Photo: Twitter (@cameronesposito)
Last week, Mattel released its new Ken Fashionistas dolls, an update to its Ken doll line, offering him in a range of new body types, skin tones, hairstyles, and updated clothing options.
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You probably know Ken as the longtime companion, boyfriend, or beard to Barbie. Depending on who you are and how you were raised, these dolls were either liberating toys, or repressive tools of the patriarchy. (My Ken doll used to sit around bored at home while Barbie rode horses, drove cars, and played with Wonder Woman, unless my Bionic Woman swung by to save him from the house collapsing or an accidental fall into a an alligator pit.) While the release of an updated line of Ken dolls reflective of evolving fashion styles is nothing new—Mattel has been churning him out since 1961—what is new is comedian Cameron Esposito’s hilarious series of photos inspired by the new Kens. The Los Angeles–based lesbian comedian has released a series of photos with her in the same outfits and poses as the new Ken dolls.
In its subtle way, this simple act is nothing short of revolutionary. Androgynous queer women have long been denied visibly at every level of our culture. Recent gains in LGBTQ civil rights have lead to clearly gay characters appearing increasingly in TV and film. And yet queer female characters are portrayed as almost exclusively feminine-presenting. While drag queens appear in diverse offerings across TV and film, drag kings as well as gender-fluid and androgynous women are still largely excluded and ignored in popular culture. And yet the culture of queer women is vibrant with diversity in gender presentation.
And while the new Kens show a greater range in presentation, at least in terms of hairstyles (note the man bun) and clothing that one might expect to see on a nightly basis in gayborhoods across the country, Barbie and her friends still remain firmly feminine-presenting.
Esposito is known for her stand-up comedy and her web series—Take My Wife on SeeSo—and in both, she mines her life as a lesbian for material. The power of humor is often in helping us to see something that we would otherwise ignore. Hats off to Esposito for finding such a fun way to subvert the gender presentation status quo. While her tweets of the photo shoot may just reflect a hilarious, inspired afternoon of dress-up, the fact that in more than 50 years of Ken and Barbie make-overs we have yet to see a doll that reflects androgynous and/or masculine-presenting women and girls reminds us that our culture still has a long way to go to reach true equality in terms of gender presentation.
