Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Achievement, Criticism and Fearlessness.
‘Especially in this place, I feel you required me. You didn’t realise it but you required me, to lift some of your own guilt.” The performer, the forty-two-year-old Canadian comedian who has been based in the UK for close to 20 years, has brought her brand new fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they won't create an annoying sound. The first thing you notice is the incredible ability of this woman, who can radiate motherly affection while articulating sequential thoughts in complete phrases, and remaining distracted.
The following element you see is what she’s known for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a dismissal of affectation and duplicity. When she sprang on to the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was strikingly attractive and refused to act not to know it. “Trying to be glamorous or pretty was seen as catering to male approval,” she remembers of the early 2010s, “which was the opposite of what a comedian would do. It was a fashion to be self-deprecating. If you appeared in a stylish dress with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m gorgeous,’ that would be seen as really unappealing, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”
Then there was her material, which she explains breezily: “Women, especially, required someone to arrive and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a enhancement and have been a bit of a party-goer for a while. You can be human as a parent, as a spouse and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is wary of men, but is bold enough to slag them off; you don’t have to be deferential to them the all the time.’”
‘If you performed in your lingerie and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’
The underlying theme to that is an insistence on what’s true: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the profile of a youth, you’ve most likely had tweakments; 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 nursing,” she says. It touches on the root of how women's liberation is understood, which in my view remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: freedom means being attractive but never thinking about it; being widely admired, but avoiding the attention of men; having an unshakeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever alter cosmetically; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless succeed under the pressure of late capitalist conditions. All of which is sustained by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.
“For a considerable period people went: ‘What? She just speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My personal stories, actions and missteps, they live in this space between confidence and embarrassment. It occurred, I discuss it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the punchlines. I love telling people secrets; I want people to tell me their confessions. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I sense it like a connection.”
Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially wealthy or cosmopolitan and had a active local performance musicals scene. Her dad owned an engineering company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was bright, a driven person. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very pleased to live nearby to their parents and remain there for a long time and have each other’s children. When I visit 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 first love? She went back to Sarnia, caught up with her former partner, who she dated as a teenager, and now – six years later – they have three children together, plus Violet, now 16, who Ryan had raised 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, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, flexible. But we cannot completely leave behind where we originated, it seems.”
‘We are always connected to where we came from’
She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been an additional point of controversy, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a establishment (except this is a myth: “You would be dismissed for being topless; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), but also for a bit in one of her performances where she talked about giving a manager a blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many boundaries – what even was that? Manipulation? Transaction? Unethical action? Betrayal (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you certainly weren’t supposed to joke about it.
Ryan was shocked that her anecdote caused anger – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it exposed something wider: a calculated rigidity around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was performed purity. “I’ve always found this notable, in arguments about sex, permission and exploitation, the people who fail to grasp the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She references 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 not have relocated to London in 2008 had it not been for her romantic interest. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have rats there.’ And I disliked it, because I was immediately 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 challenging to get pregnant, and at 23, decided to try to have a baby. “When you’re first diagnosed something – I was quite ill at the time – you go to the darkest possibility. My rationale with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many issues, 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 succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.
The following period sounds as high-pressure as a chaotic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to break into comedy in the evening, bringing her daughter with her. She knew from her sales job that she had no problem winning people over, and she had faith in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I felt sure I had material.” The whole circuit was shot through with bias – she won a major 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
