There are days where I’m positive that the naked Ken doll sitting on my roommate’s desk is a better lesbian than I am.
Her name is Kendall, and in another life, she must have been a Troy doll of High School Musical fame. The hair gives it away. There’s an uncomfortable amount of detail in it with each strand dedicated to its own wave that rises off of her head – unlike the plastic hair of the nameless Kens that are as much an accessory to Barbie as her outfits and shoes. Kendall, however, cannot be categorized as an adornment. Her face is too intentionally sculpted and her eyes are sharp and pointed, no less softened by her thin eyelashes. Her charm would almost be described as boyish if not for the slightest suggestion of nude lip gloss at her mouth. This was a Ken doll made for a purpose.
(Actual image of Kendall)
But she is Ken no more. Paired with the narrative stylings of this Autostraddle article ranking Ken dolls by lesbianism and a sometimes-frightening dedication to inside jokes, finding a messy-haired Ken doll in our local Goodwill was the cue for our suitemates to immediately birth Kendall. Broken armed, frazzled haired, and without a decent pair of pants to cover her concerning lack of genitalia, we recognized Kendall as one of “us” immediately.
“It’s solidarity,” I remember saying to my friends before handing over Kendall to the cashier. “No woman left behind.”
Our Ken doll had not only come out to the stunning price of ninety nine cents, but as a lesbian.
In case you’re wondering, it’s not the eyelashes that determine Kendall as a gay woman. Nor is it the short hair; though they sweeten her overall Sapphic projection. She has a sort of energy about her that is unmistakably queer. The type that fears appearing too gay – after all, that’s not her only personality trait; if you ask, she’s also good at crocheting and has had a really successful career at Country Max operating the forklift – and yet revels in it all the same, almost daring the world to ask her if she’s settled down happily with a man yet. The choppy bangs give her butch daring, but the eyelashes and plump lips imply that she isn’t really into that system of categorization within the lesbian community and that’s just fine.
Pantless upon purchase, we had decided that Kendall was not only gay, but a party animal. It seemed as if we had caught her in Goodwill between her transition from the night before and the walk of shame, her hair sticking up in ways that would make Casanova flush.
“I see her as a thirty year old who doesn’t know that her wild college days are behind her,” I said to my roommate when I first purchased her. “The party doesn’t last forever, but she doesn’t seem to have picked up on that yet.”
“I know she’s just trying to get back out there,” a friend later texts me. “But I worry about her sometimes. Take care of her.”
Kendall doesn’t do much these days, now that her story is set. She sometimes finds herself forced into what limited positions her plastic joints will allow her on my roommate’s desk; arm bent into an army salute around the desk lamp, or doing a handstand against the wall. If her days of fantasy play were gone long after we picked her up from the thrift shop, they’re an eternity away now.
But I think about her still. I think about the narrative we’ve built around her, and where my thoughts on my own identity fit into it.
Kendall’s identity has a snap to it. There’s a power in calling yourself a lesbian, I’d have to imagine – finality. I wouldn’t know. The words “bisexual woman” don’t quite roll off of my tongue, despite spending nearly ten years in this identity. Ten years of following up my bisexual identity with the hasty add-on “butimmoreattractedtogirls”, smiling apologetically afterwards as if I even have something to apologize for in the first place. Ten years of panic whenever I go a month without finding a man attractive, like bisexuality is some sort of overdue bill that I need to scrounge up the funds for or my account gets docked to lesbianism. Ten years of fearing if, god forbid, someone thinks that I’m lying to them to cheat my way into the oppression games.
Kendall is not privy to these fears. My imagination won’t allow her to be. She embodies what I’m too afraid to feel. I want to be someone that doesn’t have to fear that wearing jean jackets makes an outright statement about herself. That allows herself to be proud of her sexuality as an unshattered, whole identity that doesn’t need to be explained or reckoned with. She has flaws, but they do not define her; rather, they are just another excuse to get up in the morning, so she can fix them. These values must exist within me, no matter how deep – it’s just taken Kendall to play dress-up with them that has made me realize them.
There’s a lot to learn from a Ken doll with a twenty five-cent haircut, it seems.
Kendall is definitely a better lesbian than me, but that’s because I’m not a lesbian. And just as she continues to express her sexuality through stunted plastic joints, I will continue to make small steps to express myself, borrowing back each of the assets I have loaned to Kendall.
Hopefully, Kendall will one day just be a doll, and I will just be a functioning, happy, bisexual woman.
Follow Her Campus @ Geneseo on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.