Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Success, Negative Reviews and Audacity.
‘Especially in this country, I feel you craved me. You didn't comprehend it but you craved me, to alleviate some of your own guilt.” The performer, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has been based in the UK for almost 20 years, brought along her recently born fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they avoid making an annoying sound. The initial impression you observe is the incredible ability of this woman, who can project motherly affection while articulating sequential thoughts in whole sentences, and never get distracted.
The following element you notice is what she’s known for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a refusal of artifice and hypocrisy. When she emerged in the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was exceptionally beautiful and made no attempt not to know it. “Aiming for glamorous or attractive was seen as catering to male approval,” she states of the that period, “which was the reverse of what a comedian would do. It was a trend to be self-deprecating. If you appeared in a elegant attire 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 routines, which she explains casually: “Women, especially, required someone to come along 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 slag 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 wary of men, but is bold enough to mock them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the entire time.’”
‘If you took to the stage in your lingerie and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’
The underlying theme to that is an focus on what’s authentic: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the facial structure of a youngster, you’ve most likely had tweakments; if you want to lose weight, well, there are treatments for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll consider them when I’ve stopped breastfeeding,” she says. It gets to the root of how feminism is understood, which it strikes me remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: empowerment means looking great but without ever thinking about it; being universally desired, but never chasing the male gaze; having an unshakeable sense of self which God forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the pressure of modern economic conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.
“For a while people reacted: ‘What? She just talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My personal stories, behaviors and mistakes, they exist in this realm between confidence and embarrassment. It occurred, I share it, and maybe relief comes out of the punchlines. I love telling people confessions; I want people to share with me their secrets. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I feel it like a connection.”
Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially wealthy or urban and had a vibrant community theater theater scene. Her dad ran an engineering company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was bright, a high achiever. She dreamed of leaving from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very happy to live nearby to their parents and live there for a considerable period and have their friends' children. When I go back now, all these kids look really known to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But didn’t she marry her own teenage boyfriend? She went back to Sarnia, met again Bobby Kootstra, who she saw 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 a different path where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, sophisticated, urban, mobile. But we are always connected to where we originated, it seems.”
‘We can’t fully escape where we originated’
She managed to leave for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she loved. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been a further cause of controversy, not just that she worked – and found it fun – in a topless bar (except this is a misconception: “You would be dismissed for being undressed; you’re not allowed to take your shirt off”), 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 breached so many red lines – what even was that? Manipulation? Sex work? 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 amazed that her story provoked outrage – she got on with the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something larger: a calculated inflexibility around sex, a sense that the consequence of the #MeToo movement was performed purity. “I’ve always found this notable, in debates about sex, permission and abuse, the people who don’t understand the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the linking of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that different?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”
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 pests there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was instantly broke.”
‘I knew I had jokes’
She got a job in business, was found to have lupus, which can sometimes make it challenging to get pregnant, and at 23, made the decision to try to have a baby. “When you’re first diagnosed something – I was quite unwell at the time – you go to the worst-case scenario. 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 lengthy life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.
The subsequent chapter sounds as high-pressure as a classic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would look after Violet in the day and try to enter comedy in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She knew 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 plainly, “I knew I had material.” The whole circuit was shot through with discrimination – she won a notable comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was created in the context of a turgid debate about whether women could be funny