Oddly, that is what crossed my mind today when I found this:
It wasn't my doll. A friend of my mom's gave it to her while cleaning out her house. But this Donny-Osmond-Meets-The-Village-People knock-off version of Ken made me think of He-Man, a 1980's viking-esque cartoon hero with a little wizard sidekick named Orko and a mortal enemy named Skeletor. I loved the TV show He-Man. But more to the point, I loved my He-Man action figure. He was fucking hot, in sort of a gross, steroid-addled kind of a way. What with his eight-pack abs and his shoulder-length blonde hair and his weird metal viking underpants. Every episode of He-Man ended with He-Man tossing his head back and laughing in a sexy baritone. Through a foggy, portal-sized window of memory, I can see my pre-pubescent self studying He-Man with a curious intrigue that gave me a weird and unfamiliar feeling in the no-no's.
My mom worked with the LGBTQ community in the 1980s. Diverse sexual orientation was part of my childhood and we had many family friends who were not heterosexual. In fact, for awhile I was convinced my mom was having a lesbian affair. I would study her clothes every time she left the house and carefully scrutinize them when she returned, looking for signs of a belt askew or other purported "evidence" of infidelity. Why I decided it was a lesbian affair as opposed to a straight affair, I have no idea. But regardless, it turns out she was just going to psychoanalysis four days a week, which is way more boring.
There really isn't a point to this story, other than that I wanted a vehicle to showcase this ridiculous Donny Osmond/Village People doll. And a true story about my childhood sexual attraction to a plastic He-Man action figure and my mother's suspected lesbian affair is obviously the most direct means to that end.
