Gay club ken doll

Origin Story. The Aftermath. EMK and the Barbie Movie. Faced with lackluster sales of the doll, Mattel surveyed five-year-old girls and asked them if they thought Barbie should break up with Ken. The children said that they wanted Ken to stay with Barbie, but he needed to be cooler.

This was a common sentiment; if you peruse Ken's past, you'll find plenty of mediocrity and bland choices, styles of the times but no doubt lacking. What happens next in the chain of events is uncertain; some sources say that the surveyed children made demands for Ken's new look, and some suggest that Mattel took it into their own hands.

Ken's makeover consisted of some chunky blonde highlights, a purple mesh shirt, a purple pleather vest, and an earring in his left ear. Author Dan Savage remarked that the outfit was three-year-old rave couture and that the flashy pendant Ken sported was in fact a cockring.

Men wore cockrings on a necklace to signal that they were gay to other people in the know, and some men would wear cockrings secured to their vest: on the right if they are a bottom, and on the left if they are a top.

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A ken communication system, cockrings soon found their way into fashion, as zipper pulls and accessories for the younger gay crowds that had no care for the code. So, when Ken hit the scene as a newly out man, the queer community was thrilled. There had been Gay Bob and Billy Doll, proud gay dolls living in the fringes, but out of nowhere there was a mainstream representation of gay rave culture — albeit white and cis — in a club when plenty of people needed to be seen.

You will find his body recycled in the beach-themed Barbie line that immediately followed. We can guess that the use of the same doll, sans jewelry, was simply to recoup their investment. The next Ken to come was in Shaving Ken, a noticeably "straighter" doll with clunkier denim-clad fashion, dark brown hair, and a sturdier disposition.

He had a literal beard pun very much intended that could be washed away with "aftershave" only to "grow" back in time. For the next several years, Ken was buried in heteronormativity. So while the movie didn't explicitly address the issues surrounding this Ken and Mattel's queer erasure, the fact that this Ken was banished as an outcast speaks for itself.

Check out our post about gay Ken's movie cameo here on Instagram. Lisa McKendall, Manager of marketing communications for Mattel at the time, is quoted saying. If Ken cannot pass for straight, he cannot exist. If gay men can be indescript about their sexuality, they can be appropriated for normative culture - but if they are too queer, if they pass the boundary that allows others complacency, they are worthless and deserve not only to lose their status but also gay doll and their history.

Dupere, K. June 29th, In The Know. Grasso, S. February 16th, Daily Dot.