It may be hard to believe how much has changed for queer Americans in the last 30 years. As far back as 1993, same-sex marriage was not legal in any state of the country. Sodomy Laws Across America It sought to outlaw gay sex by criminalizing oral or anal sexual contact. And sex advice columnist Dan Savage, known only to readers of a handful of independent alternative newspapers across the country at the time, had the ability to make big break news. in scandalous exposure: Mattel’s latest Ken doll is openly modeled after gay fashion. Or, as Savage put it in his 1993, “Little girls in our great country wanted fancy Kens, so Mattel gave them fancy Kens. Weird Kens.”
By the way, that weird Ken is in a Greta Gerwig movie. barbie, a brief, winking cameo appearance. And given the film’s satirical and savvy tone, and the scenes in which he appears that pays homage to some of the Barbie toy series’ most disappointing and hilarious choices over the years, there’s no question that Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach know the name “Cockling Ken,” which people have been giving their Ken dolls since 1993.
Savage’s 1993 column “Ken comes out” I will explain the details. “Earring Magic Ken” (Those who cannot recognize their achievements barbieSadly, he wore a see-through purple mesh shirt, a purple vinyl vest, two-tone hair, a single silver earring, and a gold band around one elbow. It also came with shiny plastic earrings for the owner to wear. “But Earring Magic Ken wears another adornment that has hitherto been largely overlooked,” Savage wrote. “[H]At first glance, 10 out of 10 people in the know would tell you that the metallic silver thread that hangs around Ken’s neck is a cock ring. ”
![Magic Ken earrings, hands tucked in pockets, mesh shirt and shiny purple faux-leather vest all glowing in a glamorous shot.](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/QK0dmQElrKn8EQ-LErSZFxXUZ94=/0x0:1600x2526/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1600x2526):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24800055/EarringMaj.jpg)
Photo: Yvonne Hemsey/Getty Images
Savage believes Mattel never tried to give Ken sex toys. Savage initially suggests that designers at Mattel, in search of fashionable party outfits, took pictures of people in nightclubs and transformed their outfits into doll designs. “Upon closer inspection, Ken’s Earring Magic outfit turned out to be all three-year-old ravewear,” he wrote. And he describes a chrome cock ring necklace—the exact same one from Earring Magic Ken—as the era’s “absolute rave wear.”
“For about a year, every gay boy who came to the rave wore at least one,” Savage wrote. “[T]These cock rings were often used late in the evening to help a fully tuned labor maintain what the X had pulled down. ”
Twenty years later, Savage’s column is worth revisiting, but not just for understanding the gags. barbie on why Earring Magic Ken was a questionable design choice, and Sugar Daddy Ken, a 2009 “Adult Collector Line” doll whose provocative name seems more intentional than Cock Ring Ken’s apparel. (You see, he has a dog named Sugar, and he’s that dog’s “daddy.” Even in this day and age where people treat their pets as children, it still amazes me that nobody involved in designing that doll had a double purpose.)
No, the real reason you’re reading “Ken Comes Out” is for the laughs watching Savage question a Mattel rep about dolls (she clearly thinks he’s just making fun of herself) and the revelations about how Earring Magic’s Ken’s design perfectly captures an inflection point in the changing landscape of queer voices in mainstream America.
America clings to laws that slander gay citizens and criminalize them (Supreme Court has ruled this out) supported until recently in 1986) on the other hand, appropriating from them was nothing new. If you look back throughout Hollywood history, you’ll find that creators and artists have admired and stolen queer culture, or weaponized the tastes of queer creators while keeping them underground and in closets. What was new in the early ’90s, and Dan Savage specifically pointed to, was the MTV-driven era when queerness was sweeping into mainstream life before anyone else. moral majority Types can catch up and even track.
![Product shot of Earrings Magic Ken in a box: Ken doll with brown and blonde striped hair, purple mesh shirt and purple faux leather vest, and a highly visible silver ring on a chain around his neck](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EkhSLzbY0fAXrtPTvQuAbrEKhRs=/0x0:2250x3000/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:2250x3000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24800064/KenGlamourShot.jpg)
Photo: mommashobbyvintage/eBay
“What the girls saw and said Mattel was cool wasn’t what their relatives were wearing, unless they had hip queer relatives, but the homoerotic fashion and images they saw on MTV, what they saw Madonna dancers wearing at Madonna concerts and movies, and, incidentally, what ACT UP/Queer Nation fagots and dykes were wearing at demos and raves,” Savage wrote. “Queer imagery has permeated our culture so much that mainstream Americans, from rock stars (Axl Rose and his leather chaps) to toy designers, don’t even realize when they’re embracing queer fashion and practices.
barbie Naturally, I don’t try to unzip these. Earring Magic Ken (or Cock Ring Ken) passes by as a quick gag about discontinued dolls, but this movie is just one of nearly a million visual and verbal jokes about the Barbie series. He’s not even wearing a necklace, as you can tell from the few seconds he’s on screen, but that’s something we’ll take a closer look at when clips from the movie become available.
But it’s worth accepting his existence barbie It’s a reminder of a very specific and special moment in marketing history, when designers trying to embrace cool didn’t realize how quickly they were helping change history and move the world forward. Writers other than Dan Savage say they ” “Gender Bending” The Earring Magic Ken aspect — they didn’t have the working knowledge of queer culture to pinpoint exactly what they were seeing. Cock Ring Ken didn’t change the world, but he definitely showed how much and how quickly the world was changing in his time.