Ken Day

What the day is

Ken Day is observed on March 13, shared with Barbie Day, which marks her 1959 debut. Ken followed in 1961.

Origin and background

He was named for Kenneth Handler, son of Ruth and Elliot Handler, as Barbie was named for their daughter. The two-year gap is the interesting part: Mattel had not planned a male doll, and the pressure came from the play patterns children were already inventing. Girls were giving Barbie a social world, and the company added the figure the stories kept requiring.

That origin has defined the product ever since. Ken was conceived as an accessory to someone else's narrative rather than as a protagonist, and he has never sold in remotely comparable numbers. Mattel has periodically tried to reposition him, including a much-reported break in the relationship in 2004 and a reconciliation in 2011 handled as a marketing campaign.

The physical design attracted the same criticism as Barbie's from the other direction. Analyses of the proportions of male action figures over several decades found them growing steadily more muscular, well beyond what is achievable without pharmaceutical help, and researchers have linked exposure to those idealized male bodies to body dissatisfaction in boys. That research is far less publicized than the equivalent work on female dolls, which is itself part of the pattern: concern about body image in boys has been slower to register.

Mattel eventually broadened the Ken line in 2017 with different body types, skin tones and hair, following the equivalent change to Barbie the previous year.

The doll's cultural position, defined by his relationship and largely without an occupation of his own, has been read as a fairly pointed inversion of how female characters have usually been written.

How to take part

• Notice which dolls in a toy aisle have jobs and which have relationships.
• Read about the research on male action figure proportions over time.
• Talk to boys about body image, which happens far less than the equivalent conversation with girls.
• Pass old dolls on rather than discarding them.
• Look up who Ken was actually named after.