Exploring Katherine Ryan's Views on Feminism, Success, Negative Reviews and Audacity.
‘Especially in this nation, I think you required me. You didn't comprehend it but you craved me, to lift some of your own shame.” The comedian, the 42-year-old Canadian comedian who has been based in the UK for close to 20 years, was accompanied by her newly minted fourth child. Ryan whips off her breast pumps so they don’t make an irritating sound. The initial impression you observe is the incredible ability of this woman, who can fully beam parental devotion while crafting coherent ideas in complete phrases, and never get distracted.
The following element you observe is what she’s known for – a genuine, inherent fearlessness, a rejection of affectation and contradiction. When she sprang on to the UK comedy scene in 2008, her challenge was that she was exceptionally beautiful and didn’t pretend not to know it. “Trying to be elegant or beautiful was seen as appealing to men,” she states of the that period, “which was the reverse of what a comic would do. It was a fashion to be modest. If you performed in a glamorous outfit with your little push-up bra and heels, like, ‘I think I’m fabulous,’ that would be seen as really unappealing, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”
Then there was her material, which she explains casually: “Women, especially, craved 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 slag for a while. You can be imperfect as a parent, as a spouse 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 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 focus on what’s authentic: if you have your baby with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the profile of a young person, you’ve most likely had tweakments; if you want to reduce, well, there are medications 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 heart of how feminism is conceived, which I believe has stayed the same in the past 50 years: empowerment means appearing beautiful but not dwelling about it; being constantly sought after, but never chasing the male gaze; having an unshakeable sense of self which God forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and in addition to all that, women, especially, are expected to never think about money but nevertheless succeed under the relentlessness of late capitalist conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us being dishonest, most of the time.
“For a while people reacted: ‘What? She just speaks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My life events, actions and missteps, they live in this space between pride and embarrassment. It occurred, I share it, and maybe catharsis comes out of the punchlines. I love sharing confessions; I want people to confide in me their secrets. 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 link.”
Ryan grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly wealthy or urban and had a active local performance theater scene. Her dad managed an engineering company, her mother was in IT, and they anticipated a lot of her because she was bright, a high achiever. She dreamed of leaving 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 long time and have their friends' children. When I return now, all these kids look really familiar to me, because I was raised with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own high school sweetheart? She returned 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 an alternate reality where I avoided that, and it’s still just Violet and me, stylish, urban, flexible. But we are always connected to where we originated, it appears.”
‘We cannot completely leave behind where we originated’
She managed to leave 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 liked the job – in a topless bar (except this is a inaccuracy: “You would be dismissed for being topless; you’re not allowed to remove your top”), but also for a bit in one of her performances where she discussed giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It violated so many boundaries – what even was that? Abuse? 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 absolutely were not meant to joke about it.
Ryan was amazed that her anecdote provoked controversy – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something broader: a deliberate inflexibility around sex, a sense that the cost of the #MeToo movement was performed purity. “I’ve always found this notable, in discussions about sex, permission and abuse, the people who fail to grasp the complexity of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She references the linking of certain comments to lyrics in popular music. “Certain people said: ‘Well, how’s that different?’ I thought: ‘How is it comparable?’”
She would not have relocated 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 hated it, because I was suddenly struggling.”
‘I felt confident I had jokes’
She got a job in retail, was found to have an autoimmune condition, which can sometimes make it challenging to get pregnant, and at 23, decided 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 ups and downs, if we haven't separated 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 succeeded in get pregnant and had Violet.
The subsequent chapter sounds as white-knuckle as a classic comedy film. While on parental leave, she would care for 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 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 material.” The whole scene was riddled with discrimination – she won a major comedy award in 2008, just over a year after she’d started performing, a prize that was established in the context of a persistent debate about whether women could be funny
