Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka on Bowl Cuts & Big Dad Energy

Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka has no intention of ditching her signature shiny, jet-black bowl cut. “I mean, does Dora the Explorer change her look? Does Minnie Mouse?” the L.A.-based comic and writer says over the phone on a recent afternoon. “It’s culture. It’s a community now. My fans show up to my shows wearing wigs of my bowl cut internationally. I saw it in Ireland; Singapore; Japan; Philadelphia, and Madison, Wisconsin.”

The Taiwanese and Japanese-American stand-up star spent nearly two years touring the material featured in her special, Father, premiering on Hulu June 13. The title is a nod to a realization she’s had about her own marriage to Ryan Harper Gray, who is a visual artist and produces some of Okatsuka’s work: she functions as less of an archetypal wife or mother, and more like a hapless sitcom father.

This, she says, is due to her relationship with her dad—a fragile and complex dynamic she analyzes in the comedy special. Fans know the lore: when Okatsuka was around eight years old, her grandmother brought her from Tokyo to America without her dad, under the guise of a months-long vacation. But the move became permanent, and the family wound up living in the U.S. undocumented for years while Okatsuka’s father was back in Asia. (“You know it’s bad when Ira Glass reaches out to you,” the comedian notes in Father while discussing her life story being featured on This American Life.) The humorous side effects of being raised by her grandmother and her mother—who lives with schizophrenia—were highlighted in her first HBO special, Intruder. But in Father, Okatsuka opens up about reconnecting with her dad and realizing the surprising traits they share in common.

The comedy tour, in fact, gave father and daughter ample opportunity to reunite; Okatsuka was able to add international stops, which most American comedians don’t do. “Everyone goes to Japan,” she explains, “but they don’t necessarily do stand-up comedy there. It was really cool as a homecoming, to go back to the place I left without wanting to, and to have a warm welcome to a bunch of sold-out shows.” Her father made the work even sweeter by attending every show in Japan, despite his lack of fluency in English. “He’s just watching me act a fool physically up there, and watching the audience around him react,” she says through laughs. “Like, Ooh, there’s my daughter, Lucille Ball.” The excitement is mutual. “It’s really awesome now, because we get to play catch-up,” Okatsuka notes, “so much so that I’m like, Are you not tired of me yet?”

At the crux of Father is the revelation that despite Atsuko’s fans’ insistence that she is “mother,” the comedian has discovered through this journey that she is, in fact, father. Below, the comedian shares telltale signs that you may be, too.

5 Signs You’re Giving Father, Not Mother

1. You’re holding the flashlight wrong while someone else is fixing it.

2. You fold a towel and expect a parade.

3. You walk into the kitchen, open one cabinet, don’t see what you need, and say “We’re out.”

4. You ask “Where’s my shirt?” like it’s someone else’s job to know where your shirt is.

5. You thought you’d been doing the laundry, but turns out you’ve just been walking past the washing machine confidently for the last seven years.