Barbie Boyfriend: Ken By Alamy
Ryan Gosling's plastic and fantastic Ken is the unexpected star of Greta Gerwig's new Barbie movie. He attracts everyone's attention as the heroine's eternal soulmate: a listless dude with a saggy smile and an urgent need to always be in the orbit of the eponymous Barbs (Margot Robbie). He's a toy who wants to be a guy, and Gosling plays him as an adorable mix of needy puppy and woozy himbo.
It's a sublime twist that takes the film in an unexpected direction. As Barbie's marketing material makes clear, independent director Gerwig wants to subvert the idea of corporate-sponsored blockbusters (though not to the point of annoying Barbie maker Mattel). However, hardly anyone could have expected that with Ken Gosling, Barbie would be hit in the forehead in David Fincher's Fight Club, The Godfather and men who play the guitar «on» women at parties.
Gosling went for broke as Ken, and some of the character traits were transferred to the actor. When advertising Barbie, he talked about finding and cherishing your «Kenergy» — the unspeakable vertigo that surrounds Ken and makes him both extremely sweet and slightly tragic. “Until this moment, I only knew Ken from a distance,” he said cryptically. “I didn't know Ken from the inside. I doubted my Kenergia. I didn't see it.»
Having Ken become the unofficial star of a Barbie movie is an absolute role reversal. Throughout his career and many plastic and celluloid incarnations, Ken has always been Barbie's not-so-glamorous sidekick (his status at the start of the new movie).
Barbie was named after the daughter of the toy's creator, Ruth Handler, who founded Mattel in 1945 with her husband Elliot and their friend Matt Matson («Mattel» is short for «Matt» and «Elliot»). But Handler had a second child, the quiet, bookish Kenneth. It would inspire an iconic toy with the same hotly contested legacy as Barbie. In 1961, two years after Mattel released the first Barbie doll, Kenneth Sean Carson was born.
Children are introduced to the first line of Ken dolls in 1961. Photo: Hulton Archive
Like Gosling's character, Ken 1.0 was a beach rat. He was dressed in bright red swimming trunks and an open shirt that exposed his plastic chest muscles. His facial features were made to look like a teenager, a sop to fear that Barbie was already over-sexualized and would become even sexier with her boyfriend.
«Mattel took care to give him a boyish, clean look and an overall, non-threatening, asexual, little weakling look,» wrote Mattel's advertising executive Cy Schneider in his 1987 memoir, Children's Television.
Like Barbie, he had no genitals (a highlight in the Gerwig movie). Mattel insisted on the omission, over objections from Handler and her collaborator Charlotte Johnson.
Handler and Johnson thought that Ken should have something resembling male anatomy — perhaps a «bulge» on his trousers. “If his genitals were included, some mothers would object. If his genitals were down, would he look like some wounded Hemingway hero?” Schneider asked.
Mattel executives, after consulting with a child psychologist, agreed to a “permanent set of shorts with a bulge in the appropriate place.” But to reduce production costs, it was reduced to a «smooth plastic handle.»
The battle for bulge was lost. However, Ken became a constant companion to Barbie, even though he was underestimated by doll collectors.
Living in plastic is fantastic: Barbie and Ken in a London toy store Photo: Alamy
“Ken is definitely not as popular with collectors as Barbie. I know most of my collector friends will have very few Ken dolls, if not none, in their collection,” says Simon Farnworth, Barbie doll expert who runs Simon’s Collectibles, an online retro toy store. «Many consider him an accessory for Barbie, and not an independent character.»
Ken has nothing to do with collectors. “This is also confirmed when you look at the much lower cost of even the rarest vintage Ken dolls compared to Barbies,” says Farnworth. «For example, a first release of Ken in mint condition would cost $450 compared to $27,000 for an equivalent Barbie doll.»
Mattel tried to make Ken more desirable. Kens' «Fashionista» and «Looks» lines diversified his facial features and expanded his racial diversity (Ken's first black doll was introduced in 1982), giving him interesting jobs such as firefighter and lifeguard. Farnworth explains, «Ken's popularity seems to have increased with more diverse facial sculpts and ethnicities, especially with the Fashionistas and The Looks line of dolls, which are more collector-oriented.»
Ken's charm was lost on his namesake. Kenneth Handler. He was a serious kid and resented the plastic himbo. “Ken is Malibu. He goes to the beach and surfs,” Real Ken once said. “I was one of those kids who played the piano and went to movies with subtitles. All the girls thought I was a jerk. Barbie has to take care of more than just going to the beach and having a good time. It should take care of the poverty and suffering in the world.»
Handler passed away in 1994 at the age of 50. The official cause of death was a brain tumor. But later there were claims that he died from complications related to AIDS. By then, he would have lived to see Ken become a star not only in the toy department but also on screen thanks to Mattel's straight-forward Barbie movies (and which live on today as a stream of Barbie content on Netflix).
Just beach: Ryan Gosling as Ken Photo: movie stills
“In those early films, Ken was generally a harmless, albeit mild-mannered love interest for our heroine to eventually marry and fall in love with,” Henry Catman and Emma Corrie of Pink Aisle’s podcast about the Barbie movie universe said via email. «Despite their reputation, many of the early Barbie films weren't as much about romance as one might think, but more focused on the various adventures they could take Barbie into.»
Ken underwent a personality downgrade in the early 21st century. «At this time, Ken is adopting what we call the 'Kenbo' archetype, where Ken plays a much more comedic role in this movie,» Cutman and Corry say. «The first notable example of this can be seen in Barbie in Fashion Fairy Tale, in which Ken travels to Paris to clear up a misunderstanding with Barbie as various jokes get in the way of his journey.»
The idea of Ken as a funny character primarily originates from his cameo in Toy Story 3. Michael Keaton voices him as the show's idiot pony — essentially his persona at the start of Gerwig's Barbie. «In Michael Keaton's portrayal of Ken, he is treated as an object of ridicule,» Cutman and Corry say. «Many of Ken's scenes in the film are based on various jokes about his perceived lack of masculinity.»
But even though he was laughed at in mainstream entertainment, Ken had a parallel life as a gay icon. In 1993, Mattel released the Earring Magic Ken. The toy came with a «lavender mesh shirt, purple vest and pendant necklace» (he appeared in the Gerwig film). Mattel created the Earring Magic Ken after young girls said they wanted the character to be more «cool». «They wanted Barbie to stay with Ken, but they wanted Ken to look a little cooler,» Lisa McKendall, Mattel's marketing and communications manager, told the Chicago Reader around the same time. «The new Ken is out of MTV,» exclaimed the New York Times.
One of a kind: Ken's magic earring. Photo from archive
Ken's magic earring was perceived by gay people in very different ways. They interpreted the design as reflecting the kinky club culture of the early 1990s. “Queer Ken is the high point, depending on your point of view, either the infiltration of queer culture into mainstream culture or the mindless appropriation of queer culture by heterosexuals,” said gay writer Dan Savage. «Queer images have become so ingrained in our culture that mainstream America, from rock stars to toy designers, doesn't even notice when they embrace queer fashion and mores.»
Mattel went into damage repair mode, saying that suggestions that Ken was gay were «outrageous». “After long denying any sexual connotation to its dolls, Mattel suddenly finds itself in a position where it has to assert the heterosexuality of the Earring Magic Ken: the ring around Ken’s neck could just as well have been a noose,” wrote English professor and Barbie expert Ann Ducile in a 1996 essay “Toy Theory: Black Barbie” and “The Deep Game of Difference.” When Mattel released Ken into the world 62 years ago, few knew where he would end up. In a way, he left the same deep mark on the culture as Barbie.
«Many of these avid collectors are gay and some have had Ken dolls as children and have the same childhood nostalgia that many toy and doll collectors have for the items they collect. It doesn't hurt that Ken [and his sexuality] has always been rumored, especially when the Earring Magic Ken was released, arguably the most famous and best-selling Ken doll ever made. He was an instant hit in the gay community and made many love Ken to their hearts,” says Farnworth. «Those who collect Ken are pretty hardcore!»
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