The Truth About Black Ken and Me

I was thirty-three years old when I bought my first Bar­bie doll. My niece had been born a few years ear­lier, and I decided that I wanted to have some toys on hand in case she–or any of my other friends with small children–visited. When I told my friend Trixie that I bought a Bar­bie, she became quite upset.

“Why the @#%* did you buy a Bar­bie?” she said.

To say that Trixie’s reac­tion was unex­pected, is putting it mildly. “Um … because that’s what lit­tle girls play with, isn’t it?”

“Let me tell you a sad story,” Trixie began. “Once there was a lit­tle brunette girl who always received blond dolls for birth­days, Christ­mas, and when her father didn’t show up for his vis­i­ta­tions and tried to buy her love once he sobered up. And do you know what mes­sage that blond doll said to her lit­tle, dark-haired self?”

“Play with me?”

“No!” She jabbed a fin­ger into my chest. “That blond bitch said, ‘You are a sec­ond class female and you always will be!’”

“Really?” I asked. “Bar­bie said that to you?”

“Take her back!”

“What?”

“Take Bar­bie back and get a brunette friend of Bar­bie,” Trixie said.

“But my niece is blond, Trixie,” I said. “If I exchange Bar­bie for a dark-haired doll, am I not send­ing her mes­sage that says, ‘You’re a sec­ond class citizen?’”

Trixie folded her arms across her chest.  “Well, obvi­ously you’re a lost cause,” she huffed and stormed off.

I didn’t think any­thing more of the con­ver­sa­tion until Trixie gave me a pack­age for my birth­day. I tore off the wrap­ping paper to find a black Ken doll start­ing back at me.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Since you refused to return your blond Bar­bie, I decided to give you a dark-haired Ken to bal­ance things out.”

“This isn’t a Ken doll,” I said. “He’s black.”

“Oh, so in addi­tion to being an Aryan-supremacist, now you’re a racist!  Why don’t we just call him Mandingo!”

“I’m not a racist,” I hissed. “I sim­ply stated that this is not a Ken doll.  I also noted that he’s African-American.”

“So he’s a black Ken,” Trixie argued.

“Accord­ing to Mattel’s pack­ag­ing, his name is Steven.  He’s the main squeeze for Barbie’s friend Christy, who is also African-American.”

“Well, if you want to nitpick–”

“Wait a minute! Don’t even go there,” I said.  It was begin­ning to dawn on me that there was some­thing big­ger going on here than the fact Trixie had bought Bar­bie a com­pan­ion other than the one she is typ­i­cally part­nered with.  It was like read­ing about Wilma Flint­stone and Homer Simp­son hav­ing an affair in the National Enquirer.  “You know, I don’t think this is about me; this is about you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talk­ing about.”  Trixie sud­denly became very inter­ested in her fin­ger­nails.  “You said that you wanted Bar­bie to have a companion.”

“No, I said that I wanted Bar­bie to have a Ken.  When peo­ple think of Bar­bie, they think of Bar­bie and Ken–not Bar­bie and Steven,” I said.  “I didn’t even know that Steven existed.”

“If you just take some time to get to know Steven, I’m sure that you’ll grow fond of him,” Trixie said.  “I’m sim­ply try­ing to cul­ti­vate some diver­sity in your niece’s world, but it seems to me that you’re both­ered to have Bar­bie shack­ing up with a black man.  You’re a racist!”

“For the love of God, I’m not racist!  I don’t care if Bar­bie dates a black man or whether she becomes a les­bian.”  I sighed. “Do you know what it seems like to me?   It seems like you bought Steven because you wanted to make me feel like you always felt when you received a blond Bar­bie as a lit­tle girl.”

Trixie grew quiet.  “When I told you what it felt like to always receive a blond Bar­bie as a lit­tle brunette girl, it seemed like you were mak­ing light of my feelings.”

In that moment, my heart went out to Trixie.  Granted, as an adult she had totally dis­re­garded my feel­ings about what I had wanted, but her action was moti­vated by the hurt of lit­tle girl who felt that she wasn’t good enough as is.

“I’m sorry, Trixie, I wasn’t mak­ing fun of you,” I said.  I rubbed my tem­ples.  It seemed that some­thing so sim­ple had become so need­lessly com­pli­cated.  “If you felt brunettes weren’t equally rep­re­sented in y niece’s life, then why didn’t you just buy one of Barbie’s dark-haired friends?”

“Well … I recently real­ized that I’m really attracted to black men,” she said.

A long silence fol­lowed.  We both looked at Steven, then our eyes met.  There was a hun­gry look in Trixie’s eyes and I sud­denly felt very pro­tec­tive of Steven, so I sent Trixie home to take a cold shower.  What really mat­tered is that Trixie and I had both been heard.

In the mean­time, I intro­duced Bar­bie to Ken.  I wasn’t sure how things would work out, at first, because Steven thought that Bar­bie was too aggres­sive at first and Bar­bie felt that Steven was too reserved for her taste.  But I sent them off to one of those places where you have a few glasses of wine and tapas while you fire a ceramic ash tray, and one thing led to another …

For the past nine years, Bar­bie and Steven have been liv­ing together in a suit­case.  Some­times par­ents will get a bewil­dered expres­sion on their face.  “Where’s Ken?” they ask.

“There’s not one,” I reply.

“But Bar­bie is always with Ken,” they say, auto­mat­i­cally, with­out thinking.

“Well, Bar­bie used to think that way, too, but then she met Steven and fell in love with his sense of humor,” I say.  “They’re really happy together.”

They laugh.  Then they notice the dark-haired Kayla.  “So who’s Barbie’s friend?”

“You remem­ber my friend Trixie?  Well, she recently became intrigued by polyamorous love.”

Of course, that’s another story …