The sad state of women’s right to laugh.
It’s hard to feel surprised by anything in today’s political arena, but one of the Trump campaign’s attacks on Kamala Harris stands out as super weird: “Cacklin’ Kamala” – because she laughs out loud. 🙄
Seriously?
Obsessive supercuts of the Vice President’s big, sunny laughter are getting passed around in MAGA circles, where she’s roasted in the comments, like we’re seeing something shameful or disgusting. Like we’re all laugh critics, now.
“I have my mother’s laugh,” Kamala has said, and frankly it’s hard to imagine anyone triggered by such an honest family inheritance. But here we are, dodging hyena memes while Sean Hannity claims voters “detest” the Democratic candidate for being audibly mirthful. What is going on?
TRUE STORY: laughter is a natural weapon against authority, with the power to connect humans universally, across languages and hierarchies. Sharing a laugh with someone is an incredibly bonding experience that many societies – particularly the iron-fisty ones – will seek to control and discourage.
In Medieval Europe, for instance, laughing too much or too loudly was a sin called “buffoonery and idle words.” Puritans in 17th century Massachusetts punished “excessive” laughter as frivolous and morally reprehensible. So did the Taliban in Afghanistan. These laws are almost exclusively enforced upon women, whose unfiltered glee is deemed obscene, unladylike, and disrespectful to social order.
Spoiler Alert: No good laugh goes unpunished in a patriarchy! Men aren’t dummies, they know that when women are laughing together in a group, they’re likely comparing notes and coming up with their own ideas.
And when a woman is confident enough to laugh aloud on her own in public? It shakes the very foundation of male dominance.
No wonder the pushback is so predictable – and malicious. Kamala’s laugh supposedly proves she’s mentally unstable, cognitively impaired, morally corrupt, disgustingly smug. All of this is straight-up harassment that you can literally trace through history.
To see it in action in our times, you only have to go back to when Trump’s DOJ went after a 61 year old Code Pink protestor for LOL’ing during Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearing. She faced a year in jail for “unlawfully demonstrating” (that she found him absurd). Charges were ultimately dropped but still: we see ya, boo! 👀👀👀
What a different world it is now! Since Kamala Harris announced her candidacy, voters have been embracing her distinct laugh as a sign that politics can be real again. A candidate who laughs in public assures us they can let their guard down, and honestly deal with the often-comic dysfunction of our current reality.
By contrast, Donald Trump’s lack of levity is legendary. Family members say Trump’s father, Fred, felt laughter showed weakness, a trait he refused to tolerate in himself and his sons. James Comey – his former FBI director – told ABC News that he noticed how Trump never laughed and spent his tenure trying to observe one genuine moment of laughter (public or private) but he never saw one.
He even went through old videos. Trump will smile broadly, shake his head, gesture theatrically, and even bask in others’ laughter but he does not share his own. Interesting. While the ex-president claims you can tell a lot about someone from their laugh, there’s a flip side to that: a person who holds back their laughter is hiding a side of who they are.
No thanks, pal. Let’s hear it for more – not less — cheer in our elections. When times are tough, there’s nothing like a good laugh to bring us together. Keep those Kamala montages coming! 😂😂😂
SOUND OFF: TEN FAMOUS TAKES ON LAUGHTER
- Don’t trust people who don’t laugh; I don’t. ~ Maya Angelou
- If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think. ~ Clarence Darrow
- There is little success where there is little laughter. ~ Andrew Carnegie
- Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. – Frida Kahlo
- With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die. ~ Abraham Lincoln
- I believe in the power of laughter and tears as an antidote to hatred and terror. ~ Charlie Chaplain
- Laughter is the shortest distance between two people. ~ Victor Borge
- I am especially glad of the divine gift of laughter: it has made the world human and lovable, despite all its pain and wrong. ~ W.E.B. DuBois
- Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks. ~ Henri Bergson
- Trouble knocked at the front door but, hearing laughter, hurried away. ~ Benjamin Franklin
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