“Barbie” brought attention to the men-playing-guitar-on-dates phenomenon. Oftentimes, it makes women feel uncomfortable and isolated. No matter what, it’s awkward.
By Saija Maki-Waller
Hannah Johnson was a freshman at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa in 2017 when she encountered a man with a guitar. She had seen this before and was generally excited about it. Not this time.
It was her first ever Tinder date in a dorm room. Just a few minutes in, her date pulled out a guitar and began strumming, not very well, as she recalled. Eventually she found herself reluctantly agreeing to join him in a rendition of Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect.” “I’m in this strange person’s bedroom. What else am I supposed to say, no for the seventh time?” Johnson said.
Recently, “Barbie” made history as the first movie solo-directed by a woman to make over one billion dollars at the box office. In the movie, Ken plays the guitar at Barbie while she fakes amusement. Hordes of women flocked to theaters to see “Barbie” and burst into laughter at the recognized shared experience.
“I’ve long suspected that men possess a physical mutation that makes them believe, unshakably, that they are amazing at guitar,” writes Lauren Larson for GQ in her 2017 article “Never Play Acoustic Guitar for a Woman.” “This is the same mutation that allows men to say, ‘I don’t want to mansplain, but…’ and then keep talking.”
Elsa Nystrom, a student at Centre College, said she hooked up with a man who “when [they] finished, you know, whipped out a guitar still shirtless.”
In “Barbie,” Ken is a reflection of the patriarchal influences on men’s behavior. So, of course, it isn’t really the individual guitar-playing man’s fault.
Whether it’s the boombox scene from “Say Anything” or Patrick Swazey in “Dirty Dancing,” there are countless romantic comedies that feature men showing off their music prowess in order to win over the woman of their dreams.
But by poking fun at this idea, “Barbie,” united women who have experienced this.
Before she saw “Barbie,” Ryn Wiggins, a student at the University of Minnesota, had the guitar played to her on a date. After the movie, she says her perspective on the date has changed. “I probably would have thought it was funny.”
That in itself is a small act of resistance. Just as “Barbie” illustrates, laughter and comedy is a form of resistance to the norm.
But in the end, the guitar strategy doesn’t work out so well. During Johnson’s Tinder date, she was so uncomfortable that she pulled the tried-and-true “roommate has an emergency” trick so she could leave it all behind.