A Look at Katherine Ryan's Take on Feminism, Achievement, Criticism and Fearlessness.
‘Especially in this nation, I feel you needed me. You weren't aware it but you craved me, to remove some of your own guilt.” The comedian, the forty-two-year-old Canadian humorist who has lived in the UK for close to 20 years, brought along her brand new fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they avoid making an distracting sound. The primary observation you observe is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can project maternal love while forming sequential thoughts in complete phrases, and never get distracted.
The next aspect you observe is what she’s known for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a dismissal of artifice and duplicity. When she emerged in the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was very good-looking and made no attempt not to know it. “Aiming for stylish or pretty was seen as catering to male approval,” she remembers of the start of the decade, “which was the antithesis of what a funny person would do. It was a trend to be humble. If you appeared in a glamorous outfit with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m fabulous,’ that would be seen as really unappealing, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”
Then there was her routines, which she summarises breezily: “Women, especially, required someone to appear and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a cosmetic surgery and have been a bit of a party-goer for a while. You can be imperfect as a mother, as a significant other and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is confident enough to slag them off; you don’t have to be deferential to them the all the time.’”
‘If you performed in your underwear and heels, that would be seen as really off-putting’
The consistent message to that is an emphasis on what’s authentic: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the facial structure of a youngster, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to reduce, 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 core of how female emancipation is conceived, which in my view hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: liberation means looking great but not dwelling about it; being universally desired, but avoiding the attention of men; having an unshakeable sense of self which God forbid you would ever surgically enhance; and allied to all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the relentlessness of modern economic conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.
“For a while people said: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My personal stories, actions and errors, they live in this realm between pride and shame. It happened, I share it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the jokes. I love sharing private thoughts; I want people to share with me their secrets. 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 spent her childhood in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially wealthy or cosmopolitan and had a active community theater theater scene. Her dad owned an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was vivacious, a perfectionist. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very happy to live close to their parents and remain there for a lifetime and have each other’s children. When I visit now, all these kids look really known to me, because I spent my childhood with both their parents.” But she later reunited with her own first love? She traveled back to Sarnia, reconnected with an old flame, who she dated 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 a different path where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, chic, urban, flexible. But we are always connected to where we started, it seems.”
‘We cannot completely leave behind where we came from’
She managed to leave for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. These were the Hooters years, which has been another source of controversy, not just that she worked – and liked the job – in a venue (except this is a myth: “You would be let go for being undressed; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), 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 crossed so many boundaries – what even was that? Exploitation? Sex work? Predatory behavior? Betrayal (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you definitely were not meant to joke about it.
Ryan was shocked that her fellatio sequence generated outrage – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something wider: a deliberate inflexibility around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was performed purity. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in arguments about sex, consent and exploitation, the people who don’t understand the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She mentions the comparison of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “They said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”
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 rats there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was suddenly poor.”
‘I felt confident I had comedy’
She got a job in sales, was told she had an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it hard to get pregnant, and at 23, chose 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 reasoning with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many problems, if we haven't separated by now, we never will. Now I see how extended 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 high-pressure as a tense comedy film. While on time off, she would care for Violet in the day and try to enter performance 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 faith in her sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I knew I had jokes.” The whole circuit was riddled with discrimination – she won a notable 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
