[These five men in drag weren’t just one of the best ’90s
comedy groups, but one of the most enlightened. ]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

WHAT THE KIDS IN THE HALL TAUGHT ME ABOUT FEMINISM  
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Tabitha Vidaurri
May 11, 2022
Slate
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_ These five men in drag weren’t just one of the best ’90s comedy
groups, but one of the most enlightened. _

Bruce McCulloch, Scott Thompson, Mark McKinney, Kevin McDonald, and
Dave Foley of the Kids in the Hall onstage in 2015., Justin
Baker/WireImage

 

_The Kids in the Hall _forever changed the shape of sketch comedy
with its boundary-pushing, punk rock attitude and insane characters.
Starring Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney,
and Scott Thompson, the show ran from 1989 to 1994, and continued to
amass fans through years of reruns. Now that the troupe has returned
with a new series and documentary on Amazon Prime Video, I’ve been
thinking back to when I first started watching the show in high
school. As a millennial misfit, I was drawn to the Kids’ offbeat
sense of humor, but what _really_ hooked me was the troupe’s
feminist sensibilities. It was these five Canadian men in drag who
opened my adolescent eyes to concepts like sexism, toxic masculinity,
and gender inequality.

I have many feminist heroes who are women, but as a teenager
surrounded by _Girls Gone Wild _and _The Man Show_’s girls on
trampolines_, _I actually learned about objectifying women from Bruce
McCulloch’s character, Tammy
[[link removed]] the teen pop star. When
an older male record executive attempts to seduce her with a bouquet
of flowers, Tammy sings, “I’m not gonna spread for no roses …
Laura Secord never did. Gloria Steinem did once, and then she felt
sad.” No one else on TV seemed to be talking about Gloria Steinem,
much less making a joke about fetishizing young girls.

The Kids in the Hall_ _weren’t the first guys I saw doing drag, but
they were the first ones I saw playing realistic women. They
distinguished themselves from _Monty Python_’s screeching
pepperpots by representing women I could actually relate to: single
mothers [[link removed]]; secretaries
who worked boring, low-paying jobs
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navigating breakups
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harassment [[link removed]]; and, time
and time again, women who were being hit on by creeps
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Perhaps this is why the most dedicated _Kids in the Hall_ fans I
know seem to be women. Sure, the troupe has a huge male following, and
dozens of famous male comedians have listed them as an influence. But
the true _Kids in the Hall_ nerds I’ve met, the ones who don’t
so much _like_ the show as have it flowing through their veins, have
all been women.

Tavie Phillips, the Kids’ social media manager, has been keeping the
troupe’s online presence going for the past 20-odd years, so I
figured if anyone understands _Kids in the Hall _fandom, it’s her.

“Women have seen themselves portrayed by men in less than respectful
ways so often that it’s just a pleasant surprise when you see how
the Kids do it,” says Phillips. “How fully formed [the female
characters] are, how the sketches about hetero relationships aren’t
always about the man’s point of view, how the costumes, makeup,
vocal and physical characterizations skewed towards realistic rather
than campy or demeaning. Womanhood is never itself the butt of the
joke.”

Phillips is right—the drag is _really_ _good_. The wigs are well
manicured, the fake breasts are proportionate, and the early ’90s
fashion on display in the show is très chic. More than once I’ve
watched a sketch and thought to myself, _I’d wear that._

In Paul Myers’ biography_ __The Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy_
[[link removed]], the troupe
credits Thompson with creating the blueprint for these
three-dimensional female characters. Rather than just throwing on a
cheap wig, the guys were often sensitively portraying different types
of mothers, sisters, wives, and girlfriends, a few of whom are based
on their own family members. (That said, there are still some female
characters who are simply batshit, like McKinney’s preternaturally
horny Chicken Lady.)

But it wasn’t just their approach to playing women that set the Kids
apart. The way they spoke _about_ women is even more interesting.
In an early Season 1 sketch
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playing poker, and what first reads as a normal night of male bonding
takes a hard right turn when Foley confesses he wishes he could have a
period. “Just one a month, OK?” This prompts a discussion about
all the things they’re missing out on as cis men: motherhood,
breastfeeding, even menopause. Five masculine guys expressing a naked
desire to be more nurturing than their rigid gender roles allow was a
transgressive display of vulnerability, particularly in the context of
sketch comedy, a medium that’s traditionally mocking and sarcastic.
Even McKinney’s admission that he’d “like to be a dyke” is
sincere—it’s not sex he’s after, but rather “to be buried in
the sisterhood of women.”

Women also factored into _The Kids in the Hall_’s roster
of well-developed queer characters
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gently poked fun at the LGBTQ community. Thompson’s raconteur Buddy
Cole is easily one of the show’s most recognizable and
longest-running characters, and in one of my favorite sketches, he
coaches the lesbian softball team, Sappho’s Sluggers
[[link removed]]. The result? Magic.

Foley’s monologue about his “good attitude towards menstruation
[[link removed]]” showed that periods
could be openly discussed in comedy without becoming a gross-out
gag—something I appreciated during my own anxiety-ridden menarche.
“I know a lot of men are made uncomfortable by this monthly miracle,
but I embrace it,” states Foley. “Embrace it the way some men
embrace the weekend.”

Female sexuality was also portrayed without the glib misogyny of,
say, _Saturday Night Live_ sketches about Monica Lewinsky, Anita
Hill, and Marcia Clark
[[link removed]].
Sex-positive women were centered in “Wild Weekend
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secretary experiences a sexual awakening, and “Fantasy,” where an
insecure McDonald has to reckon with his girlfriend’s voracious
imagination. There was also a series of sketches with Thompson and
Foley as the apathetic sex workers Mordred and Jocelyn. While
prostitution is so often played as a cheap gag, the Kids flipped the
script and showed life from the sex workers’ point of view, so that
the joke was on their idiot clients or their loony pimp.

The show’s most salient example of feminism also happens to be one
of its most absurd characters: Cabbage Head, Bruce McCulloch’s
cigar-smoking loudmouth. McCulloch says he came up with the idea when
he noticed men hitting on his girlfriend in a way that tried to
exploit her pity. Cabbage Head’s very first line
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sleep with me or what?” When he’s turned down, he becomes even
more indignant: “It’s ’cause I have a cabbage for a head!”
Each time Cabbage Head appears, he uses his ham-fisted manipulation in
an attempt to get laid, whining excuses like “I had a bad
childhood!” any time he’s criticized. Even worse, he pretends to
be into “women’s lib
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will work to his advantage. These days, we can label Cabbage Head’s
attempts to guilt women into sleeping with him as toxic male fragility
or even nice guy syndrome, but back then, he was simply an asshole.

The Kids in the Hall never shied away from dark themes or violence,
and neither did their female characters. In one sketch, McDonald and
McKinney play two dopey guys who work in a pizzeria
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grade girls. One particularly striking girl (Neve Campbell!) turns the
tables when it’s revealed she murdered her English teacher for
“always staring” at her. As she’s dragged out by the cops, her
classmates cheer and the pizza guys see them all in a threatening new
light. In another sketch, McCulloch’s radical left-wing lesbian,
Shauna, declares that Cabbage Head must die
[[link removed]]. She bursts into a bar
where he’s being gross to yet another date and confronts him. “I
used to wear nylons on my legs to do temp work. Now I wear them on my
face to stop sexism,” she says, before shooting him and spraying
salad everywhere.

As progressive as their approach to comedy was, the Kids didn’t fall
into the trap of self-congratulation, even going as far as mocking
performative allyship in sketches like “Art Class
[[link removed]]” and through
McCulloch’s “He’s hip, he’s cool, he’s 45” character. They
were also quick to deride their own shameful desires, like in the
“Terriers [[link removed]]” song,
when McCulloch interrupts the bikini-clad backup dancers. “Sorry
ladies, you’re scantily clad and have nothing to do with the
narrative. Therefore, it’s sexist.” He then adds, “Wow. That
hurt.”

And according to Phillips, the Kids practice what they preach.
“Having spent time with each of them personally, I can tell you
there’s no hint of macho bullshit among a single one of them,” she
says. “They all have so many female friends and colleagues. Their
work is a reflection of the respect I’ve seen them show in real life
to everyone: man, woman, or nonbinary. They are all proudly feminist,
and say it in so many words.”

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my closest female friends
have all been _Kids in the Hall _fans. As teens, having that
connection meant sharing a language of weird humor and turning mundane
situations into comedic ones with phrases like “My pen!” or
“Never put salt in your eyes.” And now as adults, it means
supporting one another in the ongoing fight against sexism—and men
with cabbages for heads.

* comedy [[link removed]]
* Feminism [[link removed]]
* sexism [[link removed]]
* kids in the hall [[link removed]]

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