A Look at Katherine Ryan's Take on Success, Feminism, Bad Reviews and Ballsiness.
‘Especially in this nation, I feel you craved me. You weren't aware it but you needed me, to lift some of your own guilt.” Katherine Ryan, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has lived in the UK for almost 20 years, brought along her brand new fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they avoid making an annoying sound. The initial impression you notice is the incredible ability of this woman, who can project parental devotion while crafting sequential thoughts in full statements, and never get distracted.
The second thing you see is what she’s famous for – a authentic, unapologetic audacity, a dismissal of pretense and hypocrisy. When she emerged in the UK comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was very good-looking and made no attempt not to know it. “Aiming for stylish or beautiful 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 trend to be modest. If you performed in a glamorous outfit with your underwear 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, required 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 human as a parent, as a significant other and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is wary of men, but is bold enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be deferential to them the all the time.’”
‘If you performed in your underwear and heels, that would be seen as really off-putting’
The drumbeat to that is an emphasis on what’s real: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the jawline of a young person, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to lose weight, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll think about them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It touches on the core of how female emancipation is viewed, which it strikes me hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: freedom means appearing beautiful but not dwelling about it; being universally desired, but avoiding the attention of men; having an unshakeable sense of self which perish the thought you would ever modify; and coupled with 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 kept afloat by the majority of us pretending, most of the time.
“For a considerable period people said: ‘What? She just talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My experiences, behaviors and missteps, they exist in this area between pride and shame. It occurred, I talk about it, and maybe reprieve comes out of the humor. I love telling people secrets; I want people to share with me their secrets. I want to know missteps 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 particularly affluent or metropolitan and had a active community theater theater scene. Her dad owned an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was sparky, a high achiever. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very content to live nearby to their parents and stay there for a lifetime and have their friends' children. When I return now, all these kids look really known to me, because I was raised with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered 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 brought up 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, stylish, urban, portable. But we can’t fully escape where we came from, it appears.”
‘We cannot completely leave behind where we originated’
She did escape for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she loved. These were the period working there, which has been another source of debate, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a venue (except this is a misconception: “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 sets where she talked about giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It breached so many boundaries – what even was that? Exploitation? Prostitution? Inappropriate conduct? Lack of solidarity (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 provoked anger – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something larger: a calculated rigidity around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was performed modesty. “I’ve always found this notable, in debates about sex, agreement and manipulation, the people who misinterpret the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She mentions the comparison 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 come to London in 2008 had it not been for her partner at the time. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have pests there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was immediately struggling.”
‘I felt confident I had comedy’
She got a job in sales, was diagnosed lupus, which can sometimes make it difficult to get pregnant, and at 23, chose 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 darkest possibility. My reasoning with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many problems, if we haven’t split up by now, we never will. Now I see how long life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.
The following period sounds as nerve-wracking as a classic comedy film. While on time off, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to break into standup in the evening, taking her daughter with her. She knew from her sales job that she had no problem being convincing, and she had faith in her quickfire wit from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I was confident I had jokes.” The whole scene was riddled with bias – 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 ongoing debate about whether women could be funny
