Exploring Katherine Ryan's Views on Feminism, Achievement, Criticism and Fearlessness.
‘Especially in this country, I think you required me. You didn't comprehend it but you craved me, to lift some of your own guilt.” The performer, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comic who has been based in the UK for nearly 20 years, brought along her newly minted fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they don’t make an annoying sound. The first thing you observe is the awesome capability of this woman, who can project motherly affection while articulating sequential thoughts in full statements, and without getting distracted.
The following element you notice is what she’s renowned for – a natural, unaffected ballsiness, a rejection of artifice and hypocrisy. When she sprang on to the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was exceptionally beautiful and made no attempt not to know it. “Aiming for glamorous or pretty was seen as man-pleasing,” she recalls of the start of the decade, “which was the opposite of what a comedian would do. It was a trend to be self-deprecating. If you appeared in a stylish dress with your underwear and heels, like, ‘I think I’m stunning,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”
Then there was her routines, which she summarises simply: “Women, especially, required someone to arrive and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a boob job and have been a bit of a slag for a while. You can be human as a parent, as a partner and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is bold enough to mock them; you don’t have to be nice to them the entire time.’”
‘If you went on stage in your underwear and heels, that would be seen as really off-putting’
The consistent message to that is an insistence on what’s true: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the jawline of a youth, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to slim down, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll consider them when I’ve stopped breastfeeding,” she says. It touches on the root of how women's liberation is conceived, which I believe remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: freedom means being attractive but not dwelling about it; being constantly sought after, but never chasing the male gaze; having an unshakeable sense of self which God forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are meant to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the demands of late capitalist conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.
“For a considerable period people went: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My personal stories, behaviors and mistakes, they live in this space between confidence and embarrassment. It happened, I share it, and maybe relief comes out of the jokes. I love telling people private thoughts; I want people to confide in me their secrets. 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 connection.”
Ryan spent her childhood in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably prosperous or urban and had a lively amateur dramatics musicals scene. Her dad owned an engineering company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was vivacious, a perfectionist. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very happy to live next door to their parents and live there for a considerable period and have one another's children. When I return now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own teenage boyfriend? She went back to Sarnia, reconnected 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 solo mom. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s another life where I haven’t done that, and it’s still just Violet and me, chic, cosmopolitan, flexible. But we are always connected to where we originated, it seems.”
‘We cannot completely leave behind where we started’
She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she loved. These were the Hooters years, which has been another source of discussion, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a venue (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be let go for being nude; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), but also for a bit in one of her sets where she discussed giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It crossed so many boundaries – 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 definitely were not meant to joke about it.
Ryan was shocked that her anecdote caused controversy – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something larger: a strategic absolutism around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was outward purity. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in arguments about sex, agreement and manipulation, the people who don’t understand the complexity of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She references the comparison of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “They 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 pests there.’ And I hated it, because I was suddenly broke.”
‘I felt confident I had comedy’
She got a job in business, was told she had 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 informed about something – I was quite sick at the time – you go to the darkest possibility. My reasoning with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many ups and downs, if we haven't separated by now, we never will. Now I see how lengthy life is, and how many things can alter. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.
The following period sounds as high-pressure as a chaotic comedy film. While on time off, she would care for Violet in the day and try to make her way in standup in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She felt from her sales job that she had no problem being convincing, and she had faith in her sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I was confident I had material.” The whole circuit was riddled with discrimination – 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
