Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Achievement, Criticism and Fearlessness.
‘Especially in this place, I believe you needed me. You didn't comprehend it but you craved me, to alleviate some of your own embarrassment.” The performer, the 42-year-old Canadian humorist who has been based in the UK for close to 20 years, has brought her newly minted fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they don’t make an irritating sound. The primary observation you observe is the incredible ability of this woman, who can radiate parental devotion while crafting logical sentences in complete phrases, and without getting distracted.
The following element you see is what she’s known for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a refusal of affectation and contradiction. When she emerged in the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was exceptionally beautiful and didn’t pretend not to know it. “Trying to be glamorous or beautiful was seen as appealing to men,” she states of the that period, “which was the reverse of what a funny person would do. It was a fashion to be modest. If you went on stage in a glamorous outfit with your lingerie and heels, like, ‘I think I’m fabulous,’ that would be seen as really alienating, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”
Then there was her comedy, which she summarises simply: “Women, especially, craved 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 party-goer for a while. You can be imperfect as a parent, as a significant other and as a picker of men. You can be someone who is wary of men, but is bold enough to mock them; you don’t have to be deferential 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 off-putting’
The consistent message to that is an insistence on what’s authentic: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the facial structure of a young person, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to slim down, 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 heart of how women's liberation is understood, which I believe remains largely unchanged in the past 50 years: freedom means looking great but never thinking about it; being universally desired, but never chasing the attention of men; having an solid sense of self which God forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and allied to all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless thrive under the demands of current financial conditions. All of which is kept afloat by the majority of us bullshitting, most of the time.
“For a considerable period people went: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My experiences, behaviors and errors, they reside in this area between pride and shame. It happened, I discuss it, and maybe relief comes out of the humor. I love telling people private thoughts; 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 view it like a bond.”
Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not especially wealthy or metropolitan and had a vibrant community theater musicals scene. Her dad owned an engineering company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was vivacious, a driven person. She wanted to escape from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very pleased to live nearby to their parents and live there for a long time and have each other’s children. When I return now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I was raised with both their parents.” But she later reunited with her own teenage boyfriend? She returned 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 solo mom. “Right,” says Ryan. “Sometimes I think there’s another life where I didn't make that, and it’s still just Violet and me, chic, cosmopolitan, portable. But we can’t fully escape where we originated, it appears.”
‘We can’t fully escape where we started’
She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she loved. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been an additional point of discussion, not just that she worked – and liked the job – in a topless bar (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be let go for being nude; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), 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 crossed so many taboos – what even was that? Exploitation? Sex work? Unethical action? Lack of solidarity (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you definitely weren’t supposed to joke about it.
Ryan was amazed that her anecdote provoked anger – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it cracked open something larger: a deliberate rigidity around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was performed purity. “I’ve always found this interesting, 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 references the linking of certain remarks 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 romantic interest. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have pests there.’ And I hated it, because I was immediately struggling.”
‘I felt confident I had comedy’
She got a job in business, was found to have a chronic illness, 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 informed about something – I was quite unwell at the time – you go to the worst-case scenario. My rationale with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many issues, if we are still together by now, we never will. Now I see how extended life is, and how many things can alter. But at 23, I was unaware.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.
The next bit sounds as high-pressure as a tense comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to enter comedy in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had faith in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I knew I had jokes.” The whole scene was permeated 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 persistent debate about whether women could be funny