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The Daily Show for Women
Brandon Hickman / Current TV
Comedian Sarah Haskins has created a viral following online with her hilarious reports on absurd marketing aimed at women—meet America’s funny new sweetheart.
There is a thread on The Daily Show’s online forum that is solely dedicated to getting Sarah Haskins hired as a correspondent. With good reason: Haskins is a comedian and culture critic whose short-but-sweet segments called “Target Women” on Current TV’s Infomania have already become a kind of girly Daily Show, making fun of the many merciless ways consumer products are marketed to women.
Haskins is quickly becoming, like Tina Fey or Amy Poehler before her, a quintessential girl crush.
Since the segment’s inception last year, the 29-year-old Haskins has skewered everything from Botox to birth control to the cougar phenomenon with her trademark dry humor. For Target Women’s debut episode, a takedown of cheesy, women-filled yogurt commercials, she mused: “Yogurt eaters come from every race, but just one socio-economic class: the class that wears gray hoodies. It’s the ‘I have a master's but then I got married’ look.”
Haskins describes her humor as the “irreverent, feminist, funny take on things,” and her videos have quickly gone viral, becoming a favorite of women-focused blogs like Feministing, Broadsheet, and Jezebel (where commenter Nun Shall Pass wrote, “Sarah Haskins, will you marry me?” in response to a recent segment the comedian whipped together on fairytales and the happy-ending myths perpetuated by television and commercials). Haskins is quickly becoming, like Tina Fey or Amy Poehler before her, a quintessential girl crush.
Her newfound status as a funny girl icon is something that Haskins hasn’t quite grown used to. “The familiarity is strange,” she tells The Daily Beast. “I've been waiting to open US Weekly and see me buying Newman’s Own Lemonade in Stars: They’re Just like Us!”
Haskins has always had a mind for comedy—after graduating from Harvard, she moved back to her native Chicago, where she toured with the improv group Second City (which launched Tina Fey’s career) and auditioned unsuccessfully for commercials, including one for Laughing Cow cheese (she says she will feature the cheese ads in an upcoming segment). “I'm not a mom and I'm not pretty enough to sell most things, so I'm in that vast world of normal where you don't want to buy shit from me,” she says.
Haskins later moved to Los Angeles (a city that she notes “is not the world of The Hills”) to take a job writing for Current TV, and started watching a lot of television for the first time in her life. Haskins says that she began to notice how annoyingly retro the commercials for women were: Ads for birth control pills that would only mention regulating your period (not your sex life), other commercials touted milk as a miracle cure for a princess plagued with PMS, Barbie dolls and their myriad careers.
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I'm not sure what I find sadder -- that you apparently think the Daily Show is for men, or the fact that a female version of The Daily Show would concern itself with fashion and marketing, not news information.
Way to propagate the stereotype that men are interested in important things... and women are interested in fluff.
Exactly the way I was going to put it. I think the only significance perhaps is that it was a female comedian this time making jokes. But beyond that, it is almost even more sexist to exclaim this is a new found significance.
Let's not drown in our own political correctness. Sarah Haskins and Jon Stewart use similar styles of comic delivery to comment on society's excessess. They're not a perfect comparison, but I could definitely see similarities.
Sarah is a female comedian who criticizes stereotypes surrounding women, something that women might be interested in. The headline of this article is no more prejudiced than Sarah herself is-- they're both concerned with social critique, NOT the furthering of stereotypes.
Also, stating that the headline says that The Daily Show is EXCLUSIVELY directed at men is overreaching for meaning. Digging that deep into the writer's possible intent seems silly to me.
You read my mind.
hithere3-
You took the 1000 calorie word sandwich out of my mouth!
While her schtick is funny, for how long can you point out the same trends in ads aimed at women?
and the Daily Show has Sam Bee who does this very well?
Didn't she say once the reason she would vote for any women candidate was she had a vajajay,too?
But wait -- aren't you annoyed by the ads targeting women? I am appalled by them, so it's great, in my book, to have a smart celebrity voice hate them too, but in a witty way.
I believe Sarah's humor is waking women up. And awake women are not stereotypes, but people who, among other things, vote and purchase -- or not. I, for one (and I'm a woman), think this is terribly important satire. I have daughters, too.
So mock away, Sarah! Maybe stupid and insulting marketing will go away! Or at the very least, maybe newly awake women will decide NOT to buy something because its ads are insulting. Hey, maybe men will start to get it and be insulted by insipid beer commercials and male enhancement pitches.
I'm with you Reenilou (hey that rhymes). I think the purpose of the article is to make people aware of the Target Women's appeal. I don't think the DB is trying to say that this is the Daily Show for women. I think that was just an unfortunate title.
I love Sarah Haskins' comedy. And as a guy, I wish more people would mock the way advertisers go after women with these idiotic products and services. SNL did a great commercial parody of one of these called "Wombee". Check it out at hulu. It's hilarious.
Just to be clear, I think Sarah Haskins is hilarious. It's this article I have a problem with.
I think what Haskin's is doing is great. Not just for women, but for men as well. I am a guy, and I am constantly pissed off by the way gender is portrayed on television and movies, especially ads and movies aimed at women. the women is always some bitchy, image obsessed control freak and the guy is always a bumbling idiot. It's fucking ridiculous.
However, I wouldn't equate this to the daily show. I think the author needs to sit back and think about what haskins is trying to say in this program, because it isn't about polarizing men and women.
Yeah, I watch Jon Stewart. But let's face it: he wouldn't know a sexist ad if he tripped over it. It's a gap in the market, and I love Haskin poking fun at it.
I'll be great if Haskin was added to the Daily Show line up.
interesting article, terrible title...
Daily Show could sure use more female correspondents. I found these more humorous than laugh out loud funny. An easy target but one that certainly could use good mocking. I just with it made me laugh more.
She's great, I do agree however that this is not the Daily Show. Oh and please Tina Fey is the absolute best comic artist in TV period! No one male or female currently comes close to the breadth of (producing, writing, and acting) that wonderful woman can do.
I feel a better title would be "The Soup" for Women, however, they have a show called "The Dish" that pretty much the same.
I find this funny. I sent a link to my wife. I too hate the stereotype linked to bumbling men. I am a bumbling man and I think that we are an underepresented demographic. We want the best but seem to accomplish the worst. Have pity on us and understand that we have value, despite stereotypes.
She's very funny. As a 48 year old woman who's made a living in comedy for 20 years, it's nice to see the young women coming up who have it in spades. Go Sarah, Go Tina, Go Amy - GO!
I think I must be the last person on Earth to know about Sarah Haskins. Am happy for all the catch-up videos though!
I am the last person on earth to know about another boring comic that really thinks that she is unique. I stay away from these people, but I do make myself aware of what is going on and who is who in our little society; The United States of America. American culture has always had marketeers that have hawked their wares with lies and stereotypes, some are grossly wrong and others know Americans. The ads are just that ads, not to be taken seriously. I can't help it that I fit every type of stereotype, of an educated, professional, American male, over fifty, Navy veteran, married, with grown children, with hobbies and interests, Central Californian, that just happens to of Mexican descent, and a former farmworker. When I see that I am fulfilling that stereotype, I just laugh at myself or I will inform who I am with, (if they didn't notice it first,) about it and we laugh. I can't help that I like enchiladas, tacos, George Lopez, lowriders, women, music, (especially those oldies but goodies, avoid the northside of town, can't cook or clean, but I do have a good looking well taken care yard. I laugh at this Sarah Haskins because her humor is pretty shallow, and only a small segment of America gets her and the rest of the opinion media that thinks they are speaking for the majority. Actually the majority of America don't have time or the "want to" to take in Sarah Haskins, I did and I did not laugh once. But maybe thats the problem she was not targeting me, with her humor, not like every person or company in America that is trying to get me to spend some of my hard earned cash. America, you are more than the Ms. Haskins, Mr. Stewarts, and the other comic or political media personalities that think everytime they open their mouths something cute, funny, or powerful comes out. You ever notice how they stop, and make a stupid face that they think is funny or cute, so they can be rewarded like a spoil child with a big mouth, for saying a "nonfunny."
Thank you.
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