I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.

In the age of modern jesters — when truth was delivered with a smirk and wisdom hid itself behind laughter — the brilliant humorist Steve Martin spoke a line that sparkled with absurdity and yet carried the shadow of meaning: “I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.” To the casual ear, it is a joke — a play upon the old saying, “a woman with a good head on her shoulders,” meaning one of intellect, composure, and reason. But Martin, with his signature blend of surrealism and satire, takes this well-worn phrase and twists it, turning expectation into laughter. And yet, like all great comedy, the line opens a window into something deeper — the eternal tension between ideal and reality, between admiration and the discomfort of closeness, between what we say we want and what we truly fear.

The origin of this quip lies in Martin’s lifelong devotion to the art of the absurd. A pioneer of stand-up comedy’s intellectual revolution in the 1970s, he dismantled convention not with cruelty, but with wit that questioned meaning itself. In this line, he mocks both romantic clichés and the human tendency to idolize perfection while recoiling from what makes it real. The phrase “I like a woman with a head on her shoulders” is itself a token of admiration — a compliment to intellect and grace. But Martin’s addition, “I hate necks,” undercuts that ideal with comic violence, implying that the very thing that connects the dream to reality — the neck, that fragile bridge between thought and flesh — is somehow intolerable. Thus, his jest becomes metaphor: the mind we praise cannot exist without the body we mock.

In this, Martin stands in a lineage of jesters who speak the language of paradox to reveal truth. The ancients knew this art well. The philosopher Diogenes, who lived in a barrel and mocked the pretenses of society, once walked through Athens carrying a lantern in daylight, claiming to search for an honest man. Like Martin, Diogenes used humor to expose contradiction — the gulf between what people say they value and what they truly desire. So too does Martin’s “hatred of necks” suggest our unease with imperfection, with the mortal connection between beauty and vulnerability. We love the ideal — the head, the intellect, the abstraction — but flinch at the flawed, the human, the part that binds spirit to flesh.

Consider how this truth appears throughout history. Leonardo da Vinci, that god of art and science, spent his life painting the divine within the human form — yet even he struggled to reconcile the two. His Mona Lisa, serene and inscrutable, is a face of perfection balanced on a body that fades into shadow. The neck, that delicate link, is barely visible — as though even Leonardo, the most complete man of the Renaissance, could not bear to fully depict the joining of thought and form. Martin’s jest, though centuries removed, strikes the same chord: humanity forever seeks to exalt the intellect while denying the rawness that sustains it.

Yet beneath the laughter, there is tenderness. The neck, despised in Martin’s joke, can also symbolize vulnerability — the place where life throbs visibly beneath the skin. To hate the neck, then, is to recoil from exposure, to fear the fragile truth of connection. In matters of love, this speaks volumes. We claim to want partners of strength and intelligence, yet we shrink from the messiness of emotion, from the openness it requires. We love the idea of love — the “head” of it — but not always the living, breathing risk — the “neck” that holds it up. Thus, Martin’s absurdity becomes reflection: we must learn to love not only the brilliance of the mind, but the tender imperfections that make that brilliance possible.

In this way, his humor is akin to philosophy in disguise. Like the Zen masters who answered serious questions with nonsense, Martin’s absurdity compels us to think more deeply. “I hate necks” is no mere joke — it is an invitation to examine where our admiration turns to discomfort, where our ideals detach from reality. It reminds us that the divine always hides in the human, and that true appreciation demands we embrace the whole — both the shining head of reason and the living neck of feeling. To love only the head is to love an illusion.

Therefore, O listener, take from this jest not just laughter but wisdom. When you admire another, seek not perfection in parts but harmony in wholeness. Love the neck as much as the head — love the bridge, the imperfection, the humanity that connects thought to life. In every relationship, in every dream, accept the discomfort that comes with connection, for it is the price of authenticity. To hate the neck is to refuse intimacy; to love it is to honor the beauty of being human.

And so, let the words of Steve Martin echo not only as comedy, but as counsel: “I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.” Laugh, yes — but understand also that in laughter lies truth. The wise do not divide the ideal from the real, nor the mind from the body. They embrace both, as life itself embraces contradiction. For the path to wisdom — and to love — lies not in perfection, but in acceptance of all that connects us, fragile and miraculous, from head to heart.