Even with the Red Sox beanie pulled over the trademark mane of black hair, it's not hard to spot Sarah Silverman in the lobby at the Bowery Hotel: She's the grown woman dressed like a 14-year-old boy.
Promoting her new memoir, "The Bedwetter," Silverman saunters toward me in an American Apparel sweatshirt, Free City sweats and worn Adidas.
"In 18 months of working with her, I don't think I ever saw Sarah in a shirt that didn't have a number on it," says David Hirshey, her editor at HarperCollins, which paid $2.5 million for her book. "She dresses as if she's always ready for a touch football game."
"Wait, am I dressing like a 14-year-old boy, or are all 14-year-old boys dressing like me?" she asks in that voice that sounds as if it belongs to a baby with really bad allergies. "Remember, they're my demo."
Well, part of it. There are also the young women who aspire to look "as cute as Sarah in geeky chic," as one nose-ringed indie girl put it at Silverman's book-signing at the NoHo Urban Outfitters in April.
And, of course, there are the legions of middle-aged urban men who see in Silverman one of their more prominent dude fantasies: the hot tomboy-next-door who will laugh at your potty jokes, punch you in the arm and then make out with you.
It's almost embarrassing to witness the exchange between her and the waiter at the hotel. When she asks if she could possibly, maybe, please, have mint in her iced tea, he declares, "For you I find mint!" I'm not sure if he bowed as he handed it to her, but the bow was implied.
Looking, listening
There is a tradition of beautiful women in comedy desexualizing themselves. Lucille Ball was a showgirl before becoming a comedian, but we don't think of her as a great beauty; Phyllis Diller was actually a very attractive woman who donned the fright wigs and feathers to appear less threatening.
"Apparently people can't look at a pretty woman and listen to her at the same time - and you have to listen to funny women," says Gina Barreca, a professor at the University of Connecticut who specializes in women and humor.
Not to say that Silverman's hotness is unrecognized; she was, after all, No.29 on Maxim's Hot List in 2007. And in fact, it's a delicate balancing act, because her beauty also lets her get away with being gross. Would she have been the filthiest, best joke teller in the 2005 documentary "The Aristocrats" if, as Barreca puts it, Silverman "gained 40 pounds and dropped a litter"?
Of course, Sarah Silverman doesn't quite see herself in a fashion tradition at all.
When she started performing in the early 1990s while a student, she had a whole ensemble: miniskirts, "That Girl" beehive, black buttoned shirts with sheer black sleeves. These days, she admits, "If I kill in an outfit, I'll wear it again and again, until people start making fun of me." But otherwise, she insists, her look is entirely uncalculated and just a reflection of her absolute need for comfort.
"There's so many things you have to do in order to get dressed up" - starting with shaving her arms - "and heels put me in a bad mood after a certain amount of time. I hit a wall and I must go home."
Besides, Silverman says, she comes from a long line of fashion goofballs: Her father, who owned Crazy Sophie's Factory Outlet in New Hampshire, wears only clothing with the Target logo on it, and her mother rocks overalls. At one point, when Silverman was on the "Tonight Show" and her father and stepmother were in the audience, Jay Leno called them onto the stage; her father's shirt had large visible stains.
Said Leno to Silverman, "I see where you get your dress sense."
"I'm not being modest or whatever, but I think I just look better in casual clothes," says Silverman, who has a chapter in her book titled "Fear and Clothing." "I feel like a transvestite when I'm all dressed up."
Here comes 40
With nothing more than a drop of Benetint on her cheeks and lips, Silverman looks easily 10 years younger than she is. But this year she turns 40. Uncalculated or no, she's kind of wondering what's next sartorially.
"I'm not sure if pigtails and football shirts are going to fly. But I'll find out. And I'll let you know."
As the waiter clears her glass of mint tea (repairing to the kitchen, presumably to lick the rim), I ask Silverman whether there's anything I've missed - any point in particular she'd like to make. "Yes," she says, giving me a warm hug. "Jews run the media."
