The funny thing about difficult women | Nicky Barry | TEDxMaldon Live

when you're asked to write a bio for one of these events it's always tricky about what to include and what to Omit cuz we could all label ourselves with lots of different things couldn't we I could have added daughter I could have added niece I could have added exwife I could have added recovering Catholic you know a whole bunch of other things there it was tricky deciding I think the one glaring emission I made when I was writing my bio is that I failed to declare myself a difficult woman I think I failed to do this because I don't necessarily always identify as a difficult woman but I know that I must be one because I have thus been labeled by quite a few experts you know like they really know what they're talking about they are absolute experts on this just ask them okay you don't need to ask they'll tell you anyway more than once uh explain it in detail until you do understand or until you just kind of Fain understanding and turn the conversation around to something that's about them which is where they prefer the conversation to be I should probably now apologize for that emission but SED I'm feeling extra difficult today um uh the experts in the room will let you know that that's probably my hormones again still always um I should probably also apologize at this point for being over 35 uh for being single for not having enough super annuation I'm so sorry um and most of all of course I should like profusely apologize for being fat I know terrible terrible how dare I um the only one of those things I really care about is the super annuation bit right but I'm actually not too stressed because you know what I own a car um so you know I probably should be fine for housing in my old age thank you government for worrying about me um oh there I go being hormonal again I'm sorry um I'm not exactly sure when I first became a difficult woman uh it might have been around the time I became a woman uh not in the physiological sense of the first sign of the troubles uh but in the sense of becoming aware that I would be required to quietly and constantly diminish myself if I wanted things to turn out well for me in this life uh whose vision of well I can't be sure the experts I guess I don't know they never consulted me uh what I do know is that by the time I was legally an adult I'd figured out that playing the game of life according to the rules of the experts was not for me um I really felt that they were the hunters and that I was destined to be the prey and I wanted to engage in a game that was so different for me and for every other non-expert especially for the girls and the women who were trying to play it safe because even back then I had figured out that playing it safe can often be the most dangerous thing a woman will ever try to do so I say I didn't choose the difficult woman life the difficult woman life chose me um I feel it's been the same for most of the challenging girls I know uh it was not immediate love at first sight thing it was more like a kind of a friendship that grew into something more at first we weren't even out about it with our family and friends we still danced to songs with misogynous lyrics and drank the girl drinks at parties it took quite some time before we felt confident enough to like publicly just go and eat a second serve of dessert wild or maybe step into a circle of experts at a social Gathering and provide an opinion without invitation oh my God crazy um these were the Whispers we made while we were learning to Roar the first Roars we make as difficult women are probably a bit timid a bit breathless and perhaps poorly timed however once we've done it we keep at it ctly overtly either way works it changes the game for us and sometimes for others who aren't able to Roar before we know it we've become lionesses fiercely protecting our Cubs our food sources caring keeping away predators and going on to discover new territories and you know what we can do all of this without going in for the kill because that has never been the mission the mission is to create a new game one where nobody is the prey there's actually plenty of lions out there there roaming around who want that too they just don't know how to go about it or maybe they're too scared to roar or maybe they're afraid that if they do Roar they're going to get mauled by the alpha Lions welcome to the club fellas we know um the first thing I want to say about being a lioness is that um I love it apart from the facial hair you know like more about that later I think but it's definitely something to acknowledge it can be a little bit tricky but when I hit my mid-40s I decided to take my difficult woman/ lioness smarts and skills into a territory called comedy oo I've been sniffing around comedy for decades licking at its scraps and nibbling at the bones of at every chance I had it seemed like a great place to find joy to celebrate humanity and to create some dialogue for change most of all I felt confident that I would find some other lionesses there and that we would be set free to Roar our giant hearts out on much bigger planes what I discovered pretty quickly was that I had inadvertedly stepped into a much scarier lion Den I did indeed find some mighty lionesses in there I didn't find them all at once because unlike in a pride where you can have six or seven lionesses together the rules of Comedy dictate that there's only ever to be one or maybe two lionesses in the Lion's Den at any one time um and yes that's right I did just say rules of Comedy who knew I thought I was entering a space of joyous Anarchy and Progressive thought but no here was a place of of endless Unwritten rules created by who do you reckon experts there were they were the very same sort of experts I'd been roaring at for decades in my ordinary civilian life um at first of course I politely listened to the rules many times they were laid out for me every time I went to a gig by experts I could recite them for you now if you like um I know I pretty much know them off by heart but also as a woman I still receive a a refresher every time I go to a gig you know there's always an expert conveniently on hand to tell me how to do things in case I've forgotten great um it seems that just being a woman any sort of woman no further descriptor necessary can deem you difficult in comedy before you've even spoken a word uh I could have decided to retreat it would have perhaps been a much wiser move but I do so love comedy I believe it is one of the most powerful and effective tools we have to find common ground with strangers to provoke conversation to incite empathy and to advocate for change I much prefer the sound of laughter to the sound of roaring so I chose to put on my big girl pants and keep going with this new Endeavor now for anyone who's not familiar with big girl pants they're the giant beige ones that you could go camping in for a weekend you know those ones and they're really helpful when you want to get done you know okay they're also terrifying to The Experts most of the time I believe that if I was funny enough maybe I could convince a few other people to try and play a different sort of game with me for themselves and for all of the others who were never invited to join in a team comedy is subjective and is Reliant upon the willingness of both the comic and the audience to lean in to be vulnerable and to sometimes jump when we don't know where or how we're going to land the same can be said about change I and every other funny woman I know want the world to be different and so we persist if there's one piece of knowledge I want every person in in this room to take out back into the world with them today it's that every time still that a woman stands on a stage and does standup comedy it is absolutely activism it is a political statement it is Defiance not all difficult women will be labeled funny but I can guarantee you every funny woman you know has or will be labeled difficult and all power to her yes the rules of Comedy like the rules of current life dictate that women can be most difficult when we speak about Delicate subjects like our bodies Our sexuality our mental health or our experiences of misogyny because according to the experts uh those things are sensitive uh which means of course it is imperative that we keep talking about them without fear and without apology with joy with pain phos with irreverence with Anarchy and in the spirit of Celebration and acknowledgement and with the intention of provoking change real profound and enduring change I reflected on all of this in the early hours of the morning as I Rose to stir my cauldron and cast a spell on the patriarchy as I recited an incantation about the gender pay Gap and equal division of domestic labor I plugged along hair from my chin and threw it in for good measure for a moment I thought maybe I'm wrong perhaps when me when women do become more alike as we grow older as aches and pain and loss come for all of us and as hair Sprouts from when it has never sprouted before but then my comedic brain kicked in and I thought oh no that's not right uh women's unwanted hair and men's unwanted hair very different right I think that women grow hair on our faces so that men will finally leave us alone and I believe that at least in some cases men grow hair in their ears so that they no longer have to hear the opinions of other people um no no don't get upset I'm just making a joke I checked with the experts and that one's allowed um I hope there will be a day when I and other difficult women can retire because our work here is done there's a new game one that everyone is welcome to play until then we will continue to agitate to infiltrate and to permeate in the pursuit of change and to laugh to giggle to justest and sometimes sneer at all that thwarts us it's not the only way to play the game but we know it can be quite an effective one and after all we were taught by experts thanks very much

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 881

Keywords: Activism, English, Entertainment, Feminism, Gender, Humor, Men, TEDxTalks, [TEDxEID:57085]

Id: D9nytVUCs0U

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2024