Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Achievement, Criticism and Fearlessness.
‘Especially in this nation, I feel you required me. You didn't comprehend it but you needed me, to remove some of your own embarrassment.” The comedian, the forty-two-year-old Canadian humorist who has been based in the UK for nearly 20 years, has brought her newly minted fourth child. Ryan whips off her breast pumps so they don’t make an annoying sound. The first thing you notice is the awesome capability of this woman, who can project motherly affection while forming logical sentences in complete phrases, and remaining distracted.
The following element you notice is what she’s known for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a dismissal of artifice and contradiction. When she emerged in the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was strikingly attractive and refused to act not to know it. “Attempting stylish or attractive was seen as catering to male approval,” she recalls of the that period, “which was the antithesis of what a funny person would do. It was a norm to be modest. If you appeared in a stylish dress with your lingerie and heels, like, ‘I think I’m stunning,’ that would be seen as really unappealing, but I did it because that’s what I wanted.”
Then there was her comedy, which she explains breezily: “Women, especially, craved someone to arrive and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a advocate for equality and have a cosmetic surgery and have been a bit of a party-goer for a while. You can be flawed as a parent, as a spouse and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is fearful of men, but is bold enough to mock them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the whole time.’”
‘If you took to the stage in your little push-up bra and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’
The drumbeat to that is an emphasis 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 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 consider them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It touches on the core of how feminism is viewed, which in my view has stayed the same in the past 50 years: liberation means appearing beautiful but not dwelling about it; being universally desired, but without pursuing the attention of men; having an unshakeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever modify; and allied to all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the demands of modern economic conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.
“For a while people reacted: ‘What? She just talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My life events, actions and mistakes, they exist in this realm between satisfaction and shame. It occurred, I share it, and maybe reprieve 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 thirsty for it, but I sense it like a connection.”
Ryan spent her childhood in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly wealthy or urban and had a vibrant local performance musicals scene. Her dad ran an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was sparky, a driven person. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very happy to live nearby to their parents and live there for a lifetime and have their friends' children. When I visit now, all these kids look really known to me, because I was raised with both their parents.” But didn’t she marry her own teenage boyfriend? She traveled back to Sarnia, reconnected 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 cared for until then as a single mother. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s an alternate reality where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, stylish, cosmopolitan, portable. But we cannot completely leave behind where we started, it seems.”
‘We can’t fully escape where we originated’
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 a further cause of controversy, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a topless bar (except this is a myth: “You would be fired for being undressed; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), but also for a bit in one of her routines where she talked about giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It violated so many taboos – what even was that? Manipulation? Transaction? 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 anecdote generated controversy – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something wider: a deliberate absolutism around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was performed modesty. “I’ve always found this interesting, in arguments about sex, consent and abuse, the people who misinterpret the complexity of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the equating of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it comparable?’”
She would not have relocated to London in 2008 had it not been for her then boyfriend. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have pests there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was immediately broke.”
‘I felt confident I had material’
She got a job in business, was diagnosed a chronic illness, which can sometimes make it challenging to get pregnant, and at 23, chose to try to have a baby. “When you’re first diagnosed something – I was quite sick at the time – you go to the worst-case scenario. My rationale 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 extended life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I was unaware.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.
The subsequent chapter sounds as white-knuckle as a classic comedy film. While on parental leave, she would look after Violet in the day and try to break into standup in the evening, bringing her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem winning people over, and she had confidence in her sharp humor from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I felt sure I had material.” The whole industry was riddled with discrimination – she won a prestigious 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
