Ever heard of Samantha Bee? My family and friends have probably heard the name from me because I bring her up weekly. Samantha Bee was a "Daily Show" Correspondent for Jon Stewart. She always brought such astounding theatrics to each piece she did, and I ate it up. She was and still is easily my favorite correspondent on that show (though I love them all).
Recently, she’s been in and out of the news regarding her new show "Full Frontal," a late-night talk show that will air on TBS in February 2016. Did you hear that? A late-night talk show! She's no amateur when it comes to late-night gigs seeing as she was the longest running correspondent on "The Daily Show."
For as long as nightly shows have been around, they have mostly been a male-dominated medium. Most daytime talk shows consist of women ("Ellen," "The Wendy Williams Show," "The Talk," "The View," etc.), while the night is full of male show hosts such as Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O'Brien, Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers, and many, many more. This isn’t a hard trend to notice, as shown by "Vanity Fair’s" cover of the all-male cast of late-night show hosts. Some people asked where Samantha was, since she is going to be a host for a late-night talk show, but others responded by saying that because her show isn’t on the air yet, she wasn’t included in the late-night squad. Strangely enough, Trevor Noah appears in the magazine even though his show at the time had not yet aired either.
It’s not that women aren’t allowed or being deterred from hosting late-night shows. In fact, Amy Schumer turned down an offer to be the successor of "The Daily Show" because it wasn't risky enough for her. She's already got her own show on Comedy Central, "Inside Amy Schumer," which I highly recommend.
The media needs to acknowledge Bee's arrival into the late-night hosting world. Almost immediately after the "Vanity Fair" cover was published, Bee fiercely responded with a revision to the cover where she photoshopped herself as a centaur that had lasers coming out of her eyes with the caption "BETTER." I'm not lying, and this why Samantha Bee is incredible. These women need to be recognized. Bee even mentions in one of her Full Frontal promos, “Don’t watch my new show just because I’m a woman.”
What I'm saying is that there is a an evident increase in the number of women in comedy, which is great, and the fact that a woman is finally breaking through the sausage fest of late-night hosts is even greater. They need to be on the covers of magazines to prove a point: that anyone can host a late-night talk show regardless of gender. The idea that women aren't funny is outdated, and anyone who thinks that has clearly been living under a rock.
