“If I wrote a joke about having had a broken leg one time and I performed it,” writes comedian Jen Kirkman via email, “would people look at me up there without a cast and say, ‘I’m sorry about your leg?’
“Somehow, they can understand that I once had a life experience in an area. When we talk about being single, even if it is in the past, people flip out and want to fix it. But yeah, I’m not much for the ‘I’m only loved by my cat’ jokes if they are too clichéd. I think there is something very powerful about women on their own, and their jokes should be about how awesome their cat is compared to their ex.”
Ahead of Kirkman’s Portland stop at the Hollywood Theatre, where she’s promoting her latest book, I Know What I’m Doing—and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction, we’re discussing two different pet peeves: Her frustration at concern-trolling reactions to her jokes about being single (being single, she points out, is a transitive state that actually encompasses a LOT, including being separated, divorced, a variety of romantic entanglements that are not marriage, etc.) and my ultimate pet peeve as someone who writes about comedy: the preponderance of Cathy-style depressed cat lady jokes, often from comedians who are themselves single women, that depict being single—and pet ownership—as inherently sad propositions.