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."