A Lot Of Fans Had The Same Take On That Viral SNL Women ‘Aren’t Hot’ TikTok, And I Was A Little Surprised About The Response

Yesterday a post blew up, as hot takes are wont to do on social media. A video created on TikTok accusing the funny women of NBC’s longtime late night sketch series of not being attractive then filtered over to X (Twitter) where current SNL star Sarah Sherman, even commented on the video. Of course, a lot of regular ‘ol X users also had takes, and there’s one major bent that social media users are making over and over again that I was really surprised about.

If you haven’t seen the viral TikTok yet, the basic premise from the Tik Tok user jahelis is about the idea that if you are indeed a female comedian on SNL, and I’m just going to quote this social media person instead of spread this video again, “you have to be more funny than you are hot and if you are more hot than you are funny than it than it boils down to you just not being funny at all.” That’s the take. 

The Internet nearly immediately responded to this controversial stance, which makes sense, as I was defensive of the NBC stars watching it too. Most of these comments were coming to the defense of the ladies of Saturday Night Live. A lot of them threw back to OG’s Lorraine Newman and Gilda Radnor as evidence the ladies that have been a part of the series have always been attractive, with a slew of other people citing additional stars as women they think about in terms of attractiveness all the time. On X you’ll see a lot of comments like this: 

A slew of other fans all took to X to defend the specific women of late night, many of which are posts picking out one woman who has been associated with the show and pointing out that lady is mighty good looking. 

• Y’all are out here saying that #SNL has never hired a hot woman when Casey Wilson was fully there? Hired? On that show?
• Must have a weak set of eyes claiming that SNL don’t hire hot women when Ego Nwodim is literally right there right now.
• Tina fey was too damn fine for this lady to be saying there were no hot SNL members
• All those yesterday saying SNL hasn't had any "hot" women in the cast, and my thought was, "Have you SEEN Kate McKinnon?

While on the one hand, it seems nice to point out the women of SNL have physical attributes as well as comedic chops, and I get why people are being defensive of their favorite stars, it also feels a little yikes. Like, the natural inclination of most people on the Internet is not, "this is a dumb topic we shouldn't even be engaging in" but rather, "we feel the need to defend the looks of these ladies." 

Which is why I was so relieved when comedian Laurie Kilmartin took to X to make a similar point to what I was feeling, writing: 

I don't want to be too hard on people who pointed out how good-looking Gilda Radner (who made a huge impact in less than 5 SNL seasons), Nasim Pedrad and even a slew of SNL hosts on the show are. I had a wide range of emotions when I first watched the video and it makes sense that some people would want to point out some women they think are attractive too.

But the more I thought about it, the more frustrated I became by the fact that I can't even imagine this conversation happening about male cast members. Every single thing women do, however, is contextualized by their looks, including, apparently, comedy. Why is it our natural inclination to even indulge in this conversation about looks when the thing linking these women together is their comedic chops, not how good they look in their yearbook photos? 

Maybe I'm wrong but I don't feel like SNL consistently casts men to play a certain type of man, nor do I think people think about the male cast members that way. I feel like they cast funny men and figure out how to let them be funny, and I'd like to think the same thing is true of the women. It's not about having a resident hot woman that play the hot roles. It's about signing on women who can deliver laughs whenever they are called upon. Thankfully, Saturday Night Live has had dozens of those over the years, some of whom have won Oscars, and will hopefully have many more in the years to come.

Regardless, I don't envision this discourse going away any time soon. People will spend the next few days all getting out their takes before SNL returns to the TV schedule; so, on that note, I'd like to take a second to highlight one user’s prediction that I personally hope pans out.

If SNL is good for anything, it’s mocking stuff that’s currently making the rounds in pop culture, and if this isn’t making the rounds, I don’t know what is.