Hey ladies — you know how sometimes you’re in a bar with your friends, having cocktails and girl talk, and one of your pals starts going on and on about all the side effects of taking the Yaz birth control pill? Like, really intensely and in great detail?
Probably not, because that’s absurd. Which is where comic and writer Sarah Haskins comes in. Her online Current TV segment “Target: Women” has spent the past two years sending up the hyperbole, homogeneity and just plain silliness of female-oriented advertising (her take on the Yaz commercial: “Does anyone think Stephanie is acting super weird right now?”).
Her very first topic was yogurt. Because, as she says in the segment, “Yogurt is the official food of women.” Cut to a montage of ads that show them dancing around their living rooms with it; vowing that it’ll get you regular; rhapsodizing about it while dressed as bridesmaids: “Say some more stuff I generically relate to!” says Haskins. “Then go to a wedding!
“Advertising is so ridiculous because it’s trying to still use some of the traditional gender roles, while also trying to match the changes . . . in the past 40 to 50 years,” says Haskins, who has a background in improv comedy.
With her preppy wardrobe and understated makeup, Haskins comes off as an infinitely sane resister of the constant barrage of marketing messages: Lengthen your lashes with vibrating mascara! Clean your house as if you’re on ecstasy! Buy this mouth-muscles tightener in only six easy installments! “I am,” she admits, “an extremely normal person.”
Which made her recent appearance on “The Rachel Maddow Show” as a “fashion expert” pretty rewarding for her fans.
Haskins, like Maddow, has become a popular Girl Crush in the blogosphere. Women cheer on her segments about the ubiquity of the Doofy Husband character, on how “hot chicks love smells,” and on the strangely obsessive relationship women in ads have with laundry. “Laundry is basically the Adderall of chores. When you use it, you just get better at other chores.”
Haskins says the comedy of “Target: Women” masks serious intentions: “As the Internet and TV and movies all become one scary machine in your living room, it’s important that we all have some level of media literacy,” she says.
Her raised-eyebrow take on mainstream culture links Haskins to other female comics she adores, like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. And the feeling is mutual: Poehler recruited Haskins and her writing partner Emily Halpern to write the screenplay for her upcoming film “Lunch Lady.”
Meanwhile, Haskins and Halpern’s other screenplay is being produced by Natalie Portman’s company. “Book Smart” is about two dateless high school girls. And if Haskins knows one thing, it’s about how important girlfriends are: “Lady friends are always giving helpful advice and product tips to each other. ‘Have some protein water.’ ‘Check out these awesome granny panties.’ ‘Don’t put that in the salad dressing!’
“Friends,” she says. “What would you buy without them?”
“Target: Women” is part of Current TV’s week-in-review program, “Infomania,” and also airs on the Current TV cable network.