Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Success, Negative Reviews and Audacity.
‘Especially in this country, I believe you needed me. You didn't comprehend it but you required me, to alleviate some of your own guilt.” The performer, the 42-year-old Canadian humorist who has been based in the UK for nearly 20 years, was accompanied by her recently born fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they avoid making an annoying sound. The primary observation you see is the awesome capability of this woman, who can project parental devotion while crafting sequential thoughts in complete phrases, and remaining distracted.
The following element you notice is what she’s renowned for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a refusal of artifice and contradiction. When she emerged in the UK comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was strikingly attractive and didn’t pretend not to know it. “Trying to be glamorous or beautiful was seen as catering to male approval,” she states of the start of the decade, “which was the reverse of what a comic would do. It was a trend to be humble. If you appeared in a elegant attire with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m fabulous,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I wanted.”
Then there was her material, which she describes breezily: “Women, especially, needed someone to appear and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a enhancement and have been a bit of a party-goer for a while. You can be human as a mother, as a spouse and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is wary of men, but is confident enough to mock them; you don’t have to be deferential to them the whole time.’”
‘If you performed in your little push-up bra and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’
The consistent message to that is an focus on what’s true: if you have your baby with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the jawline of a youth, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to reduce, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll look into them when I’ve stopped breastfeeding,” she says. It touches on the core of how feminism is viewed, which in my view hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: freedom means being attractive but not dwelling about it; being constantly sought after, but avoiding the attention of men; having an solid sense of self which God forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the pressure of modern economic conditions. All of which is kept afloat by the majority of us bullshitting, most of the time.
“For a long time people went: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My personal stories, actions and mistakes, they live in this realm between pride and regret. It took place, I share it, and maybe catharsis comes out of the jokes. I love sharing private thoughts; I want people to confide in me their private thoughts. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I feel it like a link.”
Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably prosperous or urban and had a lively amateur dramatics musicals scene. Her dad managed an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was vivacious, a driven person. She wanted to escape from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very content to live nearby to their parents and stay there for a long time and have each other’s children. When I go back now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But she later reunited with her own first love? She returned to Sarnia, met again her former partner, who she saw as a teenager, and now – six years later – they have three children together, plus Violet, now 16, who Ryan had raised until then as a single mother. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s a different path where I avoided that, and it’s still just Violet and me, chic, worldly, flexible. But we can’t fully escape where we originated, it appears.”
‘We cannot completely leave behind where we started’
She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. These were the period working there, which has been an additional point of discussion, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a establishment (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be dismissed for being topless; you’re not allowed to be unclothed”), but also for a bit in one of her sets where she talked about giving a manager a blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many taboos – what even was that? Manipulation? Transaction? Inappropriate conduct? Unsisterliness (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you absolutely were not expected to joke about it.
Ryan was surprised that her story generated outrage – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something broader: a strategic inflexibility around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was outward purity. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in discussions about sex, permission and manipulation, the people who fail to grasp the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She references the linking of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it similar?’”
She would not have relocated to London in 2008 had it not been for her romantic interest. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have rats there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was instantly broke.”
‘I was aware I had comedy’
She got a job in retail, was diagnosed a chronic illness, which can sometimes make it hard to get pregnant, and at 23, decided to try to have a baby. “When you’re first told you have something – I was quite ill at the time – you go to the worst-case scenario. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many ups and downs, if we are still together by now, we never will. Now I see how extended life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.
The following period sounds as nerve-wracking as a tense comedy film. While on parental leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to enter comedy in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem being convincing, and she had belief in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I was confident I had jokes.” The whole industry was shot through with bias – she won a prestigious comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was established in the context of a persistent debate about whether women could be funny
