Fashion Editor Polly Rogers ponders why women are so often the butt of the joke on Saturday Night Live: comedy’s largest platform.
Saturday Night Live has shaped American humour for five decades, parodying anything and everything within the zeitgeist to garner easy laughs from its audience. Given the current controversial administration in the US, it seems oddly poignant that women are so often the brunt of the joke on SNL. Not too dissimilarly, the political decisions being made disproportionately detriment the lives of women and minorities. Women’s rights, specifically regarding reproduction, are under attack.
A January episode featured Stranger Things cast members, including host of the night Finn Wolfhard. In a sketch spoofing Sex and the City, he drew a comparison between “what a woman looks like down there” and the mouth of a demogorgon, the fictional monster from the Netflix show. Wolfhard dryly delivers the line out of the corner of his mouth as if its not a topic to directly address. The “joke” was poorly executed and rightly received backlash on social media. This feeds into narratives that only further influence the social disgust for women’s bodies, as if they are monstrous and vile.
Online discourse about the show’s tasteless humour is not a 2026 phenomenon. Back in 2024, Scarlett Johansson was left visibly uncomfortable as her husband and SNL staff writer, Colin Jost, compared her postpartum private parts to roast beef. This was a crude and pitiful joke written by his colleague Michael Che. Despite expressing hesitation to appear, Johansson’s live reaction was broadcast. The disrespect towards a woman’s anatomy and its natural changes after the grueling process of childbirth further instil vintage and outdated viewpoints. Johansson later commented on how vulgar it was, stating her shock that her genitalia was the brunt of the banter; which many viewers shared.
In a skit with Sabrina Carpenter about neck pillows, fictitious teleshopping hosts were openly disgusted and shocked by the presence of a product even remotely resembling female anatomy. “Dick” jokes are made all the time, to the point of them becoming a normality. Such jokes are usually delivered as some type of egotistical glorification of owning this phallus. So why, in contrast, are jokes about vaginas made with the intent to instil shame upon anyone who has one?
Other jokes that are simply are hurtful and chauvinistic jokes are scattered throughout. Last year, a White Lotus skit negatively highlighted English actress Aimee Lou Wood’s teeth and reduced her to a overexaggerated caricature. Online, she spoke out about how much it hurt her and hoped her response would be the starting point for others to follow suit and establish a boundary between satire and bullying.
With Super Bowl Sunday just gone, an old skit resurfaced of an infantile activity pack intended for women to keep them busy during the game. This would of course be between cooking and cleaning the kitchen for their male family members who indulge in watching sport. While one could argue this was entirely satirical, it simply foreshadowed the launch of Sky Sports Halo; the patronising and short-lived platform for women to watch sports. This was a pink and glittery way for women to understand sports, as if they wouldn't be able to otherwise. According to Saturday Night Live’s portrayal, women are either ugly and unattractive, brainless, or oversexualised, sultry and promiscuous.
While we can fob this off as banter, this cruel humour tears down women in the entertainment industry and furthers the perception that the mistreatment of women and girls in everyday life is okay. It seems society is constantly nitpicking the flaws in women’s personalities and appearances, which is far less common for their male counterparts. Women must strive for perfection yet they will always fall short of these impossible standards projected upon them.