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Klimek: I wrote a companion piece to Emily’s article about different Ken dolls through the years, and I wanted to compare notes about this simultaneously iconic and overlooked doll. Mattel's official line was that this was an attempt to modernize Ken based on the results of a survey that was conducted among their customers.
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. Tamkin: Yeah, we called them the Mayer family. And it was like, I had one nuclear family. She had one nuclear family.
Klimek: Emily has spent a lot of time thinking about the racial politics of Barbie. She writes about this in her book Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities . It turns out that even when the Barbie universe expanded to other body types and skin tones, it didn't necessarily change the minds of the consumer. Emily spoke with anthropologist Elizabeth Chin about this. We have seen plenty of Fashion Barbie dolls on this list, but now we have a Fashion Ken doll. Designed by Robert Best, the Gianfranco Ken doll is a gold label doll from the Barbie Fashion Model Collection. This is the Ken of the "Mad Men" era. Dressed for success, he's so rare that he always fetches top dollar. What do you think Mattel might have been responding to circa 1993 to give Ken such a dramatically different new look?
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. Because Barbie and Ken exist in the world, and the world puts different pressures on men and on women. Some are the same, but many are different. What looks progressive for the female-presenting toy is going to be different than what looks progressive for the Ken.Klimek: From Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions, welcome to “There's More to That," a podcast where journalists around the world bring you history, science and culture through the lens of Smithsonian magazine. Today, we turn our attention to the Ken doll … Someone should do it! So I like, what I don't want listeners of this program to walk away from is the idea that like, yes, in the ‘50s it was a little traditional, but then we've just been on a progressive sprint ever since. Like, absolutely not. I think Barbie and Ken's relationship to feminism, femininity, careers versus whatever that was ebbs and flows. 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 … And he has this girlfriend who's not a really fully fleshed-out character, and who really only exists or matters insofar as she has this boyfriend. And this is exactly the reverse, right? Even in the promo for this movie, it's, “She's everything. He's just Ken,” is the tagline that they're going for. Yeah, I mean, it's only appropriate that our conversation about Ken should start with Barbie because, as we say, he only makes sense relative to her. And even the name—you know, Barbie is invented in the 1950s.
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