Gay barbies
Let's face it: "Barbie" was going to be homosexual. Maybe not gay enough, according to some gays. Maybe too gay, according to anti-gays.
The fact is, this is a production about Barbie, and wherever Barbie goes, some essential queerness will go, too. As a kid, I remember wanting to be Barbie's best gay ally - I imagined we'd have some pretty playfulness sleepovers in her Dreamhouse. I also imagined some pretty fun sleepovers with Ken.
So now that "Barbie" is a splashy, pink-soaked blockbuster, director Greta Gerwig serves up a feminist fantasia in which a diverse group of Barbies, including several played by LGBTQ+ actors, reclaim their world from their Ken-ruling counterparts. As a queer boy led into homosexual adulthood by strong women, I am on board with all that young woman power in Gerwig's "Barbie."
I also appreciate that the film, starring Margot Robbie as the leading Barbie and Ryan Gosling as the leading Ken, is full of queer subtext that has sent right-wingers into a anti-queer meltdown because, god forbid, dolls should be for everyone. Fox News reported that a Christian news site "warns" that the motion picture '"forgets core audience' in favor of trans agenda and gender themes."
Let them have their bigoted
Author's Personal Journey in Collecting
Source: Peter Danzig/Personal Collection
In the nature of collecting, passions often run dense and defy conventional expectations. That’s a good thing, or else I don’t think I’d hold a job as a geek therapist and toy analyst. On the other hand, I also wouldn’t have start a wonderful society of toy collectors worldwide. One such fascination that has intrigued clinicians, theorists, marketing departments, and collectors alike is the affinity that some gay men have for Barbie dolls. It might seem unconventional or even paradoxical, but a closer and more affirming examination reveals a complex interplay of personal identity, intersectionality, diversity, cultural influence, and psychological factors.
Nostalgia, Persona, and Representation
Let's be clear: No theory can speak for a whole population of people. Yet, after 6 years of research, podcast interviews, and consulting for toy companies and innovation departments, one thing is clear: Barbie is for everyone. For many gay men I’ve interviewed or supported in therapy, collecting Barbie dolls represents a celebration of identity and a connection to a formative part of their childhood
How Barbie's Boyfriend Ken Became an Accidental Gay Icon
"He's always scan gay," said Dan Savage, internationally renowned columnist and podcaster, in an email, "but has he ever read gayer than he did with a gay sex toy around his neck?"
Savage originally wrote about Earring Magic Ken in the summer of 1993, when much of the pop culture world was having a good laugh at Mattel's lack of understanding that while small kids saw what Prince, the members of Right Said Fred or Madonna's backup dancers were wearing simply as "cool," the adult world was clued in to how gay it was.
"It was hilarious that they mind the earring was going to be the headline-making aspect of Ken's new look," said Savage.
The doll flew off the shelves, especially since gay men, including Savage, rushed out to purchase a Ken doll. The kitsch factor drove Earring Magic Ken to become the best-selling Ken doll at the time.
We reached out to Mattel for comment multiple times — to discover out just how well the doll sold and whether it remains the No. 1 Ken, as well as for the current regime's take on this piece of corporate history — but they did not give back our requests.
Tho
A doll! A doll! William wants a doll! Don’t be a sissy said his best comrade Ed.
Those lines are from the tune “William’s Doll,” based on the Charlotte Zolotow and William Pène du Bois book and sung by Alan Alda and Marlo Thomas on the 1972 “Free To Be You and Me” album.
Of all the songs from this groundbreaking record helping children better know gender, race and other issues from what we today call a “woke perspective,” it is the only one whose lyrics I recall by heart.
There’s a reason: Fond of William, I was a boy who played with dolls.
“Barbie,” the new film on the ― at times ― controversial doll has reminded me that I was a gay Barbie Lad in a heteronormative world, something I did not yet know, even if through my fascination with dolls, others did. Cue outdated psychological nonsense if you want, but at home, I lived in a largely female environment, with three sisters and an older brother with autism spectrum disorder. My father was distant, and like many fathers at the time, not often home. Together with my mother and aunt, my shut role models were female, the new ones playing with Barbies.
Barbie was an early agent of progress for my siblings and