Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Achievement, Criticism and Fearlessness.
‘Especially in this nation, I feel you craved me. You weren't aware it but you needed me, to alleviate some of your own embarrassment.” The performer, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has made her home in the UK for close to 20 years, was accompanied by her recently born fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they won't create an annoying sound. The first thing you notice is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can radiate maternal love while forming sequential thoughts in complete phrases, and never get distracted.
The second thing you notice is what she’s famous for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a dismissal of affectation and hypocrisy. When she burst onto the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was strikingly attractive and refused to act not to know it. “Attempting glamorous or pretty was seen as appealing to men,” she recalls of the start of the decade, “which was the antithesis of what a funny person would do. It was a fashion to be self-deprecating. If you performed in a stylish dress with your underwear and heels, like, ‘I think I’m gorgeous,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”
Then there was her material, which she explains casually: “Women, especially, needed someone to appear and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a boob job and have been a bit of a promiscuous person for a while. You can be imperfect as a parent, as a partner and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is bold enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the whole time.’”
‘If you performed in your lingerie and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’
The consistent message to that is an emphasis on what’s authentic: 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 undergone procedures; if you want to reduce, well, there are treatments for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll consider them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It addresses the heart of how feminism is conceived, which in my view hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: liberation means appearing beautiful but without ever thinking about it; being widely admired, but without pursuing the attention of men; having an unshakeable sense of self which heaven forbid you would ever modify; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless succeed under the relentlessness of modern economic conditions. All of which is kept afloat by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.
“For a while people reacted: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My personal stories, actions and mistakes, they live in this space between satisfaction and regret. It happened, I discuss it, and maybe relief comes out of the punchlines. I love revealing confessions; I want people to tell me their private thoughts. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so thirsty for it, but I feel it like a connection.”
Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly wealthy or urban and had a vibrant amateur dramatics theater scene. Her dad managed an engineering company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was sparky, a high achiever. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the sort of community where people are very content to live next door to their parents and stay there for a lifetime and have each other’s children. When I visit now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I spent my childhood with both their parents.” But she later reunited with her own first love? She returned 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 cared for until then as a lone parent. “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, chic, urban, portable. But we cannot completely leave behind where we originated, it appears.”
‘We are always connected to where we originated’
She managed to leave for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. These were the Hooters years, which has been an additional point of discussion, not just that she worked – and found it fun – in a topless bar (except this is a misconception: “You would be fired for being nude; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), but also for a bit in one of her sets 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? Abuse? Prostitution? Unethical action? Betrayal (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you certainly were not expected to joke about it.
Ryan was amazed that her fellatio sequence caused outrage – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something broader: a calculated absolutism around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was demonstrative purity. “I’ve always found this notable, in debates about sex, permission and exploitation, the people who misinterpret 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 dissimilar?’ I thought: ‘How is it comparable?’”
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 found it difficult, because I was instantly broke.”
‘I felt confident I had comedy’
She got a job in retail, was diagnosed 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 told you have something – I was quite ill 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 didn't realize.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.
The next bit sounds as nerve-wracking as a chaotic comedy film. While on time off, she would look after Violet in the day and try to break into standup in the evening, bringing her daughter with her. She felt from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had belief in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I knew I had comedy.” The whole circuit was permeated with sexism – she won a prestigious comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was conceived in the context of a turgid debate about whether women could be funny