Comedian, Writer And Actor Amy Schumer Stands Up For More Than Just Laughs

AMY SCHUMER WROTE HER COLLEGE THESIS ON the male gaze. Fifteen years later, she struggles to conjure the details. Did her subjects include Madame Bovary? Some Like It Hot?

- Eliza Berman

Particulars aside, she’s been inspecting the ups and downs of womanhood in her comedy ever since, right down to her latest project, the movie I Feel Pretty, out April 20. Schumer plays a woman who wishes she looked like a supermodel—and after sustaining a head injury in a SoulCycle class, she wakes up believing she’s got Cindy Crawford looks. Her newfound confidence allows her to flourish in some ways, but it also makes her lose sight of herself. Schumer plays this cocky bravado to great comedic effect, and she sees the movie as a serious response to the unremitting notion that women try to locate their self-worth in physical beauty. “I was always like that, at 5 years old, just demanding equality,” she says. “I thought it could all be fixed if you called attention to it.”

She’s telling me about little Amy in a New York City hotel suite where the handle to the bathroom door looks as if it belongs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s silver collection. On a table across the room is a wine glass, inexplicably filled with red rose petals. As Schumer puts it, “This is totally an affair hotel.” Upon arriving fresh from an interview with Howard Stern, she kicks off her skyscraping suede boots, props herself up on a pillow and— because it’s just us and this is what women do when men aren’t around to raise an eyebrow—unbuttons her pants, post–Thanksgiving dinner style.