The Feministing Five: Erin Gibson

Erin Gibson, actress, comedian and self-described gangly person is the host of the Modern Lady segment on CurrentTV’s “Infomania,” a weekly comedy show that takes on the best and worst of the mainstream media. “Infomania,” home of the fantastic Bryan Safi and former home of the brilliant Sarah Haskins, welcomed Gibson aboard this May and she’s been making us laugh ever since.

Gibson is the kind of woman who, having decided she wants to do something, throws herself into it without looking back. When she decided, somewhat unconventionally given that she was a business major in college, to pursue comedy, she moved to Chicago with almost nothing and threw herself into classes at the famous Second City improv school. Then, she went on one date with a friend of a friend, and decided to marry him. Which she did, seven weeks later.

Gibson now makes her living poking fun at media and advertising that insult women, a job that, as we know around here, requires a sense of humor as well as a sense of outrage. Her recent analysis of how beer commercials have evolved in the last few decades was particularly on-point, and of course, pretty damn funny.

It was a real pleasure to talk to Gibson and to hear her insights on everything from how to turn tall, gangly and awkward into a TV career to how to make a marriage work when you’ve only known the dude for seven weeks.

And now, without further ado, the Feministing Five, with Erin Gibson.

Chloe Angyal: How did you come to be involved in comedy?

Erin Gibson: I’m really awkward, and I’ve been awkward most of my life. And I’m taller than people, I wore glasses and had braces, and had a really poor choice of perm. We moved a lot, and I figured out that every time I went to a new school, the only way for me to make friends was to start making fun of myself before someone else could do it. And I really never stopped. I wasn’t a class clown, I wasn’t disruptive, but that’s how I made friends.

In college I was a business major, and a woman from Houston who went through the Second City program in Chicago had moved back to Houston and started teaching improve classes. And I thought, “I’ll see if like this, and see if it interests me,” and it was just for fun, but I really fell in love with it. So once I got out of college I went to Chicago and started taking classes at Second City and Improv Olympic and the Playground. I did improv probably twenty hours a week. I really immersed myself; I had this feeling that I had really missed out because I had only just discovered it, so I was just consuming it like crazy. I moved to Chicago with nothing. I shipped my clothes, and sold my car and everything I had. It was a really nice clean slate from being a kind of conservative business major to a totally liberal comedian.

I always knew I wanted to move to LA, but I met my husband who lived in LA, through a friend of a friend. And we decided after our first date that we wanted to get married. I basically married a stranger after knowing him for seven weeks. We’ve been married for six years. I will be the first to say: do not ever do it. It is the dumbest thing you could ever do, because you’re basically living with a stranger. You’re getting to know someone for the first year of your marriage – it’s bananas. It’s like the opposite of The Rules. It was very hard. When we decided we were going to get married we took bets on how long we’d stay together before we got a divorce. We said it’d be a year. We’re very honest. And we’ve been together for a long time. He’s in comedy; he’s a writer for The Jimmy Fallon Show, and we both love comedy. But that’s how I came to LA.

I started doing improv at Improv Olympic, and then the Upright Citizens Brigade, which is Amy Poehler’s theater, she started it with three guys in New York, and they opened a theater in LA, which has been my home. It’s been where I cut my teeth in comedy, doing live performances all the time, and sketches, and I still perform there once or twice a month when I can.

CA: Who is your favorite fictional heroine and who are your heroines in real life?

EG: There’s this book called The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. The character is Edna Pontelier. It’s a book I read in high school, and it’s amazing we even got to read this book because my high school was so conservative. Basically, this character has an awakening to the ideals of what’s expected of her as a woman and as a wife at the end of the nineteenth century, and she can’t take it and she walks into the ocean and kills herself. You identify with her before she wakes up from this proper, idealistic, unsustainable class system that she’s a part of, and then at the end you’re like, “well of course she walked into the ocean and drowned herself. What choice does she have?” It’s not like she can just divorce her husband and have a life of her own and have her own career.

In real life, my therapist is fantastic. Her name is Dr. Karen Bierman, and when I started seeing her five years ago, I was kind of a mess. And I was the kind of mess that was comfortable because I’d always been that way. She is so calm and understanding, and even when I think I bring something controversial or uncomfortable, we just talk through it and work it out. She has given me a sense of internal calm that I’ve only achieved because she has taught me empathy. She sounds like a Buddhist monk, but she’s this short, East Coast woman, very quiet, and I tell her, “I have my real mom, but I have you, who’s like my logical mom.” So if I have a problem, I can come talk to you and fix it. That whole mother-daughter relationship is just so complicated, I’m sure I’m not the only person, but it’s nice to have a woman in my life who’s really calm and grounded and separated from me. I don’t have to call Dr. Bierman when I get home from a plane trip, you know? And she has her own practice, she’s run her own business for about twenty years. She’s very independent, but she also has a family. She’s an example of everything I would like to be. I’d like to be someone who has a family, and is comfortable being in the mother role, but is also independent-minded. She does what she loves, and doesn’t think twice about it.

CA: What recent news story made you want to scream?

EG: Laura Ingraham is killing me right now, with The Obama Diaries. She wrote this book called The Obama Diaries, and she was going around last week and this week doing this big press tour, where she’s presenting this book as a collection of information that was given to her by a spy on the inside of the White House, who sees what’s really going on. And Matt Lauer was trying to get her to admit that it was fiction and that she was writing it tongue in cheek. She won’t do it. She answered that no, this is legitimate information that I’ve been given by insiders. She’s not logical, she refuses to answer any questions in a straightforward manner and she’s pushing this book that she’s sarcastically claiming is fact. It was amazing to see Matt Lauer ask her the same question three times, and she never answered it. So I have a problem with her, and then she’s all over these shows I have to watch for work, so I can’t escape her.

CA: What, in your opinion, is the greatest challenge facing feminism today?

EG: I honestly think it’s putting out a vibe that is nuanced and not a blanket kind of feminism. I think there are a lot of residual views of feminism that are in the vein of “If you’re feminist then you have to always support women,” or “If you’re a feminist you always have to do this.” So how do you as a feminist put out a message that’s nuanced enough? Maybe it’s impossible. Maybe people will always think that if you’re a feminist, you don’t wear makeup and you force people into abortions. Maybe that’s the challenge, continuing on in a way that’s nuanced and complicated, and trying to put up a wall so you’re not affected by those viewpoints. I think it’s hard for a lot of people to stand up and say “I’m a feminist.” And I think the biggest challenge for feminists today is to just keep doing it. It’s not a cool thing, it’s not a cool label, so the challenge is to do it in whatever interpretation you think being a feminist is. That’s what’s important.

CA: You’re going to a desert island, and you’re allowed to take one food, one drink and one feminist. What do you pick?

EG: Vietnamese spring rolls, agua fresco and Amy Poehler. I love what she’s doing with “Smart Girls.” She’s cool, everyone loves hanging out with her, and she’s being really supportive of young girls. She’s doing everything right. And she’s funny, and has a great career that she totally deserves. She’s an example of the kind of women that I think are going to be up-and-comers in Hollywood. I hope that the days of there not being enough funny women on TV are going to be over soon. I hope there’s too many. I hope we get an avalanche of funny women on TV in five years.