Popular comedy in the United States has been rapidly changing in the last ten years. Because of the diversification of consumption of television and film content, popular comedy has seen a significant rise in terms of the number of popular comedians who encompass various formats of content creation. At the same time, the public discourse of social justice is largely conditioned by identity politics. This thesis argues that there are specific changes to be observed in popular comedy which reflect the ways the discourse on social justice is organized affectively, posing the political recognition of an identity as the object of desire. It is argued that the increased focus on both male and female comedians constructs them as conscious political actors who contribute to progress of social justice depending on how they incorporate gender representation to their material. The thesis provides the analysis of both the official material in popular comedy as well as media narratives surrounding them with an emphasize on the discourse of gender equality. Drawing from theories of social justice, affect and gender representation, it is argued that both comedian's material and the comedian him/herself function as repositories of created attachments to constructs of social justice.