(Do It On My) Twin Bed is probably one of Duana’s favourite Saturday Night Live sketches in recent years. That sketch – and other girl group sketches like it – was co-written by Aidy Bryant aka Li’l Baby Aidy, who’s just been profiled in The Cut and if you haven’t read it, you should. Because she’s hilarious and cute and smart but also because it’s not JUST focused on her comedy. In fact, the whole point of the piece is her style. And this shouldn’t be important – and one day, hopefully, it won’t be – but right now it is, because most of the time, when celebrities are featured for their style, they represent a certain Hollywood-favoured body type. Which of course is bullsh-t because style isn’t limited to body types. Which is Aidy’s point.
She tells The Cut that she used to go on photo shoots with Kate McKinnon and or Cecily Strong and there would be racks and racks of beautiful clothing available to them but only one or two pieces pulled for her and the outfits were ugly. This doesn’t just happen with fashion, by the way. It also comes up with makeup. There have been times when I’ve showed up to a shoot and the makeup artist had no experience doing Asian eyes. I’ve also been to shoots where the makeup artist was not prepared to work on a black woman’s face. And, sure, I know that feeling not included in a photo shoot (oh poor you!) isn’t the worst experience ever. But it speaks to inclusion. When you leave the photo shoot and you walk down the street and none of the billboards allow you into their spaces and then you turn on the TV and it’s more of the same, these accumulated examples become a thousand little cuts that eat away at how you feel about yourself.
Aidy tells The Cut that she’s slowly putting together some ideas for a collection of her own.
“I’m just trying to get the things that I have access to out there for the masses — like when I wanted something cool to wear to a meeting or an audition or whatever and not just be wearing a black sack,” she says. “Although I love a black sack. Black sack is my mainstay. But if you don’t have a choice, you’re trapped, you know?” she says. “I feel like there’s almost two zones of plus-sized clothing. It’s either full sweatpants and huge T-shirts and elastic waist jeans, or it’s hypertrendy with a shoulder, a bow, a button, a print, a zipper.” She gestures frenetically to different parts of her body like she’s doing the Macarena. “It’s almost like, These girls have never had style, we’re going to throw it ALL at them. And I so often am longing for something that’s a little easier, cooler,” she says. “Stuff you can wear every damn day to run errands and go to meetings, that isn’t a full party dress but isn’t, like, sweats. Flattering but still comfortable.”
That paragraph, to me, is the heart of this profile. It’s does a lot with a little. It takes down the assumption that “these girls never had style” while illustrating exactly Aidy’s point of view on style. Her own style. She has style.
She also has a really great anecdote about Ryan Gosling. He hosted the first episode of SNL this season:
Her preferred mode is “silly character-y stuff.” Like her favorite sketch this season, a two-hander opposite Ryan Gosling, where she played a chicken — in a fully feathered chicken suit — and he played a fugitive who had fallen in love with her. “Ryan was taking it so seriously in rehearsal,” she recalls. “He’s like a serious-ass actor asking us, But why? Why do I love her? Like, these beautiful questions that we were talking about so seriously. At the end of the week, Lorne [Michaels] was like: LOOK, IT’S JUST A LOVE STORY, AND YOU HAVE TO PLAY IT AS A LOVE STORY.”
OF COURSE HE DID.
OF COURSE Ryan Gosling needed to find his “motivation” in a ridiculous chicken suit sketch on Saturday Night Live.
Click here to read the full Aidy Bryant profile in The Cut.
