Amy Schumer: ‘I don’t try to be feminist. I just am. It’s innately inside me’

Comedian Amy Schumer has become a new feminist icon, but she says that newfound title is unexpected.

“I don’t try to be feminist. I just am,” the “Trainwreck” star said in a Q&A with Glamour. “It’s innately inside me. I have no interest in trying to be the perfect feminist, but I do believe feminists are in good hands with me.”

The foul-mouthed “Inside Amy Schumer” star was interviewed by her sister and collaborator Kim Caramele, who also serves as a writer, producer and actor on the bawdy Comedy Central show. Caramele pointed out that Schumer’s biting comedic style often calls out sexism, and Schumer said that “every woman deals with it most every day of their lives.”

“Growing up, it’s just in your day to day,” the 34-year-old performer said. “There are all these preconceived notions of what it means to be a woman or a girl, and straying from those ideas of femininity is sort of shocking to people. I felt angered by that as a kid. I felt like that was unjust. Like that was not right.”

The “Last Comic Standing” alum has had a big year: “Inside Amy Schumer,” which wrapped its third season in April, earned her a Critics Choice Award and a Peabody Award, and the star was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people (and threw herself at the feet of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West in the process). And now she’s busy promoting her autobiographical comedy “Trainwreck,” which hits theaters July 17.

Her Comedy Central sketches such as “Last ... Day,” her send-up to older women in Hollywood that featured Tina Fey and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, her boy band-style beauty-regimen exploration “Girl, You Don’t Need Makeup” and her scathing critique of military rape in “A Very Realistic Military Game” all went viral. She said she just wants to make women laugh and encourage them to use their voice, but her own forthright voice has netted her death threats. That, she said, made her want to be even more vocal.

In June, the clever comedian received the Trailblazer Award at Glamour UK’s Women of the Year Awards and, in a very Hollywood-averse move, revealed her weight in her NSFW acceptance speech and shared the fact that she could still have lots of sex. When Caramele pointed out that if a guy made a comment like that, the media would call him a chauvinistic pig, Schumer agreed but still defended her remarks.

“To deny that there’s a major difference is ridiculous. For women, we’re taught to eat less until we disappear. And trained to believe that if you don’t look like everyone else, then you’re unlovable. And men are not trained that way,” she told the mag. “Men can look like whatever and still date a supermodel. I’m proud of what I said. I think it’s good to see somebody saying: I have a belly. And I have cellulite. And I still deserve love. ... And to not apologize.”

The New York native said she’s always been confident and “confidence has nothing to do with how you look.”

“I feel happiest when I’m with friends and I’m working really hard,” she added.

The full interview hits newsstands July 14.

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