Cliff Notes – Comedian Esther Manito: ‘Motherhood is still the acceptable base of misogyny’

Esther Manito argues that motherhood remains a topic of discomfort in comedy, leading to the silencing of women’s experiences in the industry.
She highlights the unequal expectations placed on female comedians, who are often discouraged from discussing motherhood while male counterparts face fewer restrictions.
Manito’s new show, Slagbomb, explores her life as a ‘sandwich carer’, aiming to create community through shared experiences, despite the industry’s lack of interest in such narratives.

Comedian Esther Manito: ‘Motherhood is still the acceptable base of misogyny’

Esther Mantel is a mother along with many other women in the UK – so why isn’t motherhood interesting enough for the comedy industry? (Picture: Steve Best)

While the days of all-male panel shows and outwardly sexist jokes may be behind us for the mainstream comedy most part, Esther Manito thinks misogyny is still widely accepted in the industry when it comes to one topic: motherhood.

‘I think there is something about motherhood that is still the acceptable base of misogyny,’ Esther tells Metro in a Zoom interview.

‘The division of labour is unequal, the pressure is unequal, the judgment is unequal, and motherhood is still a place where people quite comfortably go: “I don’t want to hear about it. It doesn’t titillate me.” So women are silenced.’

This has been Esther’s experience since she started comedy aged 33 with a baby and a toddler in tow, before she went on to appear on ITV’s Stand Up Sketch Show, Live At The Appollo, and became the first female comedian to perform at the Dubai Opera House.

At the time, Esther felt motherhood was all-encompassing, so of course she wanted to joke about it in her stand-up comedy.

‘They were my world,’ she explains. ‘When I started I was the only one with small children and I just noticed that there was almost a bit of a repulsion by critics, that was like, “Do we need to hear about motherhood?”‘

The comedian has been told on a number of occasions what she should and shouldn’t be talking about on stage (Picture: Steve Best)

When her career kicked off, Esther had a meeting with a well-meaning agent who asked how her comedy would progress when she had two young children. It’s unlikely that thought would crop up in conversations with male comedians.

‘I think that was my first insight into how much it would be pitted against me that I had started comedy with two very young children, and it was kind of the main thing that I was talking about,’ she reflects.

This kind of attitude still lingers 10 years on.

‘If you’re a new comedian, you should be talking about fresh faced topics,’ Esther says of the industry’s view, which she counters: ‘Mums can be fun. We can talk about motherhood. It shouldn’t just be that you can’t cover a topic that’s been done before. Why not?’

In her new show Slagbomb, Esther explores her life right now, in which she gives into mess and mayhem after aiming for adult sophistication.

‘It’s very personal. It’s all anecdotal, and it’s just stories,’ Esther explains.

She is dissecting her reality as a ‘sandwich carer’ – being a carer for children and parents simultaneously – an experience 1.25 million people, 68% of whom are women, share.

What are sandwich carers?

Sandwich carers are those who look after their elderly parents or relatives as well as their own children.

Action For Carers explain: ‘Partly because we are living longer, and people have their children later, there are a lot of people trying to look after frail and disabled elderly relatives, often their parents, at the same time as looking after dependent children. Often women, who are still trying to work too, these carers can feel exhausted and over-stretched. 1.3 million Brits are sandwich carers, but many don’t see themselves as carers, they’re simply looking after family.’

‘The whole show is basically just a meltdown about how it’s a very undignified period of life,’ Esther says.

‘I find that even if somebody doesn’t exactly relate to the same scenario, women always come up to me and go, “Oh, I didn’t have that, but I had this,”‘ she adds.

‘So it’s been really nice to hear other people’s stories. And it makes it feel like just for that hour you’ve got a bit of community.’

But while the contents of Esther’s show relates to many women across the UK, it’s not exciting in industry eyes, she thinks.

‘To be exciting, I think [topics] have got to be maybe in trend or in vogue,’ she says. ‘Motherhood is not of interest and it’s not exciting, whereas, your ethnicity, that’s exciting, that’s what we want to hear about.

‘I’m like, “I’m not just somebody who’s half Arab, I’m not just somebody who is half English, I’m not just somebody who’s a mother. I’m all those things and so and they all play huge parts in my life”.’

Esther has also been told she’s unclassy when behind the microphone (Picture: Steve Best)

So while Esther is telling her unique, individual truth, she thinks women in comedy are told what they can and can’t fashionably talk about more than men, who tend to get a much freer range.

Male comedians’ personas, for instance, have never – as far as I can remember – been reduced into a two-word definition like ‘hot mess’, for instance.

On the contrary, men on stage tend to be taken at face value more so, without being compartmentalised by the industry and critics to such a degree.

‘I do get my hair and eyebrows done. I do wear makeup. When you do all the things that are aesthetic, but then you’re roaming around on a stage pulling insane faces… I think people think, “What box are you going in?”‘ Esther says.

‘Being very physical on stage is considered quite undignified'(Picture: Steve Best)

‘I think people really just want to shovel you into this little box. And I think women have that more than men.’

Esther also feels a resistance to her leaning into the male-dominated comedy form of clowning.

‘Being very physical on stage is considered quite undignified,’ Esther says. ‘Women still aren’t really openly allowed to tap into that, whereas blokes sweaty and ugly and spitty and we kind of go, “Oh, this is really just part of their wonderful artistic temperament.”‘

Meanwhile, Esther is told that she lacks class, has terrible posture, and swears too much.

‘I just think that’s so interesting that the criteria for a clown is class?’ Esther muses. ‘I just think that’s so funny. You never sit there and be like, “Oh, finally, a man who comes on stage and talks like James Bond. Finally, I can enjoy this comedian.’