For duo Feminine Gentlemen, comedy is a labor of love

Jill Valentine and Liz McArthur, who comprise the improv comedy duo Feminine Gentlemen (“Fem Gents,” for short), have worked together for nearly a decade in various capacities and partnerships. Fortunately for them, it’s been the most fruitful decade for female comics in American history.

Tina Fey. Amy Poehler. Chelsea Handler. Amy Schumer. They’re all power players in an industry that’s still dominated by males but is increasingly less exclusionary to those without a Y chromosome.

“When people say women aren’t funny, it just cracks me up,” Valentine says. “It’s not about being a man or a woman; it’s about being a person. And everything has different flavors of comedy and different styles.”

Says McArthur, “It’s like saying ice cream isn’t good.”

And though the subject of women in comedy is one that’s often (perhaps overly) discussed, it’s also one that Valentine and McArthur take very seriously — so seriously, in fact, that they co-founded Chicago’s annual Women’s Funny Festival.

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“It’s something near and dear to our hearts, women in comedy,” says Valentine, who also serves as operations director for the Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival (aka Sketchfest) at Stage 773 on W. Belmont, where the Fem Gents will do their thing Saturday. “We started in ’99, so when we were out at Second City getting trained, there were maybe one or two women in these classes. And then you’re playing the wife, you’re playing the girlfriend, you’re playing the aunt — you’re playing all the women roles. And then as we see more women on television, we see more women in these classes, more female comedians being trained. And now half the classes are women and they’re being taught by women as well.”

They are happily “riding that wave.”

Above all, Fem Gents is an artistically fulfilling endeavor that gives them frequent opportunities to create “off-the-wall-characters” and “really think outside the box.” From conjoined twins and various inanimate objects to elks and centaurs, their options are limitless. Playing the wife, the girlfriend, the aunt is so 1999.

“We choose to do it because we absolutely love it,” Valentine says. “And we need it. When I don’t do a show for a while, I’m a mess. And I can feel it. I’m like, ‘I need to get onstage.’ It’s like a runner who doesn’t run. We’re jonesing. We’ve got to get out there.”

Their labor of love has even proved to be a financial boon of sorts, in that it’s a swell showcase for their talents. As the direct result of a Fem Gents performance attended by their mutual agent, for example, McArthur landed a fibromyalgia commercial that recently shot in Prague.

“It’s not like, ‘Wow, I feel like a really created art when I did that,’ ” she says. “It pays you a buck or two.”

Like McArthur and many other members of Chicago’s improv/comedy community, Valentine also does some commercial work. A former on-camera spokeswoman for International Delight nondairy coffee creamer, she starred in a widely aired TV commercial directed by Peter Farrelly of “Dumb & Dumber” and “There’s Something About Mary” fame.

“When you’re auditioning, you really see what you are when they’re like, ‘OK, you’re being called in for overweight lesbians,’ ” jokes Valentine, who like McArthur is copiously tattooed. “I’m like, ‘Thank you! I feel great about that!’ ”

Still, the reason they chose the “manly-girlie” name Feminine Gentlemen is because, as Valentine puts it, “that’s pretty much who we are.”

“I think Feminine Gentlemen is almost like saying you’re asexual,” she says. “You’re not a woman. You’re not a man. You’re just a comedian.”

Ideally, in the not-so-distant-future, there’ll be no need to drive that point home.

Jill Valentine in a 2012 TV spot for International Delight