Katherine Ryan on Feminism, Achievement, Criticism and Fearlessness.
‘Especially in this nation, I believe you needed me. You didn’t realise it but you needed me, to lift some of your own guilt.” The performer, the 42-year-old Canadian humorist who has made her home in the UK for almost 20 years, has brought her brand new fourth child. She removes her breast pumps so they avoid making an irritating sound. The initial impression you notice is the awesome capability of this woman, who can fully beam motherly affection while articulating sequential thoughts in full statements, and without getting distracted.
The second thing you see is what she’s known for – a natural, unaffected ballsiness, a rejection of artifice and hypocrisy. When she burst onto the UK alternative comedy scene in 2008, her statement was that she was very good-looking and didn’t pretend not to know it. “Aiming for glamorous or pretty was seen as man-pleasing,” she states of the that period, “which was the antithesis of what a comic would do. It was a trend to be humble. 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 alienating, but I did it because that’s what I enjoyed.”
Then there was her material, which she explains simply: “Women, especially, required someone to arrive and be like: ‘Hey, that’s OK. You can be a feminist and have a cosmetic surgery and have been a bit of a party-goer for a while. You can be human as a mother, as a spouse and as a chooser of men. You can be someone who is fearful of men, but is bold enough to mock them; you don’t have to be nice to them the entire time.’”
‘If you performed in your underwear and heels, that would be seen as really alienating’
The consistent message to that is an emphasis on what’s true: if you have your infant with you, you most likely have your feeding equipment; if you have the profile of a young person, you’ve most likely undergone procedures; if you want to slim down, 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 gets to the core of how female emancipation is conceived, which in my view has stayed the same in the past 50 years: freedom means being attractive but without ever thinking about it; being constantly sought after, but without pursuing the male gaze; having an unshakeable sense of self which heaven forbid you would ever alter cosmetically; and allied to all that, women, especially, are supposed to never think about money but nevertheless succeed under the pressure of late capitalist conditions. All of which is maintained by the majority of us bullshitting, most of the time.
“For a considerable period people said: ‘What? She just talks about things?’ But I’m not trying to be provocative all the time. My life events, choices and mistakes, they reside in this space between satisfaction and regret. It took place, I discuss it, and maybe relief comes out of the humor. I love revealing confessions; 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 sense it like a bond.”
Ryan was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, a place that was not particularly wealthy or cosmopolitan and had a vibrant amateur dramatics arts scene. Her dad owned an industrial company, her mother was in IT, and they demanded a lot of her because she was sparky, a perfectionist. She longed to get out from the age of about seven. “It was the type of place where people are very pleased to live nearby to their parents and remain there for a lifetime and have one another's children. When I return now, all these kids look really recognizable to me, because I spent my childhood with both their parents.” But isn't it true she partnered with her own high school sweetheart? She traveled back to Sarnia, reconnected 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 brought up 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, sophisticated, urban, mobile. But we can’t fully escape where we came from, it turns out.”
‘We are always connected to where we originated’
She got away for a bit, aged 18, and moved to Toronto, which she enjoyed. 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 establishment (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 sets where she mentioned giving a manager a sexual favor in return for being allowed to go home early. It violated so many boundaries – what even was that? Manipulation? Sex work? Unethical action? Unsisterliness (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 caused controversy – she was fond of the guy! She also wanted to go home early. But it revealed something larger: a strategic rigidity around sex, a sense that the price of the #MeToo movement was outward purity. “I’ve always found this interesting, in arguments about sex, consent and abuse, the people who don’t understand the subtlety of it. Therefore if this is abuse, why isn’t that abuse?” She mentions the comparison of certain statements to lyrics in popular music. “Some individuals said: ‘Well, how’s that dissimilar?’ I thought: ‘How is it alike?’”
She would never have moved to London in 2008 had it not been for her then boyfriend. “Everyone said: ‘Don’t go to London, they have pests there.’ And I found it difficult, because I was suddenly poor.”
‘I knew I had comedy’
She got a job in sales, was found to have a chronic illness, which can sometimes make it difficult 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 logic with my boyfriend was, we’ve had so many issues, if we haven’t split up by now, we never will. Now I see how lengthy life is, and how many things can transform. But at 23, I couldn’t see it.” She managed to get pregnant and had Violet.
The next bit sounds as high-pressure as a classic comedy film. While on maternity leave, she would care for Violet in the day and try to break into comedy in the evening, carrying her daughter with her. She knew from her sales job that she had no problem being convincing, and she had confidence in her fast thinking from her time at Hooters; more than that, she says bluntly, “I knew I had comedy.” The whole scene was riddled 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 turgid debate about whether women could be funny
