Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Success, Negative Reviews and Audacity.
‘Especially in this place, I think you needed me. You didn’t realise it but you needed me, to remove some of your own embarrassment.” The performer, the 42-year-old Canadian comic who has been based in the UK for almost 20 years, was accompanied by her recently born fourth child. Ryan whips off her breast pumps so they avoid making an irritating sound. The first thing you observe is the awesome capability of this woman, who can radiate motherly affection while forming sequential thoughts in complete phrases, and never get distracted.
The second thing you see is what she’s famous for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a rejection of artifice and duplicity. When she burst onto the UK comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was very good-looking and didn’t pretend not to know it. “Attempting elegant or attractive was seen as catering to male approval,” she recalls of the that period, “which was the opposite of what a comedian would do. It was a norm to be humble. If you went on stage in a elegant attire with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m gorgeous,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”
Then there was her comedy, which she describes breezily: “Women, especially, craved someone to arrive and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a cosmetic surgery and have been a bit of a promiscuous person for a while. You can be imperfect as a mother, as a spouse and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is bold enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be nice to them the whole time.’”
‘If you went on stage in your lingerie and heels, that would be seen as really unappealing’
The consistent message to that is an emphasis on what’s authentic: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the jawline of a young person, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to slim down, well, there are treatments for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll consider them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It addresses the heart of how feminism is conceived, which it strikes me has stayed the same in the past 50 years: freedom means appearing beautiful but not dwelling about it; being constantly sought after, but avoiding the attention of men; having an impermeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever modify; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the pressure of current financial conditions. All of which is kept afloat by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.
“For a while people went: ‘What? She just speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My personal stories, choices and missteps, they live in this realm between satisfaction and regret. It occurred, I discuss it, and maybe relief comes out of the punchlines. I love sharing private thoughts; I want people to confide in me their confessions. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I view it like a link.”
Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially wealthy or urban and had a active community theater arts scene. Her dad ran an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was sparky, a perfectionist. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very happy to live next door to their parents and stay there for a lifetime and have their friends' children. When I visit now, all these kids look really known to me, because I was raised with both their parents.” But she later reunited with her own high school sweetheart? She returned to Sarnia, caught up with 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 brought up until then as a lone parent. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s another life where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, stylish, cosmopolitan, mobile. But we are always connected to where we originated, it appears.”
‘We cannot completely leave behind where we originated’
She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the Hooters years, which has been an additional point of discussion, not just that she worked – and found it fun – in a topless bar (except this is a myth: “You would be let go for being nude; you’re not allowed to be unclothed”), but also for a bit in one of her sets where she mentioned giving a manager a blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many taboos – what even was that? Exploitation? Prostitution? Unethical action? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you absolutely weren’t supposed to joke about it.
Ryan was surprised that her anecdote caused controversy – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it cracked open something larger: a deliberate inflexibility around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was performed purity. “I’ve always found this interesting, in debates about sex, permission and abuse, the people who don’t understand the complexity of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She mentions the equating of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “They said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it comparable?’”
She would not have come to London in 2008 had it not been for her partner at the time. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have vermin there.’ And I disliked it, because I was instantly broke.”
‘I was aware I had jokes’
She got a job in business, was found to have an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it hard to get pregnant, and at 23, decided to try to have a baby. “When you’re first informed about something – I was quite ill at the time – you go to the most negative outcome. My rationale with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many problems, if we haven’t split up by now, we never will. Now I see how extended life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I was unaware.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.
The subsequent chapter sounds as white-knuckle as a classic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to break into performance in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She felt from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had faith in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I was confident I had comedy.” The whole circuit was permeated with sexism – she won a notable comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was conceived in the context of a ongoing debate about whether women could be funny
