A Look at Katherine Ryan's Take on Feminism, Achievement, Criticism and Fearlessness.
‘Especially in this country, I believe you required me. You didn’t realise it but you required me, to lift some of your own guilt.” The comedian, the forty-two-year-old Canadian humorist who has lived in the UK for almost 20 years, brought along her newly minted fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they don’t make an distracting sound. The primary observation you see is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can radiate motherly affection while crafting sequential thoughts in complete phrases, and never get distracted.
The second thing you observe is what she’s famous for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a rejection of pretense and duplicity. When she emerged in the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was exceptionally beautiful and refused to act not to know it. “Trying to be elegant or beautiful was seen as appealing to men,” she states of the that period, “which was the opposite of what a funny person would do. It was a trend to be self-deprecating. If you appeared in a elegant attire 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 wanted.”
Then there was her material, which she summarises breezily: “Women, especially, needed 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 slag for a while. You can be imperfect as a parent, as a partner and as a selector of men. You can be someone who is fearful of men, but is confident enough to mock them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the whole time.’”
‘If you went on stage in your lingerie and heels, that would be seen as really off-putting’
The underlying theme to that is an emphasis on what’s authentic: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the facial structure of a youth, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to slim down, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll look into them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It touches on the root of how female emancipation is conceived, which I believe hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: freedom means looking great but never thinking about it; being universally desired, but avoiding the attention of men; having an unshakeable sense of self which heaven forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are meant to never think about money but nevertheless succeed under the relentlessness of current financial conditions. All of which is sustained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.
“For a considerable period people reacted: ‘What? She just talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My experiences, choices and missteps, they exist in this space between confidence and shame. It took place, I talk about it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the jokes. I love sharing confessions; I want people to tell me their private thoughts. I want to know missteps people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I view it like a bond.”
Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially prosperous or metropolitan and had a active local performance theater scene. Her dad managed an engineering company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was vivacious, a driven person. She longed to get out 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 live there for a lifetime and have their friends' children. When I return now, all these kids look really known to me, because I was raised with both their parents.” But didn’t she marry her own high school sweetheart? She traveled back to Sarnia, met again 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 another life where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, stylish, worldly, portable. But we cannot completely leave behind where we came from, it seems.”
‘We can’t fully escape where we came from’
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 an additional point of debate, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a establishment (except this is a misconception: “You would be let go for being nude; you’re not allowed to be unclothed”), but also for a bit in one of her performances where she mentioned giving a manager a blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It crossed so many red lines – what even was that? Abuse? Prostitution? Unethical action? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you definitely weren’t supposed to joke about it.
Ryan was shocked that her anecdote generated outrage – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something broader: a calculated rigidity around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative purity. “I’ve always found this notable, in arguments about sex, permission and manipulation, the people who fail to grasp the subtlety of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the equating of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it similar?’”
She would never have moved to London in 2008 had it not been for her romantic interest. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have vermin there.’ And I hated it, because I was suddenly struggling.”
‘I was aware I had comedy’
She got a job in sales, was found to have an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it difficult to get pregnant, and at 23, made the decision to try to have a baby. “When you’re first informed about something – I was quite sick at the time – you go to the most negative outcome. 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 lengthy life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.
The next bit sounds as high-pressure as a chaotic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would care for Violet in the day and try to make her way in comedy in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She felt from her sales job that she had no problem winning people over, and she had belief in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I knew I had jokes.” The whole industry was shot through with discrimination – she won a major comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was established in the context of a turgid debate about whether women could be funny
