Comedian Amy Schumer on new book "The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo"
“I know my worth. I embrace my power. I say if I’m beautiful. I say if I’m strong. You will not determine my story. I will.” – Amy Schumer, “The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo.”
Amy Schumer got her start in standup comedy, winning over audiences with her special brand of on-stage honesty. The comedian, actress, writer, producer and director won an Emmy Award for her hit series “Inside Amy Schumer,” and her first feature film, “Trainwreck” was a box office hit making more than $140 million worldwide.
Now she’s out with a revealing new book, “The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo,” documenting personal stories about her childhood, family, career, relationships and sex.
In the book, Schumer writes about an experience in 8th grade where she and her girlfriends were convinced by the boys to flash the police who were chasing them (“We would all just walk around with book bags of beer,” she said Wednesday on “CBS This Morning”).
“So all the girls, we lined up and lifted up our shirts, and all the boys looked at me -- and I did not have the biggest boobs at all of the crew,” Schumer recounted. “But I looked down and realized everyone else had only shown their bras. And I was the only one who went full-frontal. And I think that’s kind of a good metaphor for my whole life. I’m always the one like revealing too much. Like, ‘Oh, I thought we were all admitting real things about ourselves.’ ‘No! No!’”
“There is a kind of contradiction about you -- which is, you are a private person, yet in terms of television, you are every woman,” “CBS This Morning” co-host Charlie Rose said to Schumer. “You have this huge profile.”
“Thank you. Yeah, I think we’re all, I think, like walking hypocrites. … There’s so many sides to all of us,” Schumer said. “I’m very charged politically, and I really care about the world, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t go home and watch every ‘Real Housewives’ and every ‘Bachelorette.’ It’s just -- we’re dynamic people.”
One thing that bothers Schumer is when people call her a “female” comedian.
“It’s just, I think, a specification that doesn’t need to be made. Because some people, they’ll say, ‘You’re my favorite female comic.’ And then I go, ‘Who are your male comics?’ And they go, ‘Actually, no one.’ I’m like, ‘Maybe I’m your favorite comic. Maybe it doesn’t have to be this distinction that’s made,’” Schumer said. “Yeah, I think there are worse problems in the world, but it does annoy me.”
Schumer’s parents have each been married three times, which Schumer said impacts her view of marriage.
“I’m very romantic, and ‘I love love,’ but just statistically, it doesn’t look so good for like, ‘You and me, forever. Burial plots.’ … Usually something happens,” Schumer said. “But I really try to just enjoy the moment and how you’re feeling now, but you know, it’s hard.”
Watch the video above to see how she connected with her current boyfriend, Ben.
“The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo” is published by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, which is a division of CBS.