A Feminist Approach to Broad City: How Abbi and Ilana’s Friendship Challenges the Patriarchy

           While there are several female comedians achieving high success right now in the entertainment industry (Chelsea Handler, Samantha Bee, Amy Schumer, etc.), men still dominate this field. Thanks to an increasingly diverse world, and the desirable millennial audience, comedy is starting to diversify and challenge the white, male, heteronormativity that has (and still does) encapsulate most media. One comedic media text that does this explicitly is Comedy Central’s progressively feminist show Broad City. The two main characters – Ilana Wexler (Ilana Glazer) and Abbi Abrams (Abbi Jacobson) – are also the show’s co-creators. Ilana and Abbi’s friendship is the driving narrative of the show. Each episode in the series opens and closes with the two together. There are moments where the female friendship starts to lean toward a possible homosexual relationship between the two, but for the most part, their friendship always takes precedence. An episode that truly shows how Ilana and Abbi’s friendship and humorous personalities challenge white male heteronormativity, and speak to the progressive feminist agenda of the show, is the episode “Co-Op” (season 3, episode 2).

   In “Co-Op,” Ilana signed up to work at a co-op organic grocery store. As she is shopping for produce (and making sexual innuendos with the fruits and veggies, see GIF above) she is denied a tab by the cashier because she hadn’t worked any of her co-op hours yet. It was the last day of that “moon cycle” that she could work the minimum of six hours to get her food, but she had a Dr.’s appointment on Long Island that she couldn’t miss. Like any best friends would do in this situation, Ilana and Abbi humorously switch places and Abbi attempts to work Ilana’s hours for her, “as” her. Wearing her eccentric clothes and playing up Ilana’s hyper-sexuality and activism, Abbi (“Ilana”) busts through the co-op doors to work her shift declaring “rape culture sucks!” Although not ethically the right thing to do (which is pointed out in the end of the episode when the store manager bans the two from the co-op forever), Abbi unquestionably puts on her best interpretation of Ilana. 

            The language Ilana and Abbi use, in this episode and throughout the entire series, speaks to the bond of their friendship as well as both of their commitments to defy gender and sexuality binaries. In the opening of “Co-Op,” Ilana and Abbi are walking down the street and openly and hilariously discussing anuses. The awkwardness that would normally ensue discussing a topic like this is nonexistent because the two are such good friends. Their conversation is cut off by some young boys playing basketball who stop to catcall the women, mentioning their breasts. Abbi tells the boys, “The only way you’re going to get to touch these boobs is if they graze the top of your head as I’m slam-dunking your skinny ass.” Ilana and Abbi challenge the young boys to a game of basketball. They are rather aggressive in physically beating them in the game and also in trash-talking afterward. During the game, Abbi smacks Ilana’s butt in celebration and Ilana in turn essentially pokes Abbi’s butthole. In response, Abbi shakes her head no at Ilana. After they win the game, Abbi makes a joke about “fucking the shit” out of one of the boys’ moms. She then smashes the basketball out of rage, making the boys cry (pictured below). 

This scene challenges a lot of real problems in society dealing with gender. By Abbi’s disapproving look in response to the way Ilana touched her, she’s showing that unsolicited touching – even among best friends – isn’t acceptable. Ironically, Abbi becomes immediately problematic by basically bullying the little boys in the way that men stereotypically bully other men. The facts that two grown women defeat a few young boys in a game of basketball, and the boys cry when the ball is literally smashed, are symbolic of how when women win or get ahead, even in the face of adversity (like being catcalled and objectified), men feel threatened. Physically smashing the ball becomes symbolic to smashing the patriarchy. Women standing up for themselves in the way that men stereotypically do (via harsh language and physical dominance), makes the boys cry, and the gut-reaction to their tears is for Ilana and Abbi to back down from their tough-talk to saying “no no no no no” and reaching out to console them.

            Another way that Ilana and Abbi challenge the patriarchy and heteronormativity is the language they use as well as how they address each other. In the article “Expanding the Brand: Race, Gender, and the Post-politics on Comedy Central” by Nick Marx, it is argued that the two address each other with masculine slang like “dude” but also “decry and deconstruct the sexual or professional shortcomings of male characters” (280). However, I think that the author fails to mention how other popular slang pronouns, such as “queen,” that are gendered feminine, are used interchangeably and just as frequently as words like “dude.” When Ilana is prepping Abbi to act as her in the co-op, they practice saying “yas queen,” “smell a dick,” and “nice pussy bitch.” Ilana is extremely sexual and views her sexuality, and all sexuality, on a spectrum as opposed to a binary. While she uses female-positive language like “yas queen,” she just as frequently uses expletives that don’t discriminate on gender and are just simply sexual. This behavior and language speaks to how feminism allows women to be as equally explicit and forward about sex as men are. 

            The “queen” pronoun that is favored by both Ilana and Abbi isn’t the only example of empowering female pop-culture being used in the comedy of the show. When Ilana asks Abbi to work as her in the co-op that day, they reveal in their conversation preceding that Ilana has been cooking food from the co-op that they are both eating. They both benefit from this co-op, so of course Abbi is going to help Ilana. This conversation further reveals the two’s comfortability with talking about any topic at all. Abbi says that ever since she’s been eating the meals Ilana cooks from the organic store, she says that she has been having the “healthiest shits of my life.” Abbi then mimics the Beyoncé song “Flawless” and says about her bathroom experiences: “Dump out, flawless. Dump out, flawless.” Even though they are being explicit and making jokes about bodily functions, something that is usually gendered male, they are still participating in stereotypically female-gendered behavior and language by referencing Beyoncé’s “Flawless” song.

           In conclusion, there are instances throughout the show where Abbi and Ilana might seem (on the surface) to be acting or speaking in ways that are gendered strictly male or female, however, this interchangeability just proves that they don’t view the world in strictly male or female perspectives. Roxanne Gay was the first to call herself a Bad Feminist in her collection of essays and I think it’s clear that Abbi and Ilana are not perfect feminists, but, that does not exist. Feminism allows women to live outside of that binary-perspective that favors white, male heteronormativity and Abbi and Ilana’s personalities and language show that they will be their authentic selves regardless of what may or may not be deemed as the “norm” in society. “Co-Op” is a useful example of how the show promotes a feminist message that women can be as sexual, tough, and explicit as men are without losing their femininity.

Works Cited

“Co-op.” Broad City, season 3, episode 2, Comedy Central, 24 February 2016. Hulu.

Marx, Nick. “Expanding the Brand: Race, Gender, and the Post-politics of Representation on Comedy Central.” Television & New Media, vol. 17, no. 3, 2016, pp. 272-287.

Ott, Brian L., and Robert L. Mack. Critical Media Studies: An Introduction. 2nd ed. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 2014. Print.