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Iliza Shlesinger: Unveiled (2019) – Full Transcript

Here comes the bride, and she's got plenty to say. Newlywed Iliza Shlesinger dissects wedding traditions as she mines her nuptials for laughs.

Thank you, Nashville! Thank you. So this year was a really important year for me because I got… Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that reciprocity. I said something positive, you gave me positivity back. I was like, “I got married,” and you were like, “That’s great. How old is she?” But like, you went… …for it. I think sometimes as women we’re afraid to share good personal news with people. Because we’re afraid that other women won’t be happy for us. What a scathing note -to start a special out on. But all too often you say something good like, “I got married,” and what I’ll get back is like… “Amazing.” I am here running on a platform to eradicate the usage of the word… “amazing”… …from our female vocabularies because I know what “amazing” means. Okay? Girls, when you say “amazing,” I know you don’t mean amazing. Okay, so save it for your boyfriends. They are not paying attention. I know what amazing means. When a woman says “amazing,” what she actually means is, “This isn’t about me and I don’t care and I’m a little insecure but I wanna make sure I’m being a good feminist and saying ‘amazing’ back when in actuality it’s boring.” Amazing. -That’s what that means. Amazing. We’ve become like robots just like, “Amazing, amazing, amaz… – Amazing. It’s amazing.” Because in the wake of Me Too and Time’s Up, all of these important, very necessary movements, what’s come out of it is women policing other women and we walk around terrified as women of being called bad feminists by quite frankly other bad feminists. So we all walk around on this heightened alert like, “She’s amazing. I didn’t say anything. Don’t get mad at me. I love all women. No woman’s ever made a mistake. White jeans are always a great choice. -Slay, queen.”

Terrified. Terrified. That if we give an actual opinion, we’re going to get crucified. That if you say any criticism, some blogger in the back of the room is like… “Female comic shamed my choices by existing. She hurt my fee-fees.” That’s what happens. So we all walk around and all we’re doing is blaming other women for our own insecurities and all of a sudden everyone’s shaming everyone by sharing an opinion that you fought so valiantly to get to exercise. “You’re shaming her. You’re shaming her.” “I’m not. She fucked up my coffee order. No personal agenda. I asked her to make it again.” This is why China is beating us. Okay? I’m a real feminist. I judge you on the asshole that you are, we go from there. That’s what it should be. Okay? That’s what it should be. You liking another woman should not be mandated. That’s not feminism, that’s communism. Okay? This idea that just because she showed up I’m supposed to have this abundant love, I can promise you this as a feminist.

I’m excited you showed up. I’m excited you’re capable. I do not hate you because you’re younger than me or prettier than me or as successful. However, you showed up and so did I so let’s get it started ’cause life’s a competition. -Like, let’s do it that way. Okay? And I know other women feel the same way, not just because you’re laughing at what I’m saying, but if you look at the language that women consistently use to uphold one another, the language is aggressive. ‘Cause women are aggressive, we’re just not allowed to show it because “likability and wrinkles.” So we keep everything…

But we’re aggressive, look at the words we use on our “slay all day” tote bags and our “feminists with to-do lists” neckerchiefs.
Look at the words.
“You’re killing it.”
“I’m gonna kill you.”
“She’s slaying it.”
“I’ll slay you in the fucking streets.”
“Murdering it.”
“Wrecking it.”
“Shutting it down in the name of the dark lord!”

Like everything. It’s just on fire. It’s exhausting. I don’t have, at 36, the full energy every time I see a woman to be like… “Kill it, queen! Mama. Amazing!” ‘Cause I’m so tired from doing all the other shit society told me to do. So if I see you, you’re not going to get the full welcome bouquet, but it’s not personal. The most you’re going to get out of me is just…

So I got married and I married a chef, another thing that I was reticent to tell people because of our country’s preconceived notions about chefs and everybody has an opinion on food. Everyone you know, you say, “I married a chef.” They’re like… “I am a chef, sort of. I film myself, I make it. I put my hand in the water! I’m in to cooking. I have a food blog, I’m a foodie.” Nope, you’re just huge. It’s not… you’re not a foodie. It’s not the same. “I love food.” I’m like, “Me too when I’m drunk at 3:00 a.m. and there’s a taco truck, ‘I’m a foodie,’ but it’s not the same thing.” “No, I have a blog. I write mean comments in a Yelp page. I’m hoping to get a series picked up -based off of it. I love… I take pictures of my spaghetti with a flash so it looks like a snuff film.” Pro tip: don’t take a picture of your food. Period. But don’t take a picture of your food with a flash. It makes the food look like a hostage. The food always looks scared. Like, take a picture of spaghetti with a flash, the spaghetti looks like, it’s like, “Please unchain me, I won’t tell anyone. I promise to be loyal.” Everyone’s involved with food now. I think it’s because of the Food Network, the ubiquity of these cooking shows. Everyone loves cooking and the Food Network, even if you haven’t seen the Food Network, you’ve seen the Food Network, right? -Like, we’ve all seen Chopped, right? Yeah. Inside your wicker basket, you’ll find a severed head and a grape, make a frittata. Yes. And everyone’s a celebrity chef now. Everyone’s like a “celebrity chef.” You can’t just be a chef. When I was little, I don’t remember any boy saying they wanted to be chefs. There were no celebrity chefs. There were like a couple of them. When your parents were kids, there were like three fat French guys -and Julia Child and like that was it. You weren’t a chef, you were a cook and you were a cook on accident. You were a cook ’cause dudes were coming home from Vietnam, we didn’t know what PTSD was yet, they’re like, “Bob’s acting weird. Stick him in the back.” “Female comic makes scathing social commentary -about our nation’s treatment of veterans. Accurate but hurtful.”

And because of how many food shows there are out there, the Food Network knows what kind of chefs you like to watch, so they cast the same archetypes of chefs, right? So there’s always like a “bad boy” chef and I didn’t want people to think I was married to that. Like just a sack of rage, fully tattooed piece of shit. “This is a devil’s tooth, here’s your crepe, suck my dick, Karen! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! These are gauges in my ears, they also measure out an ounce of responsibly-sourced tuna, eat my butt, Susan! Just tough. Yeah, wallet chain. I keep a knife in my truck to do a fine chop on parsley, lick it. Just tough.”

There’s always a bad boy chef and there’s always a lesbian chef. There’s always a lesbian chef that takes cooking, like, a little too seriously… for this to be an enjoyable viewing experience. They’re always posted up, feet hip-width apart, like… “Yes, chef!” You’re like, “Okay. Can you just stand down? Thank you for your dinner service, but just relax.” “I make vegan wedding cakes.” “You need to chill out.” This is so aggressive, right? They’re always tough. She always got a faux hawk and a bandanna. And food-related tattoos. Like salt, pepper, sugar. Like, yeah. Right? They’re always like meaty. Always a… Always a little mean-looking, right, but she always got a dainty name, like “Charity” ’cause her parents weren’t counting on having a pit bull for a daughter. “Chef Charity, what would you do if you won today’s episode?” “I would take that money so me and my girlfriend, Steph…” It’s always Steph. There’s no tough lesbians out there like, “Hey there. Stephanie.” “Me and my girlfriend, Steph, take that money, move upstate, open up our own bakery and bake everything from snatch.” And then… Okay. Okay. There you are. There you are. Not such a proper Southern crowd, are we? I always like to see where my audience has like gerrymandered its ethics for the evening’s performance. Most of you laugh, there’s always a couple people in the back, like… “She said snatch so close to Sunday. No. No, ma’am. I am uncomfortable. It’s unholy. We got four churches on every corner, but I feel uncomfortable.” “Female comic makes commentary on social topography of neighborhood, “can’t tell what audience is cheering for.”

Okay… So we went on our honeymoon and my husband really wanted to go to Italy. Really wanted to go. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go ’cause I’d been. I wanted to go other places, but he wanted to go because he’s a chef and Italy is like a food mecca, so he wanted to make his hajj. So he wanted to go to Italy and I said yes, not because I love him but because you can find alcohol pretty much anywhere. So we go and he nerded out. He made a map, a real eat-seeking map of the whole… country. And we didn’t do the tourist stuff. We went to like the foodie, cheffy places. We went to the region where they grow the grapes that the goats eat. The special goats and they take a dump and it makes the fertilizer that makes the mushrooms. If you eat them, you get detained. Like we did a whole thing. And on, like, day five, I was like, “I can’t… I can’t do this anymore. I can’t eat any more. I want to pick something. I cannot be carted around anymore like a prize pig. -I want to pick… I want to participate in this. I want to pick the restaurant and I want to order in Italian.” My husband goes, “You want to pick the restaurant and order in Italian?” I was like, “Yeah, I’ve seen Lady and the Tramp, like, I know what’s going on.”

The picking of the restaurant wasn’t that important to me. It was speaking Italian in a restaurant was important to me for one simple fact. I didn’t like the idea that as an American I would walk into some random part of Italy into a random restaurant and have some random Italian waiter think that I expected him, in his own country, to speak English, okay? Yeah. Although he probably should, like that or Spanish or Mandarin, like something along those… So… But I’m hyperaware of how we’re perceived when we travel. As an American and I am very, very proud to be an American, I know that people are watching us. Yeah, you can cheer for that. That’s fine. They have questions. A lot of them hate us ’cause they ain’t us and they want… a reason to discount you and that goes for whoever you are, whatever you look like from anywhere. When you travel abroad and you fuck up, people will decide, “Oh, all of your kind are like that.” And I couldn’t stomach that ’cause I am so proud to be an American and I wanted him to think all the great things about Americans that we already think about ourselves. So I wanted… to walk in and have him think that we’re educated and open-minded and kind and if I’m shitcanned and embarrassing in public, I want people to know I’m Canadian and I’m sorry. So I’m all set to speak Italian. I’ve got the, like, translator thing. I’m all ready to go, he hands me a menu and it’s a steakhouse. I’m like, “I’m gonna do this. It’ll be flawless Italian. It’ll be so impressive. Everyone will be impressed. They’re gonna vote me mayor of Italy. Open it up…” And I open the menu and all of their steaks were listed… in grams. There’s a 500 gram steak. What the fuck is a gram? I was so busy focusing on coming off looking amazing and the conjugation and the pronunciation, I forgot the rest of the world uses metric to measure. The rest of the world uses fucking logic. Tens, one hundreds. Yes! We here in the United States, we like to measure based… on a dream. And I’m staring at this 500 gram steak and the waiter’s looking at me, my new husband’s looking at me and I’m trying to do the conversion math in my head where my only frame of reference was like, “Okay. Well, a gram of cocaine is like that much.” Okay, you know what? We’re just gonna do an eight ball of steak. For the table. Yeah. Thank you. Grazie mille. I love it, Nashville turned up for that cocaine joke. Oh, yeah. I heard a lot of guys laughing. “Don’t let the Vineyard Vines fool you, I fucking love rails! I may have little whales embroidered on my shorts but I like to fuck and party. Yeah. You can seersucker my dick.” Love the South.

So I got married about a year ago. I’ve had about a year to think on it, ruminate on it, marinate on it, and I think what’s fascinating about getting married is it’s one of the few acts you can go through in this lifetime where once you do it once you come out the other end an expert. Totally omniscient, you know everything. You do it once, you come out the other end, you know everything about weddings, every detail. The problem is nobody wants your shitty wedding advice. Like no one. Other women will ask you advice as a way of ingratiating themselves or perhaps bonding with you. We as women are often taught if we act like we don’t know what’s going on and we need help other people will find us more palatable. So you say to other women, like… “You got married? I’m getting married. I don’t know what’s going on. What color is white? Is my foot in a bear trap? Help me!” And the other woman thinking she’s helping you and doing something right, she’s like, “Oh, okay. You want advice, great. Okay, so for my wedding, what I found helpful…” But the whole time she’s talking, all you’re sitting there thinking is, “Oh, my God, that is a tacky-ass wedding, you’re a dumb hooker.” -The whole time. -Yeah. Because every girl thinks every other girl kind of fucked it up -and you’ll do better. You won’t, and on that note, I’ve come humbly offering some wedding advice to you, Nashville. One thing you must know, the wedding industry is not designed to bring two loving souls together under the State and/or God, it is designed to extract your money from your wallet, pit you against other women and make you feel like garbage fire. -That’s what it’s there for. Okay? There’s a litany of requirements, social, cultural, traditional. All these things, everything’s got a price tag, everything takes up time and I’ll tell you what, I paid for my wedding personally. So you can best believe I took a red Sharpie and went down that list of bullshit and if it didn’t involve me taking off my shoes, drinking tequila or listening to Garth Brooks, we did not fucking do it. Yes. That’s right, Nashville.

The theme of my wedding was feminism. No one had a good time. But there’s all these things, all these requirements, all these traditions, these things, and I took a comedian’s microscopic lens to each thing and was like, “Is it weird? We’re not doing it.” So the first thing I refused to do, I would not wear a garter, okay? Okay. Okay. Some of you cheered, some of you were like, “I’m still wearing mine. What’s up? -What the fuck is up, Hollywood?” I’m glad that not everyone cheered for that because it sets up my next point perfectly. Okay? It’s important to me that me and my audience be on the same mental page for the rest of the set. Okay, right now in 2019, more than it was five minutes ago, right now, it’s the best time it’s ever been to be a woman in most states. -It’s the best time. I said it, I meant it. -The best time. Okay? But overall, we are the most heard, the loudest in our message, the most unified. However, with this newfound sense of feminism, I have noticed that there’s this weird splinter-faction of feminists, of women who get angry at other women when they deign to disagree with an opinion and then it’s not enough to agree to disagree. They want you fucking dead. -I am talking drawn and quartered in a Twitter town square. Because you hurt their feelings. So I get up here… As a joke. No harm intended. It’s a funny time, and I get up here and I’m like, “Don’t wear a garter, it’s trashy,” and I get that same blogger in the back of the room, like, “Female comic shamed my wedding-day choices and I don’t have the social wherewithal to confront her in person so I’m just going to hurl these insult turds -from behind a faceless avatar.” -So… So, since we’re all so hurt and gutless all the time, I’m going to stick to my initial notion. You look like a saloon hooker. Okay? -Go get married at a Six Flags. Girls, there’s got to be a middle ground where someone disagrees with you and you get the fuck over it. -Okay? You don’t have to hate her. Don’t have to hold on to it. One woman’s affirmation of her life choices is not the negation of your existence. -Be better than that. Okay? Yeah. We can’t walk around calling ourselves queens. “I’m a queen. She doesn’t like my top!” -Who cares? Move the fuck on. And you know who does this better? Men. They agree to disagree all the time and they’re fine. You see it all the time. Guy’s like, “He’s my best friend. I don’t like his politics and he’s stupid. -He’s a son of a bitch, but… I love him. We didn’t get along at first. We went out back. We had a drink. We fought. We had a little bit of sex and we were good to go. -Good to go!”

That’s what we must do, girls. Just move on. You want to wear a garter, wear it. I’m not going to be at your wedding, you wear it with pride. -I want to see… I want to see every one of your wedding pictures, you, garter on, dress hiked up, holding a shotgun, like… -$5,000 reward, sepia tone. Like that’s… Remember sepia tone? What’s a garter? Some of you might be wondering. Perhaps you’re from the future where they’ve eradicated this practice. A garter is a Barbie doll scrunchie… …forged of the finest polyester lace. Comes in one size. Shame. And you, on your wedding day, among the one million things you’re in charge of, girls, are also tasked with taking this fucking NuvaRing… …and hoisting it up your leg. God forbid on the wedding day we give women a break with the body-image issues. And be like, “Oh, what? That goose-choker? That lap-band for a chinchilla? Yeah, you could just… You can just wear that at the ankle, that’s fine. You can just wear that where everything tapers.” “No! You got to get it up. Get it up here.” To this thick-ass traffic jam. Of just ice-cold fat and skin and dinner, -just thick. I live in L.A. They’re like, “You can freeze it off if you don’t like it.” I’m like, “I’ve done North Dakota winters. -It did not go anywhere.” “Female comic shames her own thigh and in doing so makes millions of women question their own thighs. Why can’t you love your thighs?” -Because I am a white woman, okay? -We don’t know. We haven’t figured that out. Women of color for a couple years now have been like, “This is a thigh.” And society’s been like, “That is a thigh. We celebrate it.”

White women somehow, we’re still like, “Uh-uh, I’m gonna shave it down. -I’m gonna make it small. Be small. I’m gonna fuse my rib cage to my shin. -Be cage and shin. Snip, snip. You won’t even see it. I’m the crab woman. You won’t even know it. No thighs, can’t see them. Can’t be big. No thighs. If I walk, I’m gonna put my thighs in the background, put my tits in the foreground and walk around like this. From here to here, I am a woman, but from here to here I want to be a ten-year-old Japanese boy. Thin!” And it never looks nice. Your leg has to be the length of your body… …for it to look nice. You look down, you finally get it up there, you’re like, “It looks like I put a mini tennis skirt on a Christmas ham. It hurts.” And it’s tight. Of course, it’s tight. It’s a garter. It’s meant to hold up clothing. And right now all it’s holding up is that blood flow. Blood, like, trying to get to the artery. -You’re like… Your skin is just… …MoonPieing out on either side. You’re staring down at your corpulent leg -as it pulsates. With stagnant blood. It’s turning a light shade of blue. You’re like, “I’m the night queen. I don’t know. -What is this?” You don’t have time to ponder the deadening of your leg. You don’t have time. You got to get yourself over to the dance floor, sweet tits. That’s right. You gotta get yourself over to the dance floor where you and your new husband are going to perform a weird, -sexual garter-removal dance… …in front of your family! -Your mother is there! You’re sitting there spread-eagle, she’s like, “I’ll get it on tape, I’ll be there for the conception. This is excellent.”

Your father is there and he loves you, girls, but he is tapped out. He’s like… “Yeah, fuck her, I don’t know. He’s a good guy and this is good shrimp. It’s good shrimp. It’s a cash bar, but they’re trying.” So you got to get over there for that dance. So you go to the dance floor, -you drag your now purple… …stump over to… -…a single chair. -A single chair that has been ominously placed in the center of the dance floor. You are meant to sit in this chair… …my child. -Sit down. And you’re like, “Sit, okay. I wasn’t planning on enjoying myself, but okay.” Sit in the chair? Well, that’s easier said than done, isn’t it? ‘Cause you’re a bride like me or a bride that chose a dress that was form over function. -Your dress is tight. You’re a bride like me that perhaps chose a dress that was a size, maybe half a size too small, right? ‘Cause you told yourself you were gonna lose the weight for the wedding, but you didn’t lose the weight, did ya? -No. No, in fact, you gained two pounds just trying. -Yeah. So that dress is tight and you are trying to make yourself thin and compact in the moment, right? You got all your carry-on luggage up here. Trying to extend the torso, tuck in the tailbone, -protecting the spine, moving with breath. All the way down, slowly, slowly. You’re like that goat in the cage in that first Jurassic Park like… How does she work that noise into every special? Slowly lowering yourself down, praying to God that you don’t experience the one female-specific sartorial mishap there’s no coming back from.

When you’re a woman, there’s a lot that can go wrong. You snap a heel. You have an accident on your period. Your bra strap, whatever. But none is more embarrassing than the horror of going to sit down and having the back of your dress burst open. ‘Cause it couldn’t contain your lady meat. You won’t like me when I’m married. I don’t think the Hulk threw his shit, but… – …this Hulk does. So you finally sit down, right? You go down to the hem of your skirt, it’s time to show off that $2.45 investment, right? You gotta show off that garter. You go to lift up the hem and that’s when you realize you only put on fake tanner to the knee. I’ll be brave. Blinded… No! So you put your little white-orange Dreamsicle leg out there. Right? And you sit there and you wait and I believe what is to come next is ostensibly your first real test as a married couple. But, of course, the onus is on the woman to pass this test because it’s on you, girls, to sit there and remain facially-excited… …and turned on at your new choice in mate, as your new husband emerges from the smoke of the DJ lights. And you’re just sitting there like… “That’s my baby. That’s who I might have a family with.” His tuxedo jacket is off, so you as the bride are treated to this sweat map of South America. And you have to sit there ladylike but also excited, but also demure, but also horny. And sit there while your new husband goes under your dress… This is the most expensive dress you’re probably ever going to wear. …and he’s rooting around under it. Like a ghost schnauzer. You’re like, “That’s my husband.”

He now must remove the garter but according to weird wedding tradition he’s not allowed to use his hands. What must he use, Nashville? Teeth! So he gets under there, slides his five-o’clock shadow… …up your five-o’clock shadow. The viscous exchange of Drakkar Noir with Bath & Body Works Plumeria. Gets up here around this side hustle. Clamps down on that garter with, let’s hope, wolf-like precision. Slides it down your sweaty fucking ham hock… …to the ground and then he eats it. I don’t know what happens. I’ve never watched the full YouTube video. Okay. So, no garter. And I did not want to wear a veil over my face. It’s okay. Piercing deafening silence. -One sad “whoo” in the back, it’s fine. One girl’s like, “Whoo, I’m still gonna do it.” That’s fine. You’ll get on board eventually. I don’t like the idea that as a… What I want… I don’t like the notion that because I’m a woman and it’s tradition, my vision of a current situation… …let alone an important one… …should ever be obfuscated in the name of tradition, expectation or fashion. Okay, I can’t see. This is an important day and I’m fucking over here like John Cena. “You Can’t See Me.” What is this? Watching the whole thing through gauze?

I planned… I planned this part of the wedding. I planned the whole wedding, okay? If you’re a girl, you had a lot to do with it and you don’t get to see it. Homeboy did nothing. And because he’s a boy, he gets an unencumbered 360-view of the entire service. I’m sitting here in a bridal hurt locker. The girl did everything. “Female comic assumes gender-roles.” Fuck, yeah. Only women have a bandwidth for this kind of bullshit. She did everything. You’re the one that for the past year has been clawing at your mother like, “It’s buttercream, not French vanilla, there’s a difference!” You’re the one doing it. Put the veil over the boy, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about the details. He loves you. Okay, he bought the ring. He asked you to spend his life with him. It’s enough, put the veil over the cage like a blanket over a parrot. – Night-night. Polly go night-night. And then when it comes for the important part, like, “Do you take this woman?” “Polly does.” -Put it back down. It’s fine. -He doesn’t care. Put a game on in there like, “Bye-bye.” He doesn’t care. No man cares. He loves you. He thinks you’re beautiful, wants to marry you. That’s it. No man cares. You’re sitting there shrouded in mystery. No man’s ever going to be standing there like, “I know you can’t see this, but I’ll tell you what. You were right, -peonies were an excellent filler flower.” And you’re sitting there like… “Describe it to me. -I wish to know. Is my sister here? Does she look jealous? I’m just a humble beekeeper but one day…” Moreover, I think it’s creepy. I think there’s something a little eerie about a bride. If I describe to you a bride independent of the context of a wedding…

♪ Be mine forever ♪

Till death do us part. The pace with which the bride walks is unnerving, right? You don’t tend to see this gait independent of a haunting. However, the bride moving slowly is the least creepy of the options because let me ask you this, Nashville. What’s creepier, okay? A veiled woman walking towards you at this pace? Or this running at you? “What happened to that bride?” “I don’t know. She jumped into that mirror.” I don’t want to cover my face. Two hours in hair and makeup just to be like… “All right, let’s get you covered up. Cover that shit.” I would have worn the veil over my face if it was, like, really important to my mom. Like if that meant everything to her. I would have done it if she begged me. If she was like, “I wore the… I covered my shit and… And your grandma covered her face and your grandpa… We’re a progressive family. …he covered his face.” I would have done it, but I would have had a ‘tude about it. I would’ve put the flap down… …and be like, “You may kiss the bride.” Then he’d lift it, I’d be like, “You know it’s me, motherfucker.” Yeah. You know it’s me, we Ubered here together. I watched you hit “Split Fare.” You know it’s me. Unpopular opinion, actually popular opinion, just unpopular publicly-declared sentiment, getting married is not that much fun. Yeah. You’re not allowed to say that, especially if you’re a woman, God forbid, over 30. “Well, you’re just lucky that the Lord sent you someone… …to put up with your shit. Kissing your dog on the mouth. Stop taking videos.” There is a world where you can admit that something is difficult but also love the byproduct of it.

I love my husband, but the wedding part is exhausting. It is a physical and mental and financial just gauntlet. Even down to the last minute, the wedding itself. The whole year is exhausting planning it. It’s fun, you love your mom. But it’s a whole thing. But even just the day of. Let’s talk about the day of. What happened on the day of your wedding, girls, right? You had to prepare for it, like you woke up early. Just want to greet the sun. Got up at like 6:00, like when your dad gets up. Right? What, did you meditate? “I just want to be centered.” Right? You worked out like it matters the day of. It doesn’t. It doesn’t. You’re not going to lose any weight at the buzzer. It’s not going to… It’s never going to happen. What did you do? You did your little workout and then you got your makeup done and your nails and a massage and a colonic and a hyperbaric chamber and a hyper… hyperbolic chamber. Amazing. And you got a situation room and a silence cone and a shame corner and a Reiki healing. And you went ghost hunting, you did all this stuff. What did your husband do on your wedding day? I’ll tell you, he woke up like whenever. Went out to eat with his buddies. “Something tasty, doesn’t matter if I’m fat ’cause I’m a funny guy.” Went… Who cares if it’s bloated? Right, then he went and got a haircut… on the day of the wedding! Are you kidding me? What faith you have in this barber. Went out, had a drink, went home, jerked off, took a dump. Who says you can’t lose weight? Right, fellas? Who says you can’t lose weight day of? Yeah. Yeah, probably about 500 grams. He took a nap, he woke up to an alarm labeled “Wedding for you?” He barely made it.

The bride, it just doesn’t seem like the bride is having as much fun as everyone else because she is the one that planned it and she wants everything to be perfect. They don’t tell you that when you have a wedding, you have to plan every moment because people, when they get in a group, it’s mob mentality and they don’t think like they normally would. Okay, so you would think logically, like… “We said ‘I do’ in this room and that room’s got food on tables. Should go from A to B, shortest distance. No problem.” People are walking into walls like Sims. You have to shepherd them. You have to coordinate it. Everything you do has to have coordination. People have to be let in. You have to plan for these moments that seem organic. I will give you an example. So, if you’re the couple that wants that moment where after you say “I do” and you run out of the religious part and you get announced into the room, right? If you’re the couple that wants to have the DJ to everyone at the party be like, “For the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Raccoon.” Have all your babies, yeah! If you… want that moment, you have to plan for it. Meaning, if you want that reveal, you, after you say “I do,” have to haul ass out of that room, go to a fucking broom closet in a Ramada Inn, sign away your goats, his chickens, stamp it, kiss me. Okay, then you go and you take your couples pictures and while you’re doing that they’re setting up the party room and you have to provide a cocktail hour for your guests. So that’s three parties. The party they’re going to, this party and then the one they had before ’cause they’re gonna get liquored up to listen to “YMCA.” So they’re there and you have to provide that party, a party that you’re paying for that you’re not invited to. My wedding planner was like, “So did you want to do, like, an oyster bar for your guests?” I was like, “Do I get to eat the delicious oysters?” She’s like, “No, you’re going to be in the closet taking pictures. You don’t get to partake.” I’m like, “Then they can eat corn dogs and wait in their cars.” Okay. Tapped out. Tapped out.

It just felt like the bride is the last one to have fun. Even if you have a fun ceremony. Some couples like that. Some couples like a quiet, spiritual ceremony with crying and saying I’m sorry. Some people like… a fun service, some people like to dance. Like white people love to come down the aisle to that Bruno Mars song, like…

♪ Hey baby ♪
♪ I’m gonna marry you ♪
♪ Marry you… ♪

The bridesmaids and the groomsmen, one who was like a cheer captain in middle school, was like, “We go up, you go down. Hit it. Go, Cougars. Marry you.” And then you do it and it’s a whole thing, right? So everyone has fun with it. So the first ones that come down…

Girls, it does not matter who you marry, every man has the same group of friends. Every man has the same groom-pod, okay? First one to come walking down that aisle… Every man’s got that one friend that’s too big, okay? He’s like 6’9″. His name is Donk. He’s just like… walking on two snapped Achilles and all head injuries… “Donk.” Everyone’s, “Oh, Donk’s doing the choreography, barely.” “Go, Donk!” “I am Donk.” “Put that baby down!” “Donk is hungry.” Then the funny friend. Every man you date will have that one friend that’s funny. He never shuts up, his name is Daniel, and he comes down the aisle… “Yeah!” …and he doesn’t see a congregation, he sees an audience. So he’s going up to your nana like, “Oh, yeah, Nana. Yeah.” Right? And they’re loving it. You’re loving it. He’s like, “Yeah.” And the more they laugh, he’s like, “Uh-oh.” And then he goes off book. He’s like, “Yeah, I do the sprinkler and whatever the hell this is.”

And they’re loving… and people are laughing at your wedding, bride’s not even there yet. Everyone’s having a good time. She’s in the back, breathing into a fucking paper bag. And they think Daniel is so funny. Then they turn to me, “Isn’t Daniel funny, Iliza? You’re doing it, bravo. Move your dick more. This is great. Daniel’s so fun… Iliza, isn’t Daniel funny? He should’ve been a comic.” He could’ve been. But something happened senior year at Duke. The girl never woke up but it was wrong place, wrong time. He deferred for a year while his parents put together a defense fund. He didn’t do anything wrong, but it didn’t look very good to apply to other schools so he deferred and took community college credits. His CPA degree wasn’t what he wanted, but he won’t graduate on time. But he did graduate.

♪ Marry you, marry you, marry you ♪

The bridesmaids come down like, “This is a strapless bra. This isn’t fun. I slept with Daniel.”

♪ Marry you, marry you ♪

Now the groom comes down and he’s in sunglasses. “I’m in sunglasses. Isn’t this funny? I’m indoors, what a juxtaposition. I’m in sunglasses, which is an homage to Risky Business, which is a movie about what, Nashville? Hookers!”

♪ Marry you ♪

“Everyone get serious, she’s here.” She was last. She missed out on all the fun. All I want is for brides to have fun in 2020, that’s my campaign. That’s it. No foreign relations change, no tax refund. Nothing like that. No tax reform, just brides having fun. I think I can win. So here’s my idea for brides to have fun. If I tell it to you, will you promise to do it? Okay. Take one part red food coloring, one part corn syrup. Mix it in a bowl, a reusable bowl. Mix it. Stick it in your mouth, back of the chapel.

♪ This is gonna be metal ♪

“You may kiss the bride.” Girls, he lifts your flap, that’s when you… “Help me get back to the mirror! I do.” This is a question for the men in the audience, and keep in mind, boys, it is rhetorical before you yell out your gem of an answer. This is a scripted program. My question for you is why? Why would you want to cover your girl’s face? These guys are like… “We don’t. She wanted to wear the veil. I said, ‘Okay.’ I was enabling her feminism, I don’t… I agree. What? I’m not heckling her. I’m not… We don’t want… I’m not yelling, she asked a question. I feel maligned right now. I don’t wanna cover her face. What? You’re giving me shit. She’s the one… You know what? Get up, I gotta take a piss. Get up. I don’t care what they… I don’t even know who you are. I bought this as a Christmas present for her. Your tickets went on sale a long time ago. Okay. What? You said this was gonna be about peacocks and baby legs and so far, I don’t know.” “Accurate.” When I say her face, gentlemen, is a big part of the reason that you’re with her… “What about the tits?” For sure. For sure. Okay. In fact, that should be a big part of the veil-lifting ceremony. But the girl gets to do it. If she wants. “You may kiss the bride.” He lifts the flap and then the girl goes, “Check it out.” It’s a great idea. Think… Let me pitch you on this. Think of the money to be made on a bridal tit-flap. Right? Think of how we could market it. Think of how we could pitch it like, “Hey, sharks.” Now, when I say her face and her body, gentlemen, are big parts of the reason you’re with her, that’s not a knock against men. That’s never my MO.

I think sometimes people hear that a woman is speaking. They’re like, “Oh, she must hate men.” That’s bullshit, okay? You can be pro-woman without being anti-man. We have to adjust that, okay? My motivation has never been to shit on men. My motivation is to shit on everyone and together we rise. Yes! Like a shit phoenix. Men make up 50% of my audience. I love men. I married one and I slept with a bunch of hot ones right before, so… Right before. When I say her face and her body are big parts of the reasons you’re with her that’s commentary, not on superficiality, that’s commentary on the way men’s brains are wired, a subject I find endlessly fascinating and I write a lot of material about it. Okay?

Men are visual creatures, I’ve stated this before. They’re visual creatures, which means, girls, they have to be physically attracted to you for at least a second to get engaged and then want to get to know, like, your amazing personality. That’s the way it goes. It doesn’t have to be the whole thing, it could be a hair. Just a whisker. Just a nub. They’re like, “Hey, what’s that?” It goes looks… looks, hook him, and then your heart of gold reels him in. That’s what it is. It does not go the other way. No man’s ever been like, “I want to set you up with a girl.” And that guy’s been, “All right, tell me about her remarkable charity work first.” No. They’re attracted to you. And then they move in. Okay? He saw you and then the rest of it was yours, okay? He saw you at work, at a bar, on an app, through your window for the last six months. He saw you… approached you, fingers crossed, like, “Please don’t be a lunatic.” You turned around, you’re like, “This is my shoulder iguana and I’m a Taurus. It means a lot to me. Let’s go.” He’s like, “Okay. That’s fine, she seems warm.”

You want a man that is wired that way for as annoying as it can be. Like, “Men are pigs.” You want a man that is visually-wired because that’s the correct way to be wired, okay? “I don’t care about her looks.” Yeah, ’cause she’s hot. So, nice try. You don’t want a man that’s wired the other way. A man would have to be so broken by society to be like, “I don’t care what she looks like, just don’t let her spit in my food.” You want a man… And rather than get angry about the way that they’re naturally wired, all while crying like, “Accept me for who I am, but you better change who you are, boys.”

Rather than get angry at that, let’s use this information, rather than rage against the patriarchy. Let’s use the information we have to work within the confines of the structure… as we have for millennia. And gather information, okay? If he has to be attracted to you in order to want to get to know you, that means he must be attracted to you in order to stay with you. That means if he’s with you, he thinks you’re beautiful and he does not see all the ugliness that you think you see. Okay? Yes. He’s incapable. All the problems society says are wrong with you, he hasn’t been brainwashed into thinking that, okay? So when you were getting ready like I was for the show and you’re like, “I’m so fat. They won’t even let me in the building and asked me to resurface this whole… Cover it up.” He doesn’t see any of it. He thinks you’re beautiful. Give him a break. Okay? If he loves you, if this is a first date, I don’t fucking know what’s gonna happen.

But men are very visual, women are not. We are cerebral. We are cerebral creatures, which means we don’t have to be attracted to you to fall in love with you. We’re cerebral creatures, which means we can fall in love with you… despite your stupid fucking face! Girls, if you’re on a date, don’t cheer too loud. Every woman in this room has at some point gone out with a man less attractive than she simply because… “He makes me laugh.” It’s true. Every woman, at some point in her life, has gone out, dated, loved an absolute fucking hobgoblin… simply because like, “He’s real good with business” or some shit, right? And there’s this weird allowance we get as women where you are allowed to, like in public, say that the man you love and are with is not attractive. “But he’s real, real sweet.” Like, in front of his face. Like, at a dinner party. You’re allowed to be like, “Sean? I don’t know. He’s no Brad Pitt.” And Sean’s the first motherfucker to be like, “Yeah, I am not an attractive man. But I own a boat and I’m fucking her, so… Yeah!”

It’s not okay. No one loves to be called ugly, but when you call a guy ugly, they’re very honest about it because a man knows his worth does not hinge on the way he looks, nor does it hinge on the way people perceive his looks. When you’re a girl, that is an inextricable part of your experience on this planet and will be held against you no matter what you look like. Obviously it’s better to be better-looking, but… when you’re attractive at all, you are up for the slings and arrows of judgment from men, women. “She’s a skank.” “She must not be smart.” “I bet she steals boyfriends.” “She’s probably an idiot.” If you’re ugly, it’s like, “I bet she gets worse in the moonlight.” You’re always… Jobs, boyfriends, perception, your rise in our society, hinges on your looks and other people’s take on the way that you look. For men, not so much because they can still be charismatic and attractive to women, even if they’re hideous. You can have bad hair and date a supermodel. You can be structurally-fucked and still run the Free World. Like, you can do these things.

It’s interesting because we all wanna be treated equally, we all wanna be treated the same but I don’t think that’s gonna happen for a very long time because of the un-brainwashing we have to do with the way we treat and perceive women based on their looks. It affects everything, even if you’re trying to be kind, it still affects it. I will give you an example in real time. If I had a man here and he was heckling me the whole show, ruining the show and just being an idiot, I could snap and I could say something hacky like, “Well, you’re bald and you’re ugly and fat and I bet you got a small dick,” right? And most of you laugh, one person checked their phone. No one’s anger… Even the one in the back was like… “I got nothing to tweet. Fair play.”

If I had a woman here who was yelling at me, being rude, interrupting your show, interrupting my night at work… This is a job, despite the fact that I have purple lipstick on. Okay? And a fun ponytail. If she was doing that and acting like an asshole and I snapped and I was like, “Well, you’re a fat, ugly bitch…” She’s not even real. And you’re like… “Don’t shame her!”

A woman… As women, we are forced to be practical. We are forced to be honest about things and our expectations and we are honest. A girl, we can be attracted to ugly things. You hear girls all the time like, “My husband’s got this weird tooth in the back of his throat, but I love it. I like to lick on it. I love it. He’s so gross, sometimes he sheds all his body hair. I eat that hair. I love it so much. I make a pillow, I sleep on it. I love it. He’s ugly, I’m into it.” You will never hear a guy be honest about his girlfriend being ugly. ‘Cause he doesn’t see it. You’ll never hear, “Oh, what a blithe existence!” You’ll never hear a man admit like, “My girlfriend… Sorry, I was just thinking about her smile. It’s fucked up, but… …her punch lines are on fire.” Now you clap, but I noticed that your laughter spiked and then immediately declined… because you’re still thinking about this woman.

So no veil. And I did not want a bachelorette party out at a bar for a very specific reason, okay? I work at night, so I have seen first-hand the havoc that can be wreaked by an out-of-control bachelorette party. Okay? It sounds like that. I have been there when a zombie horde comes over the ridge, fucking kicks in a window and makes their nests, like in my show. I’ve been there… when they come in, one’s missing a fucking femur. And knowing how out-of-control they can get, I couldn’t, in good conscience, be that for a fellow night worker. I couldn’t do that to someone else who works at night, okay? Those of us, yes, who work at night! Those of us who work at night. DJs, sound mixers, security, bartenders, waitresses. Yes! Yes, nighttime scientists, Nashville. Yes, those of us… who make our wages under the cloak of the moon. I have no friends. Those of us… who work at night know first-hand what it’s like to have to absorb a crazy bachelorette party. Okay? You don’t see a bachelorette party coming, you fucking hear it. And if you’re hearing it… it’s too late. They’re already here.

So you can imagine how unnerving it is for me as a performer. I’m sitting here. I can see the first couple rows, but the rest is pitch-black. You can imagine how terrifying that is for me, just in the middle of a set in a sea of strangers and darkness like, “And another thing about raccoons…” “Stacy’s getting married!” I don’t know where it’s coming from. Get back. Get back. Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their wines.

I want you to know something about bachelorette parties. They are well-versed in the art of basic tactical warfare. Okay? Bachelorette party knows that they have you trapped, timid, trepidatious. The three Ts of combat. They got you right there. And they know that you don’t know where they’re coming from and they know that you are expecting all of them to come running in at once. But a good bachelorette party, a good bachelorette army knows you don’t send in all of your troops at once. A well-led bachelorette party understands you must send your troops in in waves so as to exhaust the bar… and deplete it of its resources. If you are at a bar and you see a bunch of girls come running in, do not be foolish. That is not the bride. That is not even the family. That is her infantry. These are her bannermen. They come running in first to let the bar know like… “Stacy’s getting married!” They kick some girls out of a booth. “This is our territory now. Get out of here!” They set a waitress on fire. Isn’t this amazing? They put down a debit card for the first round. Get fresh with the table. These women are not there for a good time or a long time. Okay? These women are there for one reason. To establish and maintain a region. That’s why they’re there. And they fought valiantly and the battlefield has been set. Now the bar knows that it’s Stacy’s bachelorette party and what to expect.

The next one to come in is perhaps the most important one of the party, or so she thinks. This is your General, otherwise known as your maid of honor, Amanda! I am Stacy’s maid of honor. Many of you know me from the Evite comment section where I’ve chatted with you briefly. XOXO. I am Stacy’s best friend since the third grade. A fact I shall lord over many of you when I feel left out of a conversation. She is my best friend. We’ve been to Cancún upwards of five times. I’ve sat in the hotel room many a night while she’s been out, making out with hot dudes and promises to tell me about it later. I am the best friend. She is the one to be married, but in many ways, I feel like tonight is about me. I have set up all of this. I have made all the reservations. I am the one you will follow and before we ride into battle, I need each of you to Venmo me $50. Will you ride with me? It was $40, but Megan’s not feeling well and she just canceled. Before the festivities begin, I wish to open with a quote from General Patton. To go bravely… Morgan. Morgan, Morgan, Morgan. Drink some fucking water, I’m not joking. Heyah! The bartender’s like, “You can’t have a horse in here.” Very well, then. If I give you my phone, will you charge it behind the bar? No, okay. Heyah!

The time has come. She is about to arrive. They all begin to scream. “She’s getting married.” We know. Bachelorette partygoers of the world, we know! Quit screaming, you fucking banshee. We know she’s getting married, we can tell, because she’s covered in dicks. Why? What is this West African shaming ritual? What is that? Why are we doing that? Why are we, every night in America, drenching our women in teeny-weeny Party City peeny? I know what your friends will say. “It’s ’cause we love her. We love her so much. She’s amazing.” Dicks! Dicks! Wear these dicks! Be a dick! Eat a dick! My issue… …is not the ritualistic shrouding of women in tiny, plastic commemorative penii. My issue is merely the lack of reciprocity at a bachelor party. I’ve never seen a bachelor party like, “Joey’s getting married, everybody put on your snootch-hat.” “It’s so tight, bro. Isn’t it crazy how no matter how many times you wear them, they never lose their elasticity… .although we tell women that, to shame them out of exploring their sexuality?”

Of all the things I did not want to do for my wedding, the one thing we ended up doing was they had a bachelorette party at a bar for me. Obviously, I’m not gonna have a party at a library. So… we had this bachelorette party at a bar and we went. And I had about four or five women with me and… I know I should have been just like going crazy and getting drunk and having a crazy time but I’m a sentimental person and I’m a thinker and I was looking at these girls, these women that some of whom I was related to, the rest of whom I’ve known my entire life. I’ve seen relationships come and go and jobs and heartbreak and death and all of the landmarks and all the things that make us human and I was with these girls and I realized that we had all been single, we had all been on a journey together, and for me that part of my journey with them stopped that night. I can still go to bars, if my husband says it’s okay. But like we’ve been going out for like a decade together, like looking for a good time, looking for a guy. And like, that was it for me. And I thought that… I get goosebumps thinking about it because like that chapter of my life was closed that night and I think that there’s something very poetic about the notion that your bachelorette party, you are in effect picking up the ashen, lifeless body of your singlehood… and laying it to rest where it was born. In a shitty bar. And it’s not that I would never be at another bar again, but I would never be at another bar unmarried. I mean, I don’t know– but I would never be… I would never be… at that time, like, that was it for me.

And I looked around the room and there was a group of girls, same amount as us, in their 20s. And they were over there. They looked amazing and they were over there and I was just staring at them. And they’re like, “Who’s that old lady staring at us?” Because they were us and I remember so fondly being that age and going out and all the trappings of it. I know so much about it, I wrote four fucking Netflix specials about it. And that was over. And I was reflecting on those years versus these years as you get older. In your 20s, you should just know, you will never be as close to other people, let alone other women, as you are in your 20s. You will have good friends. You will have book clubs. You will have all this stuff as you get older, but in your 20s, you’ve just come out of high school or college. You’re very close to the realms of academia and you are hive-minded. So you are in each other’s shit, you know everything. “I know who texted… He’s my boyfriend, I know who you are, who you like. I like you, you’re my best friend. Matching dove tattoos. Make ’em fuck. Dove tattoos. Right there. You’re my best friend. I love you so much.”

And boys ask you dumb questions that you tolerate ’cause you don’t know any better. When you’re in your 20s, boys will ask, “How many guys you slept with?” Nobody asks you that in your 30s because the answer is gross. She’s in the back. “I’ve slept with so many dudes. I dunno. I feel empowered.” But in your 20s, you’re right there and you’re in that mentality, you’re so intertwined and you make packs like, “We’re going out together. I don’t care if you meet a boy. We’re going home together. You’re my best friend. Hold my hand. We’re going out together. Tie your hand to mine. My best friend. I’m a Sagittarius, you’re a Pisces. How’s it work? Dunno, it just does. Text me when you’re home. That’s right, we’re home, we live together. Roll over. You’re my best friend. You’re right there.”

People shit on women for some reason being 30. I understand there’s the whole egg issue, but society is not kind. They’re not kind to women as they get older. Men, shitty men, not the good ones that are here, don’t like it as women age. And I gotta believe it’s less about the fact that you’re older and it’s more about the fact that when you’re older you don’t put up with bullshit and they don’t like that. They don’t like it. Smart guys don’t have any bullshit. I was at a bar the other night, some guy walked up, he goes, “Hey.” I was like, “I don’t buy it.” And I just walked away. But moreover, you’re close and you’re a cluster of girls and you go out together and no matter what plans you make, there’s always that one girlfriend that breaks away from the pack. You’re like, “We’re here for safety.” She’s like, “I’m just gonna talk to him.” Some fucking idiot with the dumbest line, but you’re in your 20s, so you’ll listen to it ’cause you haven’t lived a life yet. “I’m just gonna talk to him.” He’s like, “Yeah, come on. I’ll tell you about my company, Herbalife, let’s go. I run…” And she’s not making your job easier. You’re also out to meet a guy, to have fun, to have a life, and you’re like, “Get back here, Cassandra. No.” And you have to endure this fucking piece of shit being like, “Why are you being such bitches?” But you wanna protect your girlfriend. You’re like, “Get back here, she’s not awake. Come here. Come here.” We will do anything. When you’re younger, we will form a phalanx around a fallen girl like… Sorry. That noise right there is the anti-mating call of 20-something girls everywhere. “Sorry.” That’s right, girls, before there was RuPaul’s Drag Race… …”bye”, there was “sorry.” It’s us protecting a girl who can’t protect ourselves. Now, I wish I could tell you that that action is solely altruistic and when we do it, it’s just for the benefit of that girl. Unfortunately, oftentimes, the subtext of, “You can’t have her” is “because you didn’t want me.” But that’s a whole other lecture… and special.

In closing, girls, enjoy the sovereignty of the protection of other women when you’re in your 20s ’cause guess what, chickens? After 30, it’s not that we don’t love you, haven’t spent a lifetime with you, it’s that we’re sick and tired of your bullshit, Jamie! We’re tired of following you around, looking for you at bars, when we should be out doing our own thing. We’re exhausted, our patience has run thin, so is this delicate under-eye skin I’m finding out. We’re tired. After 30, we are not your keepers anymore. After 30, we’re gonna be like… “Go with him! We want to see what happens.”

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