If we look ahead to February's Oscars and the impending awards season before it, there's a high chance that Barbie's Ken, played by Ryan Gosling, could find himself on the docket next to a wartime government official (Robert Downey Jr's Lewis Strauss from Oppenheimer), an Osage County crime boss (Robert DeNiro's William Hale from Killers of the Flower Moon) and a loose reimagination of one of true crime's most tragic victims of abuse (Charles Melton's Joe Yoo from May December).
With his wardrobe full of bandanas, penchant for horses and a habit of being completely down bad for Barbie, Ken became an expected – if somewhat unlikely – pop culture fave in the nuclear dust settle of Barbenheimer. This is a man who epitomises the aspirational ideal of ‘no thoughts head empty’ and whose only understanding of the concept of dissatisfaction depends on whether he can lounge in a jazzy two-piece on the beach. In a landscape of brooding men twisting themselves in knots from the sheer weight of existence, he's just Ken, the premiere himbo of 2023.
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As archetypes go, the himbo is a late entry into the canon of masculinity. He's sweet, dumb, hot and harmless, with all the brawn of the silver screen hunk but none of the machismo. He has boundless golden retriever energy, with endless love to impart to his chosen object of affection. He's the counter-culture to the traditional Hollywood jock that's evolved from teen comedy heartthrob to world-saving superhero and turns the lens of objectification often pointed at women with a cheery glint.
If the last few years were all about waify, Timothée Chalamet, Harry Styles-like androgynous internet boyfriends, then 2023 has been all about himbos. Ken may have opened the door, but since then a wave of regular, stunning guys have made their way into our hearts. Take Taylor Swift's latest beau Travis Kelce, who hard-launched his aspirations for a hook-up with the world's biggest pop star with a friendship bracelet with his number on it. Here was a man who seemed so unburdened by the societal shame of shooting your shot at the risk of failing, the internet had no option but to root for him. Then his decade-old tweets came out, a phrase that should send a shiver up anyone's spine at the mere thought. But rather than anything notes app apology-inducing, they were just a seamlessly never-ending stream of himbo gold, with such gems as “I just gave a squirle a peice of bread and it straight smashed all of it!!!! I had no idea they ate bread like that!! Haha #crazy” and “NAP TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”.
Imagining that we could peek into the minds of men whose heads appear to resemble nothing more than a monkey clanging symbols (affectionately) is what has truly made the himbo take off in 2023. Think of Ken's “I'm just Ken”, the sentiment that launched a meme movement and a mid-Barbie vintage musical number. The song says so much about a man who knows absolutely nothing, and that's just fine – fun, even. Aspirational. Much like Kelce's high school tweets (that he's proudly left up even after going viral), the surge in aggregated pull quotes from Twitter accounts like Film Updates and Pop Crave have also given us a perfect nuggets of unadulterated, joyful himboness.
Jacob Elordi, whose turn as Felix in Saltburn could be seen as himbo-adjacent, himself has danced with the notion of himboism (although you could argue he's more babygirl than himbo, but that's a debate for another time). In his press run for Priscilla, where he plays Elvis Presley, he revealed "The most I knew of Elvis was in Lilo & Stitch”, and while promoting Saltburn, we've been delivered a steady stream of him towering over co-star Barry Keoghan (he's 6'5, in case you didn't know) and helping him with tall-boi tasks like picking up his coffee while they both sit on high chairs. He also said that his penchant for tiny bags isn't a fashion statement: “It’s not so deliberate. I lose stuff a lot."
Who's to say why the himbo has elicited such a warm spark in our hearts this year. Perhaps there's just so much happening all the time, every hour of the day, every second of every minute that the idea of coasting through life with a sense of dopey wonder (while also being hot) is something we want to cling to. The himbo seems to have it all figured out, even if, by design, he has absolutely nothing figured out.
