Confessional Empathy: Baby Cobra By Ali Wong

Confessional Empathy Ali Wong in “Baby Cobra” talks about her opinion on the very relevant topic of feminism. Through the use of her comedic stage, Wong expresses her ideas and confesses her opinions on why she thinks “feminism is the worst thing that ever happened to women”(Wong). Ali Wong questions women and their independence and the reasoning for why they would want to work. Why would women ever want to work? Who wouldn’t rather stay at home watching their favorite TV shows all day? Wong through the confessions of her controversial opinions on feminism is able to incept these ideas into the audience’s head and reveal a bigger picture of her contrasting feelings towards feminism. “Confession doesn't just allow – it incites”(Jamison). Although

She talks about her relationship with her husband and how the couple came to be engaged. Wong reveals that she “pressured” her husband into proposing and encourages the audience into doing so, stating that “A woman has to incept the idea of proposing into the man’s head. First passively and then if he doesn’t get the message, extremely aggressively”(Wong). With this statement, Wong not only gives the audience advice on how to marry early, but she essentially encourages them to do so. Although the primary purpose of feminism is to stimulate equal rights between sexes, people oftentimes used it as a way to promote women's independence. By encouraging the audience to marry earlier rather than to encourage the audience to focus on their careers, Wong goes against one of the main ideas of feminism which sets up her

Wong states that women’s “job used to be no job”(Wong), implying that before the movement of feminism, women didn’t have to work as they do now. She then goes on to state that women should “have done the smart thing, which would have been to continue playing dumb for the next century”(Wong). Before the times of feminism, women were expected to stay at home, however, with the start of the feminist movement, women with the use of their intelligence fought for the right to have equal pay, rather than using their intelligence to do the smart thing and stay at home. Although the concept of working during the start of the feminist movement might have sounded appealing, today women are now expected to work. Wong’s initial controversial statement now allows the audience to imagine what their lives could have been if feminism didn’t happen. Obviously, Wong is not trying to take away the good effects of the movement, such as the gaining equal rights to men, however, she is using feminism as a strategy to gain the audience’s understanding of her