Yesterday I was perusing Twitter and was surprised to see that Katherine Ryan had tweeted a photo of her bottom (a belfie, if you will) looking swollen and bruised. Accompanying the photo was a peach emoji – natch, and a message saying: “It’s true, I got a #BBL by an unlicensed surgeon but I’m making the best of it. Sorry to let you down. Refunds for canceled shows this wk.” Followed by another tweet saying: “I asked the doctor for ‘Kylie’ but he did the wrong one. Very stupid. Not worth it.”
I’d like to say I knew straightaway this was a hoax, or rather #FakeNews as Katherine put it, to promote her show on Saturday on Channel 4. The Mirror and the Daily Mail covered the fake story of Katherine’s botched surgery and have since posted updates to say it was all FAKE but the Mail still managed to add a breathless description that I’m pretty sure was lifted from a Mills & Boon story of Katherine’s pose “Katherine pulled at her pink sweater and gave the camera a coy look, brushing her lip with her finger in mock-innocence.”
My first slightly uncharitable thought was ‘Does Katherine have any shows this week? Isn’t the Kathbum tour over?’ and the next one was ‘surely successful-comedian-off-the-television Katherine Ryan has enough money for cosmetic surgery.’ I make no apologies, it is my job to be aware of which comedian is touring when, also I am too poor for botox so it is my wont to speculate over what surgery people can afford.
Did I bother to tweet Katherine either of these thoughts? No. However plenty of her followers were on hand to offer their sympathies and criticisms. One saying her augmented bottom looked like ‘a shelf’ and another saying ‘No sympathy, pure stupidity. There was no need. You used to look great why do that?’
Why do that indeed? ‘Well it just goes to show’ I said, sagely, to my husband who disapproved of the alleged surgery, ‘no one is safe from insecurities.’ People have cosmetic surgery for all kinds of reasons and our only concerns really should be that they don’t go into insane debt for it and that they are safe. However it is seen as our duty to wag our fingers at every woman who has it done. Particularly if they are famous.
The unwritten rule remains that if you are a woman in the public eye, then the public technically owns you. What a burden it is to constantly police a woman’s sweat, wrinkles and weight – especially weight because at any moment a star could be flaunting it or losing it, as it were. Yet how unladylike it apparently is to visibly try to meet various physical criteria using any kind of shortcut. You MAY be photographed partaking in gruelling exercise routines, you may not let on of any liposuction. That would be a bad example for all the young people out there – though it is not a bad example to tell grown women off for choosing to change themselves.
For a comedian like Katherine Ryan the idea of surgery invites extra criticism. This is because whilst I’d like to think we are in the final stages of the Can Women Be Funny? debate, we are at a point where we are asking ‘can women be funny and pretty or vain?’ as if it matters. No one asks can men be handsome and funny because we take into account factors such as being funny can make you more attractive etc. Just as it’s apparently ok to remark on a woman comedian’s ugliness and cite it as a reason for not liking her work, even though that would rarely be seen as an acceptable reason to air for disliking a male comedian.
Twitter got cross with Katherine because as a comedian who sends up celebrities and talks about feminism and IS A MOTHER who ‘already looks great’ she is not supposed to get surgery. By which I mean be vulnerable or insecure or worry about her appearance. When she admitted it was a hoax a lot of her followers tweeted their relief, not that she wasn’t suffering from botched surgery but that she had restored their perception of her.
This is because as a woman in the public eye she is apparently supposed to be a role model. She is supposed to be pretty, but not too pretty because she is funny and the jury is apparently still out on whether you can be funny and try to be more attractive…
The Fake News Show is on Channel 4 this Saturday at 8pm
