipops or text friends.
Before they had a regular spot on Mtv, CollegeHumor.com found a loyal audience with popular original videos featuring reoccurring characters like Jake and Amir, a straight man-funny man relationship reminiscent of Abbot and Costello but contemporary, and the Phantom of the Office, an office worker not much different than most, but with a mask, top hat, and operatic voice.
Perhaps that’s why the television series comprised of a compilation of already filmed original videos and a new scripted narrative of life at the CollegeHumor offices seemed so jarring as it continuously mocked Schneider’s appearance in all three episodes; just perusing the most-watched videos of CollegHumor.com could result in stupid-humor that had little to do with women’s appearance.
That’s not to say that the website is free from the exploitative user-submitted photos of college women in bikinis with their mouths hanging open to be named “Cute College Girl of the Day” or videos entitled “POV: Hot Girl. Get inside her. Deep inside her,” but the videos that don’t include bouncing breasts and shower scenes are funny, actually funny and have no hint of sexuality.
In one video, the men of CollegeHumor present Schneider with a birthday cake and attempt to sing “happy birthday,” but they have all forgotten the tune and the words. They each proceed in giving their version of the birthday song which includes, “Birthday, birthday candles on your cake,” and “You’re older than you were before sha na na na” as Schneider waits angrily for the actual birthday song. They end in a pseudo-barbershop rendition of “Baby it’s your birthday” with one of the men playing a keyboard. Although Schneider is upset, claiming their bad memory has ruined her birthday, the rest of the office gathers to sing and dance to this new song and the end shot is of Schneider grimacing in a cardboard party hat with her arms crossed.
Short videos like this one are put at the beginning and ends of each episode, but the episodes are also interrupted by ads for the new movie Miss March, about a high school girlfriend “a solid seven” according to one of the characters, who grows up to be a Playboy Bunny. “Do you think she’s still a virgin?” her ex-boyfriend asks his friend who’s peering closely at a picture in Playboy, “Nope, I’m afraid not.”
The saddest part of the series is the viewer comments of each episode on Mtv’s website. The comment at the top of the board for the episode “Interns” says, “WTF happened to the days when ‘hot girls’ actually had to have boobs?” According to “freduardo” who posted this, the “hot girls” CollegeHumor found weren’t actually hot enough, which begs the question, what exactly does it take for a woman to be attractive? The episode had enough painful moments of the men of the office attempting conversation with the “hot girls” to make the point clear that they weren’t “hot” enough men for the women, but, thanks to “freduardo” the “narrow definitions of beauty” as Schneider called them keep getting narrower. All the while, college women are taking flattering, or in some cases just hypersexual, photos of themselves in an effort to be named by these gawky, pale, unattractive men as one of the “Cute College Girls of the Day.”
In the March 2008 issue of Glamour, Gabriel Olds wrote an article about the women he’s dated who have had surgical enhancements and his reactions to them. After relaying awkward epiphanies of his partners’ breast augmentations and rhinoplasty, Olds decided the “surgical enhancements” were a sign of insecurity, “it didn’t seem like a celebration of beauty, but a scrambling attempt to fix something...It was as if something purchased to say, ‘Hey, check me out’ actually said, ‘I don’t like myself very much’” The article tried to spin this as positive by generalizing that all men want natural beauty, but the quoted men at the end of the article are counterproductive. Lee Cohen from Portland said, “I love the way fake breasts look—they’re a turn-on. But I couldn’t see myself getting involved with someone who’d go through that just to turn into a fantasy.” There you have it, women should be stick thin with large busts, but it needs to be natural or no dice. It’s all becoming so clear and manageable now.
Gabriel Olds is a semi-attractive, slightly chubby, very average-looking man as are the men at CollegeHumor, and probably all the men quoted at the end of the article yet these are the makers and enforcers of women beauty standards. Put as bluntly as this, the power seems to be in the hands of women now, why do they submit to these judgmental and unrealistic standards?
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