Man Bun Ken

Submission 17,196

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About

Man Bun Ken refers to a series of image macros featuring Mattel's millennial rebranding of the Ken doll in which the iconic toy's hair is styled to look like a man bun. Online, people caption pictures of the updated Ken doll with stereotypes about millennial urban dwelling men.

Origin

On June 20th, 2017, Mattel debuted their rebranded brand of Ken dolls along with numerous other updated Barbie dolls, including Ken dolls with man bun hairstyles. In a Tweet, the official Barbie Twitter account posted "Our new Fashionistas feature even more skin tones, eye colors, and hairstyles. #TheDollEvolves." The post (shown below) received more than 1,100 retweets and 3,900 likes in 48 hours.

Shortly after the dolls premiered on Twitter, morning talk show Good Morning America devoted a segment to the dolls, highlighting the "Man Bun Ken" in particular. On Twitter,^[2] the video (shown below) of the segment received more than 500 retweets and 1,000 likes.

WATCH: Mattel introduces a new line of diverse Ken dolls (INCLUDING MAN BUN KEN): https://t.co/rF9l5l71fz pic.twitter.com/MuM5fujcNo
— Good Morning America (@GMA) June 20, 2017

Spread

Following the segment, Good Morning America posted a picture of Man Bun Ken to Twitter. Above a picture of the new doll, @GMA tweeted, "MAN BUN KEN." The tweet (shown below) received more than 730 retweets and 1,300 likes.

After the segment aired, people on Twitter began using the Ken Doll as an inspiration for jokes about millennial men, generally mocking hipsters (examples below). Twitter user @NicCageMatch tweeted a picture of the doll with the caption: "Man-bun Ken doll just interrupted me to tell me that Bernie would have won." The tweet (shown below) received more than 4,500 retweets and 15,300 likes.

Throughout the day, people continued to tweet jokes about the doll. Most of them tended to revolve around the way men treat women, either through jokes about mansplaining, dating and/or politics.

Several news outlets covered the release of the new Ken, including The Daily Dot,^[2] Vox,^[3] The New York Times,^[4] GQ^[5] and more. Twitter published two Moments^[6]^[7] pages about the new Ken Doll, highlighting the announcement and the reaction.