Here it is again, a bit less bitter

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.