Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Achievement, Criticism and Fearlessness.
‘Especially in this nation, I think you craved me. You didn't comprehend it but you craved me, to lift some of your own guilt.” The performer, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has lived in the UK for almost 20 years, was accompanied by her brand new fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they won't create an annoying sound. The primary observation you observe is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can project motherly affection while forming coherent ideas in full statements, and remaining distracted.
The next aspect you notice is what she’s known for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a rejection of pretense and hypocrisy. When she sprang on to the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was exceptionally beautiful and refused to act not to know it. “Attempting elegant or beautiful was seen as appealing to men,” she recalls of the start of the decade, “which was the antithesis of what a comic would do. It was a norm to be humble. If you went on stage in a stylish dress with your lingerie and heels, like, ‘I think I’m stunning,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”
Then there was her comedy, which she explains casually: “Women, especially, needed someone to come along and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a advocate for equality and have a enhancement and have been a bit of a promiscuous person for a while. You can be imperfect as a parent, as a significant other and as a selector of men. You can be someone who is wary of men, but is self-assured enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the entire time.’”
‘If you performed in your little push-up bra 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 baby with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the jawline of a youngster, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to reduce, well, there are drugs for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll look into them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It touches on the core of how feminism is viewed, which I believe hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: freedom means looking great but not dwelling about it; being universally desired, but never chasing the male gaze; having an impermeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever surgically enhance; and allied to all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless prosper under the pressure of late capitalist conditions. All of which is kept afloat by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.
“For a long time people said: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My experiences, behaviors and missteps, they live in this area between pride and embarrassment. It happened, I discuss it, and maybe catharsis comes out of the jokes. I love telling people confessions; I want people to confide in me their secrets. I want to know mistakes people have made. I don’t know why I’m so eager for it, but I view it like a connection.”
Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably wealthy or urban and had a vibrant local performance arts scene. Her dad owned an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was sparky, a perfectionist. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very pleased to live close to their parents and remain there for a considerable period and have one another's children. When I go back now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I spent my childhood with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own teenage boyfriend? She traveled back to Sarnia, caught up with 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 cared for 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, stylish, cosmopolitan, flexible. But we cannot completely leave behind where we came from, it seems.”
‘We can’t fully escape where we came from’
She managed to leave for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. These were the period working there, which has been a further cause of controversy, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a venue (except this is a misconception: “You would be dismissed for being nude; you’re not allowed to be unclothed”), but also for a bit in one of her performances where she discussed giving a manager a blowjob in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many taboos – what even was that? Abuse? Sex work? Predatory behavior? Unsisterliness (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you certainly were not meant to joke about it.
Ryan was surprised that her anecdote generated 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 modesty. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in debates about sex, agreement and manipulation, the people who don’t understand the complexity of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She mentions the linking of certain comments to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”
She would not have come to London in 2008 had it not been for her then boyfriend. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have vermin there.’ And I disliked it, because I was immediately poor.”
‘I knew I had material’
She got a job in retail, was told she had lupus, which can sometimes make it difficult to get pregnant, and at 23, made the decision to try to have a baby. “When you’re first told you have something – I was quite unwell at the time – you go to the most negative outcome. My logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many problems, if we are still together by now, we never will. Now I see how long life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I was unaware.” 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 take care of Violet in the day and try to make her way in standup in the evening, bringing her daughter with her. She knew from her sales job that she had no problem being convincing, and she had belief in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I felt sure I had jokes.” The whole industry was permeated with discrimination – she won a prestigious comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was created in the context of a persistent debate about whether women could be funny
