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They're making a line of toys that will go with the movie. And I'm curious to see how the Ken dolls do, you know? And also the discourse that comes out of the movie. What part will be about Ken? Chris Klimek, host: When writer Emily Tamkin was little, she created a whole imagined life for her Barbie and Ken dolls. And thus Barbie was born, and Barbie takes the name from Ruth's daughter, Barbara. Two years later, when Barbie gets a boyfriend, it's just named after her son. So it's like, “We'll give her a boyfriend, that kid that I also have.” No, so they're named after her children, Barbie and Ken. Klimek: Let's hear another piece of archival audio that gets into the increasing sophistication of the hair on these dolls. Klimek: To get a better understanding of where Ken has been, and where he might go in the future, Emily and I sat down together and watched some ads for different Ken dolls over the years. We started with Ken’s debut in 1961.
Several years ago, almost a decade ago now I think, there was a big push to put out Barbie dolls of different body shapes, and breaking with this idea that “Oh, she has this perfect unattainable figure.” I think Barbie has been used as a stand-in. I was at a women's rights protest, this is several decades ago, and there are signs that are like, “I'm not your Barbie doll.” But the Ken that was issued had, most famously, the earring, but, you know, a leather vest, a mesh shirt … dramatic transformation in wardrobe from prior Kens. As we know, Ken takes his job, "beach," very seriously. So, there's no reason he shouldn't be a representative of the most well-known beach area in the country — Malibu, California. Klimek: Yeah. I mean, are you willing to share a little more about that, the lore that you and your sister invented? Plenty of famous actresses or classic characters have been immortalized by the Barbie brand by creating their very own doll and Lucille Ball of I Love Lucy! fame was not immune to this treatment.
Emily Tamkin, Smithsonian magazine contributor: We sent these Barbies to college. They had different careers.
And it just seemed like the form of the paper doll was too flat to really carry the hopes and dreams and imaginings of her daughter. Plus, she had seen this novelty doll while traveling in Europe that had a more buxom shape and thought, “What if I put these two ideas together?” 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.” Ken got eventually real hair (like Barbie doll) in the 1970s, one edition was the “ Now Look Ken” in 1975 and the other one was “ Sport and Shave Ken” in 1979. Groovy. The next Ken with real hair was the “ Totally Hair/Ultra Hair Ken” in 1991 and “ Shaving Fun Ken” in 1995 or 1996, then the Ken of “ Butterfly Princess Barbie” also had real hair and a late 90s version of the Shaving Ken too. All the other editions had painted hair. Ken was constantly available and a reliable companion until 2004. Suddenly Ken and Barbie were separated and Barbie got a new boyfriend called Blaine but their relationship did not last that long. At the begin of this decade there was a reunion of Barbie and Ken. Mod hair Ken prototype It all started at the dance. Barbie, the famous teenage fashion model doll by Mattel, felt that this was to be a special night. And then it happened. She met Ken! And somehow she … ALLAN (or how to steal your best friend’s husband headmold for your boyfriend). Jokes aside… In 1990 a handsome groom made his reappearence to marry Barbie’s bestie Midge with a facemold exclusively made for this ocassion. The flamant groom was Allan and his face became so successful that Mattel set aside the plans to launch him and Midge with their own family line as a replacement of the Heart Family (years before the Happy Family) to give Ken this new face because people prefered the Alan facemold (with a single L) than the 1988 Ken one. The 90s saw Ken with several faces, many created from Alan’s mold as a base with modifications, most of them in the way the hair was sculpted, although we can see some models with rooted hair too. Alan reapeared with Midge in 2001 with another face mold in the controverted line Happy Family and since this line we didn’t see him again. The boys: Sparkle Surprise Ken 1992 (Alan Facemold) Ken Secret Heart 1991 (Secret Heart Ken Facemold) Ken Hollywood Hair 1992 (Short Hair Alan) Ken Magic Jewel 2002 (Alan Rooted) #alanfacemold #barbiealan #kenalan #barbiemattel #kenmattel #alanmattel #kenhollywoodhair #kensparklesurprise #kensecrethearts #kenmagicjewel #fashiondoll
As ruler of the sea, he's adorned with rose-gold colored armor, a shell-encrusted breastplate and regal head adornments. 8. Ken Doll (Mexico) And we're closing out the show, as we do every episode, with a little extra bit of info from my colleagues at Smithsonian magazine. This installment of the “dinner party fact” is best served during dessert. 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. And so I guess this is what I'm saying, is it didn't matter to us if Mattel said, “Oh, Barbie and Ken are together or not” or like, “Oh, Ken's from Wisconsin.” Cause my Ken could have been from New Jersey and married a woman from Michigan. Actually, I did have one Barbie go to the University of Michigan. I think in part this is meant to sell different outfits, which was another part of Ruth Handler's genius, really, was that you can buy one doll and then have all of these different outfits that you need to buy for her. You'll need to buy Barbie's park-walk outfit or Barbie's bridal gown.
So even if he was the father or the boyfriend or the husband or the professor or the teacher, whatever he was, it wasn't like, “Today we're going to play this really great game and it's all going to be about Ken”–ever. Sorry, sorry to Ken. There's a Ken doll for every season, and he can be worth a lot — just like his Barbie counterpart. Most Valuable Ken Dolls Gosling: I was, uh, surprised how, you know, some people were kind of clutching their pearls about my Ken as though they ever thought about Ken for a second. He's an accessory—and not even one of the cool ones. The tale of Ken’s tortured existence began, as many a toy’s, with a board meeting. Two years after Barbie’s breakout debut, Mattel’s financial advisors sought to convince cofounders Ruth and Elliot Handler to expand the brand into the profitable world of product licensing, according to Barbie Bazaar, a 1990 series of articles by the doll collector A. Glenn Mandeville. Save for the presence of Ruth, it’s easy to imagine this discussion resembling the roundtable of male executives in suits who represented Mattel’s top brass in the Barbie movie. The Handlers were initially concerned that assigning Barbie a fixed biography might limit children’s imaginations during play. They nevertheless agreed, per Mandeville, that “select firms would be allowed to develop the personality of Barbie, under the watchful eye of management of Mattel.” With that obstacle cleared, the floodgates opened. Out came vinyl record totes, Barbie novels, and, crucially, Ken.To have a progressive Ken in the same way that we've had a progressive Barbie would look different. Right? It wouldn't be like, you can be a doctor. It would be like, you can be a teacher, which is a very feminized profession. You can be a stay-at-home dad. You can be a caretaker. Most famously, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster creating Superman in the ’30s. And they create this invulnerable, you know, fantasy man, kind of in the same way that Barbie is this impossible physical ideal a generation later. This is the Ken of the "Mad Men" era. Dressed for success, he's so rare that he always fetches top dollar. And meanwhile, while American Jews are grappling with their own ambivalence about what it means to now be suburban Americans, here comes Ruth Handler inventing the Barbie Dreamhouse, inventing this very stereotypical-looking, all-American young man, young woman doll … Like Totally Hair Ken, Cool Shavin' Ken (looking rather like George Michael) is very concerned with his appearance.
The Spanish were remarkably guarded about their methods for processing and cooking chocolate throughout the 16th century and into the 17th century, such that when they went public in the 18th century, they really, really dominated this European trade in cacao. And also had avoided a significant degree of competition by not telling everyone how magical these beans were. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rozas Rivera, Terence Bernardo, and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.This specific I Love Lucy! Barbie doll was modeled after how Lucy looked in the classic "Sales Resistance" episode of the show.
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