Katherine Ryan on Success, Feminism, Bad Reviews and Ballsiness.
‘Especially in this place, I think you needed me. You weren't aware it but you required me, to lift some of your own embarrassment.” Katherine Ryan, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has been based in the UK for nearly 20 years, has brought her brand new fourth child. Ryan whips off her breast pumps so they avoid making an distracting sound. The first thing you observe is the remarkable capacity of this woman, who can fully beam parental devotion while forming coherent ideas in complete phrases, and remaining distracted.
The next aspect you notice is what she’s famous for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a rejection of pretense and hypocrisy. When she emerged in the UK stand-up scene in 2008, her provocation was that she was exceptionally beautiful and refused to act not to know it. “Attempting elegant or attractive was seen as appealing to men,” she recalls of the early 2010s, “which was the antithesis of what a comedian would do. It was a fashion to be self-deprecating. If you appeared in a elegant attire with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m fabulous,’ that would be seen as really off-putting, but I did it because that’s what I liked.”
Then there was her routines, which she summarises casually: “Women, especially, needed someone to appear 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 party-goer 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 fearful of men, but is bold enough to criticize them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the all the time.’”
‘If you performed in your underwear and heels, that would be seen as really off-putting’
The consistent message to that is an focus on what’s true: if you have your child with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the jawline of a youth, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to slim down, well, there are medications for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll look into them when I’ve stopped feeding,” she says. It addresses the core of how feminism is conceived, which I believe hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: empowerment means being attractive but without ever thinking about it; being widely admired, but avoiding the attention of men; having an solid sense of self which heaven forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless succeed under the demands of late capitalist conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us bullshitting, most of the time.
“For a while people said: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be challenging all the time. My personal stories, choices and missteps, they reside in this space between satisfaction and embarrassment. It took place, I discuss it, and maybe relief comes out of the humor. I love sharing private thoughts; I want people to share with me their private thoughts. 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 especially prosperous or urban and had a active amateur dramatics arts scene. Her dad ran an technical company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was vivacious, a driven person. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very happy to live close to their parents and live there for a long time and have each other’s children. When I go back now, all these kids look really known 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 her former partner, who she went out with 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 avoided that, and it’s still just Violet and me, stylish, urban, flexible. But we cannot completely leave behind where we came from, it seems.”
‘We are always connected to where we started’
She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she adored. These were the time at the restaurant, which has been an additional point of discussion, 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 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? Manipulation? Sex work? Unethical action? 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 shocked that her anecdote generated controversy – she liked the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something wider: a strategic 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 manipulation, the people who don’t understand the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She mentions the equating of certain remarks to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that distinct?’ I thought: ‘How is it comparable?’”
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 rats there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was instantly struggling.”
‘I knew I had jokes’
She got a job in retail, was found to have an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it difficult to get pregnant, and at 23, chose to try to have a baby. “When you’re first informed about something – I was quite sick at the time – you go to the darkest possibility. 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 extended life is, and how many things can change. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.
The following period sounds as white-knuckle as a tense comedy film. While on time off, she would take care of Violet in the day and try to break into comedy in the evening, bringing her daughter with her. She felt from her sales job that she had no problem persuading others, and she had confidence in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says plainly, “I knew I had comedy.” The whole industry was riddled with sexism – 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
