Freedom in Laughter

Freedom in Laughter, an exploration of a woman's laugh on The Riza

I’ve proclaimed several times to Jordan that I’m having a feminist awakening and unfortunately for him, can’t stop talking about it. I’m consuming so much feminist content, all unintentional as this wakening comes at a surprise. I started reading Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry shortly after my birthday. There was the day Netflix suggested Feminist: What Were They Thinking? and I watched it without questioning if I was in the mood for it. Then there was the Amazon book recommendation The Baby on the Fire Escape by Julie Phillips which I ended up buying. I’m in the second chapter and my mind is blown! The algorithm must be tracking my feminist awakening. Jokes aside, I wanted to discuss a piece of content that’s been with me since last week. I listened to Glennon Doyle’s podcast, We Can Do Hard Things, with Gloria Steinam titled, “Laughing Our Way Through Liberation.” I was listening to it while grocery shopping and I couldn’t help but “yup” out loud and nod fiercely throughout the episode, well aware that I was in a public space. This episode caused a lot of self reflection and I needed to write them down to make sense of the awareness I was coming to, how I use my laughter.

One of the first questions Abby Wambach asked Gloria, referred to photos of Gloria and other women, like Dorothy Pitman Hughes, laughing. Abby asked how she and other women were able to have so much joy and laughter “after so many decades of fighting against this relenting bullshit” instead of resulting in bitterness. Gloria responded with this, “Laughter is crucial. Laughter turns out to be the one emotion that can’t be compelled. It’s proof of freedom.” This laughter, as Gloria puts it, is a sincere and irresistible desire. In contrast Glennon shares experiences of nervous giggle that Gloria defined as a “compulsory laughter that's an expected response to bullshit.” Laughter should be a purely positive emotion and experience, yet I had confusion and feelings of disempowerment around my laughter.

A Mexican-American friend once said to me of a video of Kamala Harris laughing, “I love a woman who is not afraid to laugh.” I did not know this was a sentiment others shared nor did I understand what it was precisely about Kamala laughing that made me feel joyful. I replied that I shared her feelings, telling her that I often felt self-conscious about how big and loud my laugh is. We then shared experiences of our mothers teaching us that showing too much emotion was not appropriate for women. For cultural context, the Philippines and Mexico were both colonized by Spain, resulting in the Catholic church being the dominant religion in both countries. So ideals of women being modest and demure were ingrained in our respective cultures. The embarrassment and shame of big laughter is just one way those ideals affected my friend and I personally.

Contrary to having constrained myself to laugh big and sincerely, I found that I have often and easily given up my laughter in inappropriate or uncomfortable situations. Glennon speaks of experiences in which she regretted having nervously giggled at comments or jokes to humor men which left her feeling like she betrayed herself. I’m familiar with that betrayal. The ability to say no or express disagreement with words is difficult enough. But to fill a room with a silence of disapproval is unbearable, especially given expectations of how the disempowered should react to power. So a nervous laugh is made to fill the silence that would otherwise have communicated a simple no.

A few years ago, Jordan and I were walking down the hall of our church making our way toward the exit, when we were suddenly approached by a woman who was excited and eager to speak to us. An “Oh my gosh!” came from our mouth and she proceeded to tell us of an embarrassing situation she found herself in regarding Jordan, myself, and our less than a year old baby girl. The embarrassing situation was that she had walked up to a new family in our congregation and asked them if they were related to the Hydes. When this new family responded no, this woman then inquired, pointing to their less and a year old baby girl, how they came to be holding the Hyde's baby. Jordan and I were very puzzled, unsure of how anyone could just make an assumption that someone was related to us. But just then the wife of this new family walked by and to mine and Jordan’s horror we understood why the assumption was made. This new family that was mistaken as our relatives was also a biracial South East Asian and white couple. And the baby whom the woman thought was ours was actually their baby. Throughout this storytelling, Jordan stood there with his arms crossed, and no smile was given in sympathy, sorry for the humiliation she was expressing. I, however, nervously laughed throughout the whole story and lied through my teeth when asked rhetorically if it was so funny how silly this woman’s actions were. To make it worse, the South East Asian woman joined in on how funny it was when she realized that she had been mistaken for a Filipina. Her laughter had affirmed the authority of the white woman and had excused her racist assumptions. My awkward laughter continued with theirs, and I acquiesced my sense of self and my values to fit in.

This is just one of many experiences that I look back on and wonder why I fake laughed my way through a degrading experience. Amanda Glennon said fake laughter, like faking an orgasm, “ [is] intended to placate the outside while slowly killing you inside. . . We’re giving up on our right to have that pleasure and enjoyment and instead placating the moment and the power dynamics that we’re in.” Referring back to when my Inay would tell me to “calm down” my laughter, I recognized it was only when I was around white people, like my friends who I should be able to laugh genuinely with. Contrary to what Inay taught me, I laughed loudly and sincerely with my family all the time, never receiving any correction. It was confusing. Ultimately the ideals of being a demure Filipina woman taught me to mind white people and their authority either by nervously laughing when wrong and inappropriate things were said or to withhold my laughter to express myself in a modest fashion. In both scenarios, I was not true to myself. That is the betrayal Glennon spoke of.

This is the revelation I came to as I listened to this episode of We Can Do Hard Things. As I read over this final draft out loud, my voice cracked and I had to pause to cry. The humiliation of that self-betrayal still sits with me. When writing this piece, I recalled this Asian-wife-White-husband mix up with Jordan and I asked how he was able to stand up for himself and not give a single giggle. He validated my reaction, understanding the difficulty of honoring your values when taken aback by blatant racism. He recounted a time when he found himself frozen in betrayal of his values when a white mom verbally expressed adultification bias about an elementary age Black boy. Gloria Steinem says of laughing or not laughing, “It’s all about the right to be authentic and not to be so governed by the shoulds of life that it takes over your body, your face, your laughter, and even your voice.” So I leave these experiences here on the public internet, though it is very vulnerable to do so, with the hopes that it will give you pause to reflect on how you give up your voice, body, and laughter to cultures and systems whose aim is to take away any sense of self and autonomy.

Now I need to get back to watching Eat, Pray, Love and continue my learning of how a woman regains her sense of self. What feminist content are you absorbing this month?

A Chill Spring

One Dress, Three Ways

The Riza Magazine