An Open Letter to Iliza Shlesinger

Dear Iliza,

You've had quite a year! Between Confirmed Kills and getting on your own late night show, Truth & Iliza, you have had many accomplishments to celebrate. But, as the old saying goes, "With great power, comes great responsibility."

In May, The Hollywood Reporter quoted you as saying, "My perfect idea of feminism is that we judge based on character and merit. It’s my goal to empower women that are younger than me, women that are looking for something and women around me."

You can. And you must. (We need you!)

As a nonprofit organization for women in the comedy industry, Women in Comedy is building momentum in cities across the country to convene and uplift women in the industry and to equalize the playing field by increasing the visibility and pay scale of our comedy sisters. We would like to personally invite you to our first event of this year that will be taking place in multiple cities including Los Angeles on August 20, 2017. Will you join us in LA?

Our Inside Jokes conference (taking place in DC, NYC, Los Angeles, and Chicago) will give women the tools to further their careers and create more opportunities for various perspectives and voices to be heard. We hope that by hearing experiences and voices of ladies in the trenches, it will underscore how many funny, diverse, hard working women are on the scene. We hope it will also help spotlight why so many commercially viable voices in comedy are predominantly male and how we can work together to change that.

You have shared strong opinions about wanting more women's voices to be heard and for those voices to be substantive and powerful, which is fantastic! But we also found some of your comments--and some of the broad, sweeping generalizations about other women's work--to be problematic. In your defense, we were also taken aback by the way you were immediately vilified by many women on social media. We do not wish to shame, pigeonhole, or bully anyone, but rather, seek to bring women together and create a positive path forward.

We hope you will join us for this event and more to opportunities to follow in creating change.

Sincerely,

Women In Comedy