Amy Schumer Parody Video Strikes a Chord, Again

Amy Schumer seems to be entering the Jon Stewart stratosphere, in which each show is mined for its message. This time around, she's winning praise for a One Direction parody video in which she mocks as insincere the sentiment that guys are fine when women ditch their makeup. ("Girl, I can't be seen with the ghost from The Ring," is one of the lines after Schumer washes her face.) The video sparked what Vanity Fair calls a "minor Twitter revolution" in which women posted photos of themselves sans makeup. (Examples here.) "Finally, a feminist anthem for people who like humming boy band songs all day," observes a post at Entertainment Weekly.

"The video is a succinct explanation of everything that’s wrong with the Bruno Martian school of soulful ditty in praise of a woman who doesn’t know how beautiful she is," adds another at Slate. Schumer is clearly on a roll, writes Katie McDonough at Salon, but there's a flipside to that: Her willingness to take on feminist themes is "a powerful thing, but I don’t envy the kind of pressure that seems to come with it," she writes. "In its own way, the Feminist Savior is just another version of the Cool Girl trap." (More Amy Schumer stories.)