Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Achievement, Criticism and Fearlessness.
‘Especially in this place, I believe you needed me. You weren't aware it but you needed me, to remove some of your own shame.” The comedian, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comic who has lived in the UK for almost 20 years, was accompanied by her recently born fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they avoid making an irritating sound. The primary observation you see is the awesome capability of this woman, who can fully beam motherly affection while crafting sequential thoughts in complete phrases, and without getting distracted.
The next aspect you see is what she’s renowned for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a rejection of pretense and contradiction. When she emerged in the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was strikingly attractive and made no attempt not to know it. “Trying to be elegant or attractive was seen as man-pleasing,” she remembers of the early 2010s, “which was the reverse of what a comedian would do. It was a trend to be humble. If you went on stage in a glamorous outfit 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 liked.”
Then there was her material, which she summarises simply: “Women, especially, craved someone to appear and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a advocate for equality and have a enhancement and have been a bit of a promiscuous person for a while. You can be imperfect as a parent, as a significant other and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is fearful of men, but is bold enough to mock them; you don’t have to be nice to them the all the time.’”
‘If you went on stage in your underwear and heels, that would be seen as really unappealing’
The drumbeat to that is an emphasis on what’s real: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the facial structure of a young person, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to lose weight, 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 touches on the root of how women's liberation is understood, which in my view hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: freedom means appearing beautiful but not dwelling about it; being constantly sought after, but without pursuing the attention of men; having an solid sense of self which perish the thought you would ever surgically enhance; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the demands of modern economic conditions. All of which is sustained by the majority of us bullshitting, most of the time.
“For a while people went: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My experiences, actions and mistakes, they reside in this space between pride and shame. It took place, I share it, and maybe relief comes out of the humor. I love sharing confessions; I want people to confide in me their private thoughts. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so thirsty for it, but I sense it like a connection.”
Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly wealthy or metropolitan and had a lively community theater musicals scene. Her dad managed an engineering company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was bright, a perfectionist. She wanted to escape from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very pleased to live next door to their parents and stay there for a considerable period and have their friends' children. When I go back now, all these kids look really familiar to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own teenage boyfriend? She returned to Sarnia, reconnected with an old flame, who she went out with 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 an alternate reality where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, chic, urban, mobile. But we are always connected to where we started, it seems.”
‘We can’t fully escape where we started’
She managed to leave for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been another source of controversy, not just that she worked – and found it fun – in a venue (except this is a myth: “You would be dismissed for being undressed; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), but also for a bit in one of her routines where she mentioned giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many red lines – what even was that? Exploitation? Sex work? Predatory behavior? Unsisterliness (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 fellatio sequence caused outrage – she liked the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it cracked open something wider: a strategic absolutism around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative modesty. “I’ve always found this interesting, in debates about sex, permission and abuse, the people who misinterpret the complexity of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the comparison of certain comments to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that dissimilar?’ I thought: ‘How is it similar?’”
She would never have moved to London in 2008 had it not been for her partner at the time. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have rats there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was instantly poor.”
‘I was aware I had comedy’
She got a job in business, was found to have a chronic illness, which can sometimes make it challenging 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 most negative outcome. My rationale 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 lengthy life is, and how many things can change. But at 23, I was unaware.” She succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.
The following period sounds as nerve-wracking as a chaotic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would care for Violet in the day and try to break into comedy in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had confidence in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I felt sure I had material.” The whole industry was riddled with sexism – she won a major comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was created in the context of a ongoing debate about whether women could be funny
