Headless women

Comic Marcia Belsky and Hollywood’s gender problem

When she first started doing stand-up, Marcia Belsky’s shtick was being the “Jew from Oklahoma.” 

Born in Albany, New York, Belsky and her family relocated to Tulsa when she was four years old. 

“Tulsa’s much more liberal than other places in Oklahoma, but when I was in elementary school, all these evangelical Christian parents were telling their kids to tell me that I was going to hell because I didn’t believe in Jesus,” Belsky, now 25, said. 

“That was some of the formative stuff…and that’s really when I got into comedy. I would sit at home and watch so much comedy, and realize ‘oh, right, I’m not the crazy one.’” 

Seeking a liberal mecca after high school, Belsky moved to Portland for college. There, at age 19, she attempted her first open-mic night.

Owing in equal parts to her education, finding a community of comics in New York after college, and to her lineage of strong, assertive women, Belsky eventually found her voice as a comic and a feminist. 

“I had this idea that, to be listened to by men, I had to completely non-gender my jokes,” she recalled. “I hardly ever talked about being a woman, hardly ever talked about women’s issues … In most comedic communities, to be truly accepted in the boys’ club, you basically have to be this perfect little sister—that they want to fuck.” 

As she matured, so did her stand up, which led to a job writing for feminist satire site Reductress. She began her performance group “Free the Mind,” and adopted an unapologetic, hyperbolic feminist persona on her Facebook page and Twitter account. The message of these projects comes down with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer: “KILL ALL MEN.”  

“I was thinking, if this is what they think feminists are, why not just give them what they want? We’ve seen this angry feminist character before, but she is usually being made fun of with the underlying joke being ‘and that’s why feminism is stupid.’” 

But Belsky’s idea was to turn this trope on its head, with an over-the-top character illustrating a woman’s right to be angry. And, by going full-throttle, ball-cutting “feminazi,” Belsky beats misogynistic trolls to the punch. 

“Sexist men can’t say anything because, when they’re like, ‘it’s fucked up to say kill all men,’ I’m like, ‘oh, if you feel oppressed, it’ll only take you about 6,000 years for you to get some of your basic rights back.’” 

Recently, Belsky has drawn national attention with her Tumblr blog, “Headless Women of Hollywood,” which she created after noticing a disturbing trend in the portrayal of women in advertisements and movie posters—namely, that they are missing their heads.     

In the website’s mission statement, Belsky pins down what makes this phenomenon so problematic:  “By decapitating the woman, she becomes an unquestionably passive object to the male gaze. The question of her consent is removed completely alongside her head, and her purpose becomes solely that of being looked at by men. Her value is that only of her sexual appeal to men, and not of her personhood.”

Seeing this collation of women consistently robbed of their personhood in advertising, it becomes easier to comprehend why there are so few substantial speaking roles for women in film.

An April 2016 study by Polygraph found that, out of 2000 films examined, 1500 featured dialogue spoken primarily by male characters (60%+), while there were only 170 films with dialogue spoken primarily by female characters. 

“Women, people of color, and gay people are taught to look at a straight white man and relate to his story,” Belsky said. “But straight white men are taught that if a movie’s about black people, it’s for black people. If a movie’s about women, it’s for women. And why would they care about that?”

The limited range of female roles in male-driven comedies doesn’t help, either.

“There’s still this idea that, if you’re a woman and you don’t want to be there as part of the sexual appeal or the brunt of a joke for men, then they don’t have a part for you.”

Belsky is not without hope that the landscape is changing. She reels off a list of prominent and up-and-coming female comedians: Amy Schumer, Abbi Jacobson, Ilana Glazer, Liza Treyger, Samantha Bee, Kate Berlant. But for her, it isn’t just about the women who have already made it. It’s about fostering a community of women so that others can make it, too. 

“We’re all conscious of the stereotype that women can’t get along [and] are inherently competitive with one another—as opposed to it being something that’s been bred in us for years and years.”

Belsky said she’s found the opposite—real effort by the community of female comedians to support one another. 

“The only comparison I have,” she laughs, almost apologetically, “is that we’re bros with each other.”

For more from Claire, read her review of "Broad City."