The Popular Culture Research Network (PopCRN) is hosting a Barbie conference! "You Can Be Anything": Imagining and interrogating Barbie in popular culture will be happening 27-28 Mar 2024, via Zoom. I will be presenting a paper at this conference, on Ken's very transmasculine story. My current title is "To See the Man Behind the Tan and Fight for Ken: Ken’s Transmasculine Journey through Toxic Masculinity to Self-Respect". Here's a peek with the abstract, see you there!
The discussion of living sincerely as you are and as the person you want to be permeates throughout Barbie. In a possibly unexpected twist, this seems to have resonated strongly with viewers through Ken’s plotline. Because Ken and his fellow Kens are simultaneously stand-ins for how women are treated in the real world within a dystopian framework of ironic inversion and a camp performance of patriarchy, they fall into an ambiguous grey space of identity between the masculine and feminine that has allowed them to be deeply relatable. This has been particularly true for transmasculine viewers, many of whom have felt seen by Ken and his struggles. This paper will investigate Ken’s story through the lens of queer and trans* theory, and through the parodic camp mode that frames gender as simultaneously arbitrary and expressive. Ken’s story asks questions inherent to the transmasculine experience: How does one define masculinity in a feminine space? How does one distinguish oneself as masculine without doing harm? Ken’s story is one of alienation and othering, a grasp for power and vindictive retribution, and a need for communication, community, and self-respect. Ken’s transmasculine story offers an acceptance beyond the requirements of patriarchy.