Event Pick: Amy Schumer

Watch Amy Schumer Skewer Gender and Sex on Her Live Stand-Up Tour

_{Frank Erwin Center
November 18, 8PM}

Maybe you fell in love with Amy Schumer when her spoof of “Twelve Angry Men” went viral. Or perhaps it was her one-liners in “Trainwreck.” Or maybe you’ve spent the past three years living off the grid in the West Texas desert, and you don’t know who Amy Schumer is. In that case, get thy solar-powered Winnebago back to Austin and mark your calendar for November 18, the night you will fall in love with Amy Schumer when she performs live at the Frank Erwin Center.

“I’m not gonna apologize for who I am, and I’m actually going to love the skin I’m in and not be striving for some other version of myself,” Schumer said, in her 2015 Glamour Women of the Year Awards speech. Many comedians are as repulsed by earnestness as a strict dieter would regard a double cheeseburger, but Schumer displays a refreshing backbone of feminism beneath the funny.

The best comedy reveals the ridiculous in what we unthinkingly accept. For Schumer, that territory is sex, punishing gender dynamics and privilege. The jokes might be dirty, but they also have a scouring effect: clearing the air on what we’ve come to accept. Schumer’s stand-up success proves that misogyny can be ridiculed — not internalized — and, hopefully, move the chuckles forward.

_{Read more from the Arts Issue | November 2016}