Oh, the delicious nuttiness
In a way, I’m not surprised. At all.
The New York Post’s Page Six reports:
BARBIE and Ken are beloved by millions of children – but the people behind the world’s most popular dolls were involved in unsavory sexual behavior they kept secret for years, a new book reveals.
In “Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel,” out next month, Jerry Oppenheimer reveals that Jack Ryan, the Yale-educated designer who popularized Barbie, was a “full-blown seventies-style swinger” with “a manic need for sexual gratification.”
And Barbie isn’t the only one with a sordid past. Ken has his issues, too.
Barbie and Ken were named after the kids of Mattel founders Ruth and Elliot Handler – an honor that plagued Ken, who “grew up embarrassed and humiliated by having an anatomically incorrect boy doll named after him . . . [with] no hint of genitalia.”
Despite marrying and having three kids, Ken was a closeted gay, Oppenheimer says. “To all those who knew him Ken Handler was a wonderful father, a loving husband . . . But there was another side to Ken. And in 1990 he was formally diagnosed with AIDS. His parents and wife were shocked.” He died in 1994 in Greenwich Village, but obits didn’t mention the disease.
Humorously shocking to me was the Post’s use of “gay” as a noun. It smacks of such old-school, politically-incorrect leanings, like using “colored” or “oriental”.
Read the full story here.
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