The first look at Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie didn’t tell us much. Warner Bros. released a picture of Margot Robbie as the world’s most famous doll, driving a pink convertible in an all-blue outfit. Boring. But the reveal of Ryan Gosling as Barbie’s boyfriend — and one-time husband — says it all: This Ken fucks.
With bleached blond hair, a denim cutoff vest showing off his glistening abs and matching washboard jeans paired with Calvin Klein-inspired “KEN” underwear, this is clearly “Earring Magic Ken,” aka “Cock Ring Bottom Ken,” just sans earring. Sure, the original 1993 doll, an accidental gay icon, was wearing many more accessories than Gosling Ken. But Gerwig is apparently going for a less-is-more approach, and that’s fine too.
Earring Magic Ken, for those unfamiliar, wore an earring on his left ear, a lavender mesh shirt, a matching pleather vest, and most notably, a necklace that bore a striking resemblance to a cock ring. When Earring Magic Ken came out (sorry), Mattel’s manager of marketing and communications did her best to deny that the doll is clearly wearing a cock ring, telling Dan Savage that Mattel is “not in the business of putting cock rings into the hands of little girls.”
Apart from the obvious Earring Magic Ken comparison, there are already countless other notions of what, exactly, Gosling’s version of Ken looks like, including: Yassified Vin Diesel, Freddie Prinze Jr. as Fred in the live-action Scooby Doo movies and Archer undercover as a gay man in Miami.
Gerwig hasn’t shared the official plot details for her movie, which was co-written with her husband and frequent collaborator Noah Baumbach, but Simu Liu, who plays one of the Kens, described it to Variety as “wild” and “incredibly unique.” The movie comes out in July 2023, so we’ll have to wait until then to see if Barbie is truly Ken’s beard — and if the cock ring still fits.
Tatiana Tenreyro
Tatiana Tenreyro is a contributing writer at MEL and has written for the A.V. Club and SPIN, living the dream of every plaid-shirted boy she had a crush on in high school.
