Politics & Power Quote by Tina Fey

The joke lands like a slap because it mimics the oldest, laziest explanation men reach for when a woman gets power: she must have traded sex for it. Fey’s line weaponizes that reflex, then pivots it through the Afghan context where the very premise collapses. In a place where women have been policed for showing skin, “show her ankles” is a surgically chosen detail: it’s absurdly modest, culturally specific, and instantly exposes how sexualized suspicion doesn’t require actual sexuality. Any scrap of female visibility gets framed as seduction.

The intent isn’t to take a cheap shot at Afghan politics so much as to indict a global misogyny that travels well. Fey performs the voice of the guy at the bar - “Man” as a whole demographic, not just an interjection - and lets the ugliness of that default assumption do the work. The laughter comes from recognition and discomfort: you’re hearing an attitude you’ve encountered, maybe even internalized, rendered grotesque by being placed against a society where “ankles” can be a scandal.

The subtext is that women’s legitimacy is perpetually conditional, forever treated as a conspiracy with a body attached. The line also needles Western self-satisfaction: even when we congratulate ourselves for progress (“two women!”), we still reach for the same cynical narrative that reduces women’s competence to access. Fey’s comedy isn’t comforting; it’s a mirror held at a cruelly funny angle.