Jarossi’s description seems to capture the essence of Ryan Gosling’s very Method press tour for Barbie, during which he has been exceedingly deferential to Barbie and offered himboism after himboism. “Very little is known about Kenergy,” he told ET. “And we don’t have the funding for the research. We know that it’s real. In my case it came on as a rash, and then it turned into a tan. And then suddenly you’re shaving your legs, and you’re bleaching your hair, and you’re wearing bespoke rollerblades.” He admitted to BuzzFeed that letting go of the Ken role was “a bit like that Pillsbury dough—go with me on this—Cinnabon mix? Like once you open that canister you’re making Cinnabons. And you’re loving it. You’re loving making Cinnabons.”

If you look at the video, they're dressed in this very 1950s, all-American, clean cut garb. They're getting married; they end up at the aisle. There’s a lot of TV out there. We want to help: Every week, we’ll tell you the best and most urgent shows to stream so you can stay on top of the ever-expanding heap of Peak TV. Klimek: This is a thing that you write about in a really nuanced way in your piece about how the Handlers were a Jewish family and how even for the creators of Barbie the aesthetic of Barbie was kind of a fraught subject. Tamkin: With euphoria, with obsession? No, I think it's great. I think they're really playing on the sort of, not tension, but the twist of the trope, which is that very often we have superhero movies or we have, whatever the story is, and it's all about the guy.

Kens made in other countries don't differ much from those produced in the U.S. This Ken, however, has a "made in Japan" stamp, which makes him all the more valuable. Ken is dressed in an elegant but boxy-cut suit with shoulder pads and a purple corsage and is ready to take Barbie out for a night on the town. 16. Cool Shavin' Ken

The Earring Magic Ken-fuffle may have forced Mattel into a hetero corner, but it also proved to the company that its dolls’ personal lives could win it free press. As the company moved into an era of stunt-based PR, it decided Ken was more valuable as a punching bag than an accessory. In February 2004, the company announced that Ken and Barbie had broken up. The event was covered in the tabloids with all the rigor of an A-list celebrity breakup, including a VP of marketing at Mattel telling Today.com that Barbie and Ken remained just “friends.” Soon after, the company linked Barbie with a new male doll, an Australian surfer named Blaine. The implication, of course, was that switching out Kens was easy. Ein Beitrag geteilt von The Barbiest (@thebarbiest) am Jun 7, 2019 um 12:12 PDT The first afro-american friends Klimek: To read Emily Tamkin's feature story about the history of Barbie, and my piece about groundbreaking Ken dolls through the years, visit SmithsonianMag.com. You know, as a sign of “You can't put this hyper-feminine pressure onto me as a woman.” Which, again, I do understand even if Mattel would say, “Well, you could be anything,” that's the whole point. You know, I will cop to this on this podcast. I had Barbies and Kens growing up, and the relationship between the individual Barbies and Kens that my sister and I played with—Mattel was not telling us what those were. We had a whole extended family, you know. That was us. Mattel didn't tell us to do that.No, like, you can buy different Kens, but it's also the trap of Barbie. Is that, on the one hand, she's a figure who receives ire from feminists, right? Or from just people, like, what is this? She's white, she's blonde. She has this impossible figure and she's very beautiful, and you can dress her up in different ways. But at the same time, Barbie's always breaking that mold, because the clothes that they assigned to her, as we talked about, are of any profession. And once you give a girl or boy a Barbie doll, they can play with it and have it, as Ruth Handler said, be anything. And do anything.

Tamkin: So, Ken did great in asking Barbie out at that dance. We can hear both strains or threads of what we've been discussing in that ad. She's a teen fashion model at a dance. It's not only a Barbie world — Ken dolls have been an iconic part of popular culture for decades, too, with certain editions becoming exceptionally valuable among collectors. These prized dolls often possess unique features, limited production runs or significant historical significance. He was around for about two years before his original run was discontinued, though he did reappear in the 1990s as a companion for Midge. I think moving forward, what I don't know that we've seen enough of is: Barbie and Ken come from a time in which we thought of gender as pretty binary. It's a very heteronormative project. You have Girl Barbie and you have Boy Ken, and the assumption is that they're going to date. And so I don't know that we've seen Mattel play with Pride, you know, as much as one might think, given where we are culturally in this moment, or as people increasingly publicly identify as nonbinary or as gender fluid.That was all invented by us. So Ken stans, don't worry. He's been given a much richer story than has been afforded to him by his company, by the families who have played with him across the United States and the world.