10 onscreen himbos who paved the way for Ken
As Barbie's ridiculously good-looking doofus continues to dominate the conversation, let’s count down pop culture’s most beautiful dim-witted men
With the colossal success of Barbie—Greta Gerwig’s spirited ode to and subversion of the iconic fashion doll brought in a whopping $162 million domestic and $356 million global in its opening weekend—comes a much-welcomed entry into himbo history: Ryan Gosling’s “Stereotypical Ken.” Playing Barbie’s ultimate accessory, Gosling giddily commits to every deliciously doofy aspect of the character: the ’80s power ballad, the insane costumes (at one point he wears cat-eye sunglasses over another pair of cat-eye sunglasses), the nonsensical job occupation (simply “Beach”), the sheer eagerness with which he approaches, well, everything.
But even when Gosling’s Ken ends up leading a patriarchal coup against the women-dominated government of Barbie Land, it’s his innate himbo wholesomeness that subdues any real sense of danger. That’s because true himbos are characterized as much by their harmlessness as they are by their abdominals. A portmanteau of “him” and “bimbo” coined by a 1988 article in The Washington Post, the himbo label has come to signify a specific genre of exceptionally handsome, charmingly good-natured but ultimately very dim-witted dudes, the kind of fellas that folks on the internet dub “cinnamon rolls” and “golden retriever boyfriends.”
Hollywood has a long himbo tradition across screens both big and small. In recognition of the latest, let’s honor the greatest: Here are 10 dumbly beautiful and beautifully dumb men that paved the way for Ken.
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