SNL's 'Welcome to Hell' sketch perfectly describes what it's like to be a woman
'Oh, and this ain't a girl group. We just travel in a pack for safety'
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Which, of course, usually comes with its chorus of shocked, disbelieving reactions - but from women? It's hard to be that surprised. Being a woman, alive on this planet, means knowing that sexual harassment is pretty much hiding around every corner. Or, as the ladies of Saturday Night Live put it: "Welcome to Hell".
"Cat's out of the bag. Women get harassed all the time," Kate McKinnon coos as part of a bubbly, '80s pop track. A reminder that all the news coming out recently is just a small portrait of the daily threats women have to deal with: in the workplace, out having fun, or just trying to walk home at night. "This been the damn world," Cecily Strong reminds us.
Too bad that House of Cards was ruined after the Kevin Spacey allegations, but let the group explain what's been ruined for women since the beginning: "Parking and walking and Uber and ponytails. Bathrobes and nighttime and drinking and hotels and vans - nothing good happens in a van."
As the group launches into the beat, they note: "Oh, and this ain't a girl group. We just travel in a pack for safety."
"I guess it begs the question, 'Woah, why didn't you say something, baby girl?'" McKinnon says, while guest host Saoirse Ronan chimes in: "Well dang, double daddy, we definitely did. For hundreds of years." Cue a cut back to the Salem witch trials, the suffragette movement, and the '60s Sexual Revolution. Centuries of women who had to battle their entire lives just to be heard.
And, as Leslie Jones steps in to point out: "You do know that it's like a million times worse for a woman of colour, right?"
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