Twitter Is Having a Hard Time Accepting the New Man-Bun-Sporting Ken Doll

Mattel just released their new “Fashionistas” line of Barbie and Ken dolls, which includes 40 new dolls, with seven different body types, 11 skin tones, and 28 hairstyles. The internet is a flurry of opinions, of course, though they’re mostly ignoring the 39 of the new diverse line’s dolls and focusing on one: Man Bun Ken.

Oh boy, does the internet have some opinions on him. There are a lot of people (whose tweets I’m not even going to embed, because they don’t deserve the attention) making jokes about Ken’s anatomy, because apparently hair length, anatomy, and masculinity are all directly correlative.

There are others keeping their disdain brief and unexplained.

If you’re going to bash Millennials and man buns, at least be clever about it.

I’m not sure why so many adults find this doll distressing, but I bet there are more than a few kids to whom this Ken will be cool, or even a meaningful form of self-expression. And if you think that’s an overstatement, let me direct you once again to those cretins first mentioned above who to this day insist on equating hairstyles with self-worth and masculinity.

(image: Mattel)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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