Objectifying Men: Genuine Ken

 

So, for those of you who are going... what on Earth is this? Here is some backstory.  In 2004, Barbie and Ken broke up, she wanted to date a surfer, her career(s) had clearly outstripped his and she wanted to move on with her life, sew wild oats, etc... Regardless, she was IMMEDIATELY dating a blonde Australian surfer. Don't believe me? Here's an article for BusinessWeek that goes into the whole thing in more depth. 

So, years later, the Internet age has led to Barbie and Ken going... transmedia. Barbie Tweets, Ken Tweets, and now Ken has launched a nationwide multi platform marketing campaign to get her to take him back. Now, with Barbie flying to Mercedes Benz Fashion Week and Valentines Day Monday, we're all wondering... Will They Get Back Together????? 

At least some people are, people who post to Ken's facebook page and respond to his tweets and who are voting in the online polls and so on. His facebook page also aggregates all the content being created (suspiciously all licensees of Mattel's) to support the campaign to get her back. You can vote here at BarbieandKen.com

 ... and this phenomenological display at Dylan's Candy Bar in Manhattan  

Anyway, you get the gist of all this. Something is going down at fashion week and 

Barbie and Ken are really familiar to people the world over, have been for decades.  With that and they've been parodied and played with endlessly by millions. Toy Story 3 did some great things with the pair. 

They're just now getting "voices" of their own online, though Barbie has been defining herself more clearly to her audience in narratives for years in films and television spots and games. This is a natural progression of marketing efforts and one I have talked about at some length given that this sort of thing is my job.

All of this is cute, and interesting to a wide fan base, most notably that of Adults rather than children. Kids overall don't need to be sold on Barbie, but if you want to expand Barbie's market demographics it's sensible to look towards those who once loved her rather than trying to sell boys on the pink plastic dream house. 

Ultimately, very few people need to learn that Barbie and Ken exist, the marketplace is saturated. But as icons, they have grown stale and people have forgotten why they exist and why they're popular. Why they played for hours with them as kids, and why their children probably would. This is not an intellectual process but an emotional one and while it is cheesy and direct that is exactly what Ken and Barbie are all about.

Ken has always been a secondary character in the Barbie Franchise, one who is the butt of so many "no genitals underwear painted on his pants" comments that it doesn't even need to be said anymore. He has always been Barbie's match and has always filled a role that men in the modern era find themselves in more often than it seems they once did, with wildly successful interesting girlfriends with a variety of interests, who often take the spotlight and who want a partner who isn't threatened by that. It is a piece of the zeitgeist that is not explored as thoroughly as it might in other narrative franchises, and that sets the stage for some big things from Barbie.

Ken's love of Barbie has lacked a clear voice for Barbie and it's a great argument to make for the Barbie brand to put Ken forward in this way because he can articulate all the reasons why a person would love Barbie, because he does. So, you have a solid campaign in the narrative universe, what other kinds of stories fit here? 

 

If you're anything like me, your gut reaction to this reality show is horror, mixed with fascination, mixed with a feeling of nausea and a bit of terrified awe. But that is my reaction to every reality show I've ever heard of so it's a dismissible reaction.

So. These guys are all competing for the title of "Great American Boyfriend" in the mold of Ken. Explicitly. It's clearly branded, immediately identifiable and yet, is really down to earth when it comes to the actual tasks presented. It's clearly not designed for the 5-9 set, though I don't think I'd be uncomfortable if someone that age saw it.

It has the feel of other 28 minute dating shows and is fairly wholesome. After getting over my initial terror of the whole thing (the things I do for you, blog) and actually watching it, I have to say, in the reality genre, it's solid. It's very well produced, very high quality for a web show, and they obviously were extremely considerate in the way the put it together. Admirable attention to detail.

There is a certain joy that comes from watching guys objectified in the same way women often are on reality shows, and there's nothing abnormal about any of the portrayals. There is less emphasis on sex because there's no one object of the contestants' affection to seduce directly. Instead, the focus seems to be on the guys various personalities and components of romance. That is actually somewhat refreshing in the genre and totally tone perfect for the Barbie and Ken romance. (insert joke about Ken's underwear here)

I found myself laughing out loud in the judging ceremony at the end of the show too, because in classic reality show fashion, they receive tokens that say they are moving forward. Those tokens:

Full Sized Ken Tags.

This whole campaign is extremely well done. It's really highlighting strong points in its brand, while not pushing against the grain and trying to take the brand into places that don't fit. It's playing to its strengths, but doing them carefully and considerately. I have never been the biggest fan of Barbies, as a kid I preferred dolls that were action figure sized because boys toys and girls toys were notoriously hard to play with together. Barbie was too tall for G.I. Joe, Batman was a little too short to play with She-Ra, and I liked the action figures a lot more than I cared about Ken.

As an adult though, I find myself intrigued by this whole campaign and feel a bit more inclined towards the content for my daughter as a result, it shows that there is thought going into the franchise and what the dolls mean. I am not running out to buy Barbie, but I probably wouldn't keep my daughter from getting one if she wanted one.

Why Can't I Be a Boy Fairy?

While this blog is geared towards girls franchises, the answers to the questions below its headline are really non-gender specific but seem to come up again and again in conversations about gender, narrative, storytelling and marketing the problem with most content driven towards girls is that it shows characters without much complexity and limited world that surrounds them. The same problem exists when you look at many male-oriented franchises, and when you look at characters in franchises without a gender-bias.

So, stereotyping of both genders, poorly considered secondary characters, and plots that make those characters act outside of their core personalities are major flaws that diminish storylines and diminish the possibilities to extend a franchise. (Tangent: this is a great article about the Plot vs. Story issue that was on io9.com last year)

In his review of Disney Fairies: Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure on Nintendo DS for IGN Jack DeVries said something that had me giggling manically: Why Can't I Be a Boy Fairy?

It would have been nice if players could create boy fairies though. I realize that a large majority of players will be girls, but there are male characters in the movies, and games, so it seems like the developer could have had the option. One of the cooler features in the game is that players can transfer their fairy and ingredients to the online multiplayer Pixie Hollow game, essentially turning this game into one giant mini-game for the online world.

There was something just so deeply charming and amusing to me about hearing a critique of a game that I've heard so many times in the opposite direction from women and girls, "Why Can't I play as a girl?" When Fable came out there was much hay made about the fact that a game touted as a game about choices didn't even have the option of creating a female avatar, which was addressed by the developers in subsequent chapters. But the inclusion or exclusion of male or female characters in franchises aimed at one gender goes way beyond video games.

I remember that as a little girl, I always wanted to play as a girl when my male friends and I made-believe on the playground that we were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but playing as April was somewhat anticlimactic as playtime might dissolve into an argument about whether or not she could also be a ninja. Thank goodness Carmen Sandiego was around to steal landmarks and be totally awesome or I might never have gotten past the arguments to be a female submarine captain in the library bookshelves, or as a CEO trading basketball players from team to team during lunch hour. (I still have no idea why the exclusively sports playing guys went along with my friends and my nerdy machinations, but they did and it was great!)

My friends were always male and female; in real life kids have friends that are both male and female, but in the stories presented to them tend to show groupings that are overwhelmingly one gender or another. In games, movies, animated series, and books, there tends to be a lack of this reality shown. One thing that Mr. DeVries points out is that in the Disney Fairies movies, and the franchise as a whole, there ARE male fairies. Disney Fairies is actually a great example of a franchise that is doing something to actually show male and female friends in realistic situations, even though it's primary audience is female and likely to remain so.

TinkerBell has several male friends, her closest friend being Terence, a dust-keeper talent fairy. There is a great verisimilitude in this friendship that is explored in the most recent DVD TinkerBell and the Search for the Lost Treasure, and in the extensive book series. But there's more than just one male character, there's also Bobble and Clank, who are TinkerBell's friends and fellow tinkers, and they get as much time as TinkerBell's female friends when they aren't directly involved in the story. In addition to there simply BEING mixed genders the talents are not distributed by gender exclusively, TinkerBell herself is a tinker, an inventor and engineer, the Fairy in charge of Spring is male, both genders are equally concerned with bugs, flowers, fairy dust, and adventure.

It would be very satisfying to see some franchises aimed at young boys treating their worlds and the people, male and female, that inhabit them with the same sense of reality. There are going to be women around somewhere no matter where these boys go in real life, they will have to deal with them sensibly or face serious consequences. The same concern about whether girls are being shown positive images and realistic ones that make them aspire to do inspiring things and prepare them for adulthood should be asked in relationship to what boys are being shown, beyond the obvious critiques about violence so often thrown at franchises. Boys, as well as girls should be able to see cross-gender friendships and normal relationships between peers in their entertainment because not only is it interesting, it helps them understand the world around them and demystifies the opposite gender.

The next time you hear someone groan about how "they don't understand women" or "they don't understand men" think about what the male and female characters presented to them from infancy to adulthood have showed them, and the question of why they might not understand these mysterious alien creatures tends to answer itself.