Pondering Baby Blues and Between Friends

Between Friends, 2013-05-01.

Baby Blues, 2013-05-01.

The fact that these two strips appeared on the same day isn't actually the staggering coincidence it may appear to be as it's a pretty common theme in both these comics, and not without reason. The problem really is that the underlying message always seems to be "Hey women, if you're over 40 then you look bad and you should feel bad." And this is supposed to be funny?

Between Friends is particularly bad for this as the main characters actually seem to revel in this attitude, resenting younger women for not feeling bad about how they look but taking pleasure in the idea that those women will eventually reach the point where they too suffer from constant guilt and shame about their appearance.

It's not quite as grim as Tom Batiuk's comics where the message is pretty consistently that awful things will happen to you, all happiness is fleeting and life is merely an agonising journey to the grave, but it's in that same direction.

What are we supposed to be laughing at here? I could understand if the joke were "Hey, look at these unreasonable expectations society pushes on women, aren't they ridiculous?" but it seems more like the opposite of that, like we're not supposed to find such expectations ridiculous, the joke is actually at the expense of the comics' main characters. Or that those young people making them feel bad are right, but don't worry, they'll get theirs when they get old and fat and ugly, then we'll see who has the last laugh.

It's no one, no one laughs, because this is terrible.