There was a scene in the Barbietrailer released earlier this year in which Ken, played by Ryan Gosling, asked Barbie, Margot Robbie, if he could sleep over. “Why?” she replies cluelessly. “Because we’re boyfriend-girlfriend,” says Ken, in what remains my favorite line reading of Gosling’s overplayed performance, in my opinion. “To do what?” Barbie continues the dumb blonde act. A pause. “I’m actually not sure,” Ken shakes his head. Pure perfection.
The moment is elaborated on in the full scene in Barbie, which hit theaters last week in the biggest opening weekend of the year and the biggest for a female director—ever (yes, it’s 2023). In it, Barbie informs Ken that it’s girl’s night so he can’t stay over. As Ken say, “every night is girl’s night” in Barbieland and Ken stays eternally rebuffed, his “long-term, low-commitment, distance, casual girlfriend” of 62 years showing the least amount of interest in him as possible. Therefore, it could be read that Barbie is asexual and aromantic.
Margot Robbie supports unions. Period. #Barbiehttps://t.co/3wMevy3nGS
— SheKnows (@SheKnows) July 15, 2023
Despite many a child’s earliest sexual exploration being through playing with their Barbies, Barbieis sexless. Robbie toldVogue in her May cover story that this is because “she doesn’t have reproductive organs. If she doesn’t have reproductive organs, would she even feel sexual desire? No, I don’t think she could,” going on to elaborate on the Vogue podcast The Run-Through that “she can’t smell pheromones because she’s immune, so I guess she doesn’t have that [sexual] urge.” Hence why there are no love scenes between Barbie and Ken. Anything “sexual” about Barbie is, and has always been, more to do with what people project on to her rather than what she actually displays. In a sense, she is sexualized but never sexual.
Her lack of interest in pursuing or being pursued by a romantic partner frees up Barbie to have her own existential journey and personal awakening that is not often afforded to female characters on film. When Barbie (and Barbie, and Barbie, and Barbie—it’s a “group effort”) restores matriarchy to Barbieland after the Kens discover patriarchy and make a carbon copy of the real world, one character asks what Barbie’s ending is.
“That’s easy; she’s in love with Ken,” proffers the Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell) in both a call back to Ken being forced into Barbie’s life way back when due to corporate concerns over Barbie’s singleness and the movie’s own forgetfulness about just who its protagonist is. “NO!” everyone yells, including this viewer. Gosling’s assertion that “no one cares about Ken” was clearly a swerve because this movie devotes a little too much mileage to him.
Sure, real-life Ken dolls have been a vehicle for romantic exploration for kids, but many a child’s cohort of Barbie’s included maybe one Ken — and suddenly The Bachelor is starting to make a lot more sense. My own personal solitary Ken was the discontinued Earring Magic Ken, who makes a cameo in the movie and is famous for being coded as gay. As others have pointed out, many of the Kens—and Allan!—in Barbie can be read this way, and their performative heteropatriarchy could be seen as queer conformity to what conservatives wish this movie was.
As has been discussed in the deluge of think-pieces in the lead up to and wake of Barbie, the doll was revolutionary when she was released in 1959—an independent woman based on a German sex doll who had financial and marital independence decades before real women. Barbie is the ultimate spinster and she looks damn good doing it, challenging notions of how asexual and aromantic people present. Robbie goes on to say on The Run-Through that despite how Barbie looks and dresses, “people [may] project sexualized ideas onto her but she should never be exuding them.” This is clear in the scene in which Barbie manipulates Ken in the final step in the Barbies’ plan to take back Barbieland (Robbie differentiates the types of outfits she wears when she’s dressing for herself or her friends versus when she’s dressing for men, as in her pink minidress in this scene).
The Barbies know how to maneuver around these rigid expectations like women and femmes have to in the real world, despite America Ferrera’s human character having to give a feminist monologue for them to believe it. So it’s really refreshing to know that once the equilibrium is restored in Barbieland, they will continue to live their lives independent of men and gendered expectations. We need more of that in the real world.
Before you go, click here to see the best Barbiecore looks on the red carpet:
Leave a Comment