Poor Ken.
The doll has spent his lifetime toiling, desperately, to please Barbie. He has worn sky-blue short shorts, with a matching man bag — an outfit only Barbie could have endorsed. In the 1990s, he wooed his gal by using styling gel to tease his hair into a slushy pile. And he wore neon. Lots of neon.
Ken’s world has been one capitulation after another. Yet, Mattel’s 12-inch, plastic boy toy stands firm in the Barbie universe.
This week, he’ll celebrate a milestone — 50 years of bowing down before his blond, bling-hungry goddess.
Among other things, the Lakewood Heritage Center, a museum that explores 20th century history, is holding a party Friday for Ken’s birthday, complete with cake and punch for the public. The museum also is showcasing a small Barbie and Ken exhibit.
“You can see how Ken changed over the years,” said Jeff Fields, who runs the shop for Lakewood. “He was a skinny, tall dude at first. In the 1980s, he was scruffy and more buff. Now he’s blond and blue-eyed again.”
This is a big year for Ken, but he has more to celebrate than an anniversary. On Valentine’s Day, Mattel announced his reunion with Barbie. The toy company severed the couple’s relationship in 2004, introducing a new beau for Barbie, a hunky Aussie boogie-boarder named Blaine (after which — classic Ken — he hired a celebrity stylist to impress Barbie with what was called Ken’s “Hollywood Makeover”).
Ken’s role in the 2010 animated film “Toy Story 3” was a critical triumph, and it added depth to his character, shading him with something sinister. The “Toy Story” Ken was not weak or sycophantic. He was cunning.
Finally, Mattel has ginned-up a variety of Ken-related events to celebrate his half-century in the public eye. He has a Facebook page and a Twitter handle. The company cobbled together a reality television show called “Genuine Ken: The Search for the Great American Boyfriend,” in which real guys genuflect before a panel of women to prove they are ultimate boyfriends — just like Ken.
So things are looking up for the man of many hairstyles.
But still. He’s just Ken.
As Mattel put it in a recent news release: “For nearly five decades, Ken has been Barbie’s perfect arm candy.”
Poor, poor Ken.
“It’s a great time to reintroduce girls of all ages to Ken,” according to Mattel publicist Stefani Green. “After all, every doll needs a Ken!”
Paula Reding, the owner of Denver Doll Emporium in Centennial, knows Ken’s position well. “The girl dolls had the fancy clothing and the girls identified with Barbie. And Ken was just there to escort her somewhere.”
Ken’s role as Barbie’s servile suitor is based in history, said Joe Blitman, a prominent Los Angeles dealer of Barbie-related collectibles. He said after Barbie was released in 1959, Mattel began hunting for something the audience — girls between the ages of 8 and 12 (it has changed; Green said it’s now largely girls between the ages of 6 and 9) — wanted for their favorite doll. A car? A nice house?
They wanted a boyfriend.
Through the years, the two have acted as pop-culture “mirrors,” Blitman said. When disco was hot, Barbie and Ken wore satin shirts and platform shoes. A recent Ken sported a Justin Bieberish fedora.
Everything that Ken pursues, though, is borne out of his connection to Barbie, said Jacqueline Fulmer, a University of California, Berkeley scholar who is soon to publish a book called “Doll Culture in America.”
Even the wealth of attention Mattel has lavished upon him this year is tied to Barbie. “Ken’s whole function is a player in a drama. He is not an attraction in himself,” Fulmer said. “He’s meant to be an idolization of a good companion.”
Ken’s a comfort.
“He’s not going to hit you. He will listen to you. He helps kids understand adult relationships in positive terms,” she said.
The couple, Fulmer said, represents “a venue for seeing men and women who get along.”
But in Barbieland, getting along means serving the queen, which has established Ken as the very symbol of the weak, bland man.
“He’s nice, but can I see myself having family dinners with this guy for 40 years?” she said. The public, she said, uses Ken “as a shorthand to explain male vapidity.”
Ken’s status as docile ditz explains, at least in part, the difference between Ken and Barbie when it comes to academic scholarship.
Edgy Barbie has provoked a blizzard of academic papers over the years, with titles like: “The Wonder of Barbie: Popular Culture and the Making of Female Identity,” and “From a Feminist Nation to a Barbie Nation.”
Ken? The scholarly record is limp.
Collectors are just as apathetic. Vintage Barbies can sell for $10,000, said Reding with Denver Doll Emporium. A retro Ken? Maybe a few hundred bucks.
Rebecca Chulew, a former writer for Barbie Bazaar magazine, who now writes about dolls and music for a variety of publications, said her collection of Barbies and Kens fluctuates between 400 and 800. The vast majority of her dolls — Barbies.
The Austin, Texas, writer has paid attention to Mattel’s stab at a Ken transformation.
“They have really spent some time,” she said. “They had real guys dressed up as Ken, going around at Fashion Week (in New York). They are trying to develop a deeper personality for Ken, but I’m not sure they have succeeded.”
Poor Ken.
Douglas Brown: 303-954-1395 or djbrown@denverpost.com
