‘I’m just Ken’ – a brief history of Barbie’s boyfriend, from all-American boy to movie star

As first boyfriends go, you could possibly do worse than Ken Carson. Launched in 1961 by Mattel, the Ken doll was the epitome of the all-American boy subsequent door. Clear lower, athletic and with a pointy haircut, he was the right counterpart to his extra well-known girlfriend, Barbie.

Ken’s first merchandise of clothes was a pair of crimson swimming trunks, indicating his sportiness and reflecting the fashionable American life-style of leisure and penchant for out of doors recreation.

Created by Barbie’s inventor Ruth Handler, Ken was a boyfriend designed by ladies for ladies. Simply as Barbie was named after Handler’s daughter, so Ken was named after her son. And so the secure, boyfriend-friend dynamic of Barbie and Ken’s relationship was established. Notably designed with no genitalia, he signifies a primary masculine encounter in little ladies’ playscapes and a secure house wherein to follow romantic relationships.

Nevertheless, this doesn’t imply that conventional patriarchal relationship dynamics are all the time faithfully replicated when kids play with Ken and Barbie. As with all play, the dream house of Barbie and Ken meant they provided an alternate house for relationship ambitions, the place guidelines might be damaged.

Simply as in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the place recognisable buildings of actuality are distorted and reversed, so with Barbie, themes of courtship are current however reinterpreted for an viewers of women. Barbie is the dominant determine within the relationship. She has all of it, whereas Ken – smiling and obliging – holds her purse.

Because the supporting participant to Barbie’s star, Ken unwittingly turns into the locus of little ladies’ expectations of and frustrations with masculinity. Barbie is characterised by extra – outsized breasts, lengthy flowing hair, numerous equipment and careers.

Ken, nonetheless, is characterised by his lack, not simply of genitals, however in his vapidly good smile the absence of any significant position. Outshined and out-glammed by Barbie, denied any rugged substance, Ken seems little greater than an emasculated bit participant.

Ken’s vogue historical past

But, simply as with Barbie, Ken displays the actual world in his altering garments, equipment and skills, changing into a marker of American vogue and cultural historical past.

Within the Sixties, Ken was the clean-cut faculty sweetheart of the American teen scene. The preoccupation with coolness and counterculture of the Seventies shines via along with his famous person and surfer appears to be like. Within the Eighties he morphed into the teenager heartthrob , reflecting the conservativism of the Republican period. And in his retro and Baywatch styling, the preoccupation with nostalgia, tv and movie within the Nineties might be seen.

In, 2004 Barbie and Ken broke-up on Valentine’s Day. The next marketing campaign to win Barbie again (reuniting on Valentine’s Day 2011) showcased new advertising methods and an acknowledgement of the realities of recent courting. Romance doesn’t must be ceaselessly – each Ken and Barbie may get pleasure from life as singletons, and in relationships. Fashionable TV reveals within the 2000s similar to Pals and Intercourse and the Metropolis had additionally proven that relationships might be messy.

Extra considerably, Ken, following Barbie’s lead, has develop into extra inclusive, in recent times, altering ethnicities and skills (for instance, the 2021 Ken in a Wheelchair doll).

Ken within the Barbie film

What then to make then of Ryan Gosling’s latest incarnation of Ken in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie film?

As actors go, Gosling is just not an apparent alternative for Barbie’s boyfriend. With a filmography that features Lars and the Actual Lady (2007), Drive (2011) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), Gosling is understood for darkish character roles that stray into ultraviolence. However what unites them is an exploration of bleak masculinity. Coupled along with his potential to sing and dance evidenced in La La Land (2016), Gosling brings complexity to his studying of Ken, giving him depth and pathos.

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Greta Gerwig’s Barbie film is a ‘feminist bimbo’ traditional – and no, that is not an oxymoron

Singing I’m Simply Ken, Gosling mirrors the latest disaster in masculinity within the west. Destabilised by waves of problem to patriarchy, different variations of masculinity are more and more being explored, such because the embrace of camp and wonder by stars similar to Harry Types. American society has vastly modified from the one the primary Ken doll entered within the Sixties.

So, from faculty sweetheart, to Barbie’s ex boyfriend, to a poster boy for troubled masculinity, what subsequent for Ken? Following Gerwig’s invitation for him to affix Barbie on her journey of self discovery, maybe Ken too will look to redefine his position – not as an adjunct or plaything, however as his personal self.

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