Tiffany Haddish became the first black female stand-up comic to host Saturday Night Live last night. (Other black women with comedic chops have also hosted, but they are not known for their stand-up like Haddish.) As The Undefeated pointed out, only 1.5% of Saturday Night Live hosts have been black women since the show began, and we at TMS have previously covered the fact that multiple seasons included zero women of color as hosts.
Black female hosts on #SNL since 1975:
Cicely Tyson (1979)
Oprah Winfrey (’86)
Queen Latifah (’03, ’04)
Halle Berry (’03)
Janet Jackson (’04)
Rosario Dawson (’09)
Gabourey Sidibe (’10)
Maya Rudolph (’12)
Kerry Washington (’13)
Tarahi P. Henson (’15)
Octavia Spencer (’17) pic.twitter.com/ZEx0bdMSUd— The Undefeated (@TheUndefeated) November 12, 2017
Haddish’s opening monologue was honestly my favorite skit of the night (though watching her and Kate McKinnon try to herd cats was also pretty hilarious). Speaking on sexual harassment, Haddish offered an easy sexual misconduct litmus test for cis dudes, since “consent” apparently isn’t simple enough for them. “Fellas, I got a tip for y’all,” Haddish said. “I like to call it Tiffany’s Tips. It’s a Tiff Tip. Listen, fellas. Listen. If you got your thing-thing out, and she’s got all her clothes on? You’re wrong! You’re in the wrong! Wait until she takes her own clothes off, then pull your thing-thing out.”
While this is obviously not a catch-all, I do love the way it captures the inherent absurdity of any man who does this saying he thought the woman “wanted” to see it. Like, look at the scenario.
The other parts of Haddish’s monologue were personal, funny, and relatable. (Though there is a bit of a fat joke, which, come on. You’re funnier than Tosh.) Haddish spoke about growing up in foster care and said, “I want to say thank you to anyone who paid taxes between 1990 and 1999, because if you wouldn’t have paid your taxes, I wouldn’t have been standing here today.”
She also joked about the pressures that female celebrities face around their wardrobes. “That’s what I can’t stand about the internet!” she said, “Cuz it’s messing with my fashion game … Like this dress. I wore it on the red carpet for Girls Trip, and my whole team, they told me: ‘Tiffany, you cannot wear that dress on SNL. You already wore it. It’s taboo to wear it twice!’ And I said, ‘I don’t give a dang about no taboo. I spent a lot of money on this dress. This dress cost way more than my mortgage. This is an Alexander McQueen, okay? This is a $4,000 dress; I’m gonna wear this dress multiple times. Real talk? You might see this dress in two sketches tonight.”
And did she indeed wear that dress later in the show? You know she did.
What’d you all think of last night’s SNL?
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