Oyster #99 is the all women’s issue – a celebration of women, featuring women, by women. It features profiles on as well as contributions by cover star Shalom Harlow, photographer Cass Bird, artist Aurel Schmidt, model Tasha Tilberg, ex-US Vogue Features Director and current Editor of the New York Times’ T magazine, Sally Singer, Aussie model Bambi Northwood-Blyth, teen media empire Tavi Gevinson, Slutever blogger Karley Sciortino, illustrator Julie Verhoeven and photographer Alice Springs, the wife of Helmut Newton among others. It also includes an interview with Girls creator and star Lena Dunham, a preview of which you can read below…
There seems to be a movement towards young, female writers – you’re in your mid-twenties. What has paved the way for this? Do you think it’s a trend? I hope it’s a trend. I feel like every couple of years there is a news story saying, “Guess what, guys – women are funny!” Like that’s a breaking headline. But I do think that this time – right now – the difference is that women are getting to be funny and it’s also been more commercially successful. I mean, Judd [Apatow, Dunham’s co-executive producer on Girls] produced Bridesmaids and that was a movie that women loved, that critics loved, and that also cleaned up at the box office … I feel really excited about the amount of television shows for women, because people tend to go, “There’s that one show about women, so I guess that’s all we need for this season,” but nobody ever says, “I’m really sorry, we’ve got six dude shows, so we’re closing the door on that.”
You’ve said that Judd is quite gender-blind, and Zooey Deschanel said recently that she gets annoyed when people say “female comedy” rather than just “comedy”. Does it irritate you that people distinguish like that? Well, that does definitely create the impression that there is a different kind of funny that women can be – an inferior kind of funny. Judd once said that Amy Poehler is the funniest person around, and you had to think for a second but then go, “He didn’t call her an actress.” I think that, to Judd, funny is funny, and he is just excited by what he thinks are original voices being truthful about their own condition. Of course it would be great to get to a place where a ‘funny women show’ was just a funny show – that would be utopia.
Oyster #99 hits stands this Friday.
