Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Success, Negative Reviews and Audacity.
‘Especially in this nation, I feel you needed me. You didn't comprehend it but you craved me, to remove some of your own guilt.” The comedian, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has lived in the UK for almost 20 years, brought along her newly minted fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they don’t make an distracting sound. The primary observation you observe is the awesome capability of this woman, who can project parental devotion while articulating logical sentences in whole sentences, and remaining distracted.
The second thing you notice is what she’s known for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a rejection of affectation and hypocrisy. When she emerged in the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was strikingly attractive and made no attempt not to know it. “Attempting glamorous or pretty 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 norm to be humble. If you went on stage in a stylish dress with your underwear and heels, like, ‘I think I’m gorgeous,’ that would be seen as really unappealing, but I did it because that’s what I wanted.”
Then there was her material, which she explains breezily: “Women, especially, craved someone to come along 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 selector of men. You can be someone who is fearful of men, but is confident enough to criticize 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 alienating’
The drumbeat to that is an emphasis on what’s real: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the jawline of a young person, you’ve most likely had tweakments; if you want to lose weight, well, there are drugs for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll look into them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It gets to the root of how female emancipation is conceived, which I believe has stayed the same in the past 50 years: freedom means looking great but without ever thinking about it; being widely admired, but without pursuing the male gaze; having an solid sense of self which God forbid you would ever modify; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are meant to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the pressure of current financial conditions. All of which is sustained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.
“For a long time people reacted: ‘What? She just talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My personal stories, behaviors and errors, they live in this area between satisfaction and embarrassment. It took place, I discuss it, and maybe relief comes out of the humor. I love revealing secrets; I want people to tell me their private thoughts. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I sense it like a bond.”
Ryan spent her childhood in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially affluent or cosmopolitan and had a vibrant local performance arts scene. Her dad owned an engineering company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was sparky, a high achiever. She wanted to escape from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very pleased to live close to their parents and stay there for a considerable period and have their friends' children. When I return now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But didn’t she marry her own first love? She returned to Sarnia, met again an old flame, 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 single mother. “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, sophisticated, urban, flexible. But we cannot completely leave behind where we originated, it appears.”
‘We are always connected to where we came from’
She managed to leave for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the Hooters years, which has been an additional point of controversy, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a venue (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be let go for being topless; you’re not allowed to be unclothed”), but also for a bit in one of her performances where she talked about giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It crossed so many red lines – what even was that? Manipulation? Sex work? Unethical action? Unsisterliness (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you absolutely were not expected to joke about it.
Ryan was shocked that her story provoked outrage – she liked the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something broader: a strategic inflexibility around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was outward modesty. “I’ve always found this notable, in arguments about sex, agreement and manipulation, the people who don’t understand the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the equating of certain comments to lyrics in popular music. “They said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”
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 suddenly struggling.”
‘I felt confident I had material’
She got a job in business, was diagnosed a chronic illness, which can sometimes make it difficult 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 darkest possibility. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many issues, 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 nerve-wracking as a tense comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to make her way in standup 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 confidence in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says simply, “I knew I had material.” The whole scene was riddled 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