2013-12-23
Explanation
The Joke
A man accidentally sees a woman's forearm and blurts out, "Oh damn. Sorry... I just eroticized your arm... in my mind." He then explains that forearms have androgen-dependent hair, which is a post-puberty characteristic, making it legitimate for him to find them sexually attractive. He asks her to cover her forearms because they are "really distracting." She responds, "What? That is your problem, not mine!" He then says "My eyes are up here" (a classic line usually said by women to men who stare at their breasts), and she reluctantly agrees to cover up, telling him to "stop making it a big deal."
The Humor
The comic is a gender-role reversal satire about modesty culture and the policing of women's bodies. It takes the real-world phenomenon of men telling women to cover up because they find certain body parts sexually distracting, and applies the exact same logic to something completely mundane -- forearms. By having the man use pseudo-scientific reasoning (androgen-dependent hair as a secondary sex characteristic) to justify his sexualization of a forearm, the comic highlights how arbitrary and absurd it is to place the burden of modesty on the person being looked at rather than the person doing the looking. The reversal of the classic "my eyes are up here" line further underscores the satire. The woman's eventual capitulation ("stop making it a big deal") mirrors how real-world modesty policing often pressures the target into compliance despite the unreasonableness of the demand.