Katherine Ryan on Success, Feminism, Bad Reviews and Ballsiness.
‘Especially in this nation, I feel you required me. You didn’t realise it but you needed me, to remove some of your own guilt.” Katherine Ryan, the forty-two-year-old Canadian humorist who has made her home in the UK for close to 20 years, has brought her newly minted fourth child. She takes off her breast pumps so they avoid making an annoying sound. The primary observation you see is the awesome capability of this woman, who can fully beam maternal love while forming logical sentences in whole sentences, and never get distracted.
The following element you notice is what she’s renowned for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a rejection of artifice and duplicity. When she burst onto the UK comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was very good-looking and made no attempt not to know it. “Trying to be stylish or pretty was seen as appealing to men,” she remembers of the early 2010s, “which was the reverse of what a comedian would do. It was a norm to be modest. If you went on stage in a elegant attire with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m gorgeous,’ that would be seen as really off-putting, but I did it because that’s what I wanted.”
Then there was her routines, which she explains simply: “Women, especially, required someone to appear and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a advocate for equality and have a boob job and have been a bit of a promiscuous person for a while. You can be flawed as a mother, as a partner and as a selector of men. You can be someone who is afraid of men, but is self-assured enough to mock them; you don’t have to be pleasant to them the all the time.’”
‘If you went on stage in your lingerie and heels, that would be seen as really unappealing’
The consistent message to that is an focus on what’s true: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your breast pumps; if you have the profile of a youngster, you’ve most likely received treatments; if you want to lose weight, well, there are drugs for that. “I’m not on any yet, but I’ll think about them when I’ve stopped nursing,” she says. It touches on the root of how feminism is understood, which it strikes me hasn’t really changed in the past 50 years: empowerment means looking great but not dwelling about it; being constantly sought after, but avoiding the male gaze; having an solid sense of self which perish the thought you would ever alter cosmetically; and coupled with all that, women, especially, are meant 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 pretending, most of the time.
“For a while people reacted: ‘What? She just discusses things?’ But I’m not trying to be controversial all the time. My personal stories, actions and missteps, they exist in this space between satisfaction and embarrassment. It happened, I discuss it, and maybe relief comes out of the punchlines. I love sharing confessions; I want people to confide in me their private thoughts. I want to know errors people have made. I don’t know why I’m so keen for it, but I sense it like a bond.”
Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not notably prosperous or metropolitan and had a vibrant amateur dramatics musicals scene. Her dad ran an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they expected a lot of her because she was vivacious, a high achiever. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the kind of town where people are very content to live nearby to their parents and remain there for a lifetime and have each other’s children. When I visit now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I grew up with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own high school sweetheart? She went back 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, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, portable. But we can’t fully escape where we originated, it seems.”
‘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 an additional point of debate, not just that she worked – and enjoyed working – in a topless bar (except this is a myth: “You would be let go for being undressed; 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 crossed so many boundaries – what even was that? Abuse? Sex work? Inappropriate conduct? Betrayal (towards whoever it was who had to stay late so she could leave early)? Whatever it was, you certainly weren’t supposed to joke about it.
Ryan was surprised that her story generated 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 price of the #MeToo movement was performed purity. “I’ve always found this fascinating, in debates about sex, consent and exploitation, the people who misinterpret the nuance of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She brings up the comparison of certain comments to lyrics in popular music. “They 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 partner at the time. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have rats there.’ And I hated it, because I was instantly poor.”
‘I felt confident I had comedy’
She got a job in business, was found to have a chronic illness, 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 worst-case scenario. My rationale with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many ups and downs, if we haven’t split up by now, we never will. Now I see how long life is, and how many things can change. But at 23, I didn't realize.” She was able to get pregnant and had Violet.
The next bit sounds as high-pressure as a classic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would look after Violet in the day and try to make her way in standup in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She was aware from her sales job that she had no problem winning people over, and she had faith in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I knew I had jokes.” The whole circuit was riddled with sexism – she won a prestigious comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was established in the context of a turgid debate about whether women could be funny
