I owe Joan Rivers a debt of gratitude. And if you’re in possession of a vagina, you owe her one, too. Because she’s done more for women—not just women in comedy, but women in general—than most will realize, or even care to admit.
Maybe you didn’t like her—the brassy, in-your-face manner, the brand of humor, or the strange ways in which her face morphed over the past few decades. Personally, I don’t care what work she had done. Because she endured more than most of us will, bravely and without apology, and transformed all of that pain and anger into comedy gold.
You may not realize, or even believe, that this loud-mouthed comedian has anything to do with you or your life. But she has. She’s been a pop culture figure for as long as anyone can remember, and you’re used to having her around, which is why it is so odd that she’s gone. But beyond that, she set the bar high—because the reason you and I feel we can say whatever the fuck we want, whenever we want, on social media, on our blogs, or to whomever, is because women like her did it first.
Sure, it’s easy to think that women are all that, now that we’re living in the golden age of female comics. It’s easy to think that we always had Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Chelsea Handler and Whitney Cummings and all the other brave, funny, irreverent women to look up to—except we didn’t. At one point, all anyone had was Joan Rivers, and by the way, they weren’t all fawning over her from the start. Joan said things that people (read: women) shouldn’t say—back when it wasn’t cute.
If you’ve read even a little about Joan Rivers’ life, you know that she started her career at 24, hoping to be an actress, and made her success by swashbuckling her way into a male-dominated business. She had a failed marriage behind her, and just when things were ramping up for her, Carson blacklisted her, her show was canceled, and her second husband committed suicide. She’s been fired, she’s been criticized, dismissed, and shamed. And when she was pushed, she pushed back. Hard.
OK, so you’re not a comic, a writer or anything having to do with the entertainment industry, so you say, well, what does this have to do with me? A lot. Because women in show biz don’t just matter to women in show biz. They matter to us all. Every time they speak up, every time they face off with critics, hecklers, and haters, they do in public what we hope to do in our own lives: Stand up for ourselves and be who we are, no matter what anyone says. They set an expectation and an example. Like them or not, you learn a lot by watching. Everyone does. Women like that don’t just clear a path; they change the landscape.
If there’s one thing I am most grateful to Joan Rivers for is that she did not apologize—not for her thoughts, her talent, her strengths, or her jokes, no matter how much someone objected to them. And where would she be if she had? Exactly. We won’t get anywhere, individually or as a group, if we aren’t willing to do things unapologetically, and to stand behind what we say, regardless of what other people think.
Because fact is, for all our F-bombs, we still feel the pressure to apologize to everyone for everything—our choices, our thoughts, our ideas, our efforts to make ourselves heard. Shit, how many times have you apologized to a chair for bumping into it. Which is why we will always need women like Joan, not that there ever will be another.
One of my very favorite clips of hers is the night she took down a heckler in Wisconsin (“Don’t you tell me what’s funny, you stupid sonofabitch!”). Goddamn! The woman was a fury, a force, and not to be fucked with, period. We would all do well to learn from her example. And in many ways, I’m betting you already have.