Amy Schumer Breaks a New Glass Ceiling

Becomes first female to make it onto the highest-paid comedians list
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 28, 2016 10:03 AM CDT
Amy Schumer Breaks a New Glass Ceiling
In this Jan. 17, 2016 file photo, Amy Schumer accepts the Critics' Choice MVP award at the 21st annual Critics' Choice Awards in Santa Monica, Calif.   (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

For the first time, a woman has made it onto Forbes' list of the highest-paid comedians in the world. And Amy Schumer isn't just on the list, she's in the fourth spot. At Forbes, Madeline Berg looks at how Schumer pulled off the huge accomplishment. She made $17 million last year between her Comedy Central show, a comedy tour, a book advance, a Super Bowl commercial, and her role in Trainwreck. The big difference, Berg writes, is how much Schumer makes for touring. While tours typically make big bucks for male comedians, the biggest females names in comedy see most of their success thanks to TV and movies. Meanwhile, Schumer became the first woman to do stand-up at Madison Square Garden back in June.

"Onstage, many women still face the gendered stereotype that women just aren’t funny, or double standards with subject matter," such as raunchy material being considered taboo territory, Berg writes. There's also the fact that, as studies have shown, women find funny men attractive—while men don't particularly care if a woman is funny or not when considering how attractive she is. "This means that there is more pressure on men to be funny," Berg writes, and thus our culture has evolved so that there are more male comedians than female in stand-up. That makes it harder for women to break through, a fact Schumer is changing. See the rest of the list here. (More Amy Schumer stories.)

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