For queer people, Michael Cera’s Allan is the most important doll in the Barbie toy box -TGN

Margot Robbie is Barbie‘s ingenious heroine. Ryan Gosling does Barbie‘s meaningless adversary. Yet Michael Cera, who plays the ever-anxious Allan, is Barbie‘s surprising heart and soul.

Despite the cast of several queer icons — including Alexandra Shipp as Writer Barbie, and scene-stealing, FLAT FEET!-screeching trans icon Hari Nef as Doctor Barbie — queer representation in Barbie‘s storyline is on the light side to say the least.

It’s fair enough though. While some Barbie fans had suspected that Margot Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie would be a lesbian, thanks to everyone’s collective childhood memory of banging Barbie dolls together, Robbie himself made the excellent point that Barbies don’t really have a sexual orientation. After all, they have plastic mounds, not genitals.

However, LGBTQ+ fans who feel a little cheated given the film’s camp and colorful aesthetic need not fear: Michael Cera’s Allan brings all the queer undertones we need.

Allan was introduced to the Mattel dynasty way back in 1964pitched as “Ken’s Buddy,” even though consumers saw him for exactly what he was: an unnecessary marketing gimmick.

Since the Kens themselves are hardly needed in Barbieland – they don’t even seem to have a home in the movie – was there ever a need for an Allan? He was quickly discarded two years after Mattel introduced him, before being briefly revived and renamed ‘Alan’, with one ‘L’, in 1991 and 2002.

Allan may be just an unfortunate misstep in the Mattel empire, but in Greta Gerwig’s record-breaking Hollywood blockbuster, he takes on a new lease of life and establishes himself as the gay community’s gateway to Gerwig’s pastel dreamscape.

In any context, Gerwig did a fantastic job of using Allan as one of the film’s very best comedic devices. In his opening sequence, narrator Helen Mirren introduces him as “Just Allan”, the only male doll of which no replicas exist. “Yeah, I’m confused about that,” replies Cera.

In that brief 10-second introduction, we can already see Allan for what he is Barbie universe: an outlier. He doesn’t fit into the world he lives in, and this fact makes him a little insecure about himself. In those 10 seconds, he establishes himself as a character in which so many queer people can see their younger selves reflected.

For all its feminist messages and self-empowerment mantras, the fact remains that Barbieland largely mirrors the binaries of the real world; the Barbies should rule the city with the other Barbies, the Kens should just be Kens, with the other Kens.

However, Alan is different. He’s not too content with being buff and stranded with the Ken dolls. When Ryan Gosling’s Ken returns from the real world on a misogynistic power trip with a plan to establish patriarchy in Barbieland, Allan is the first to call it out for what it is, planning to help the Barbies and Gloria (America Ferrera) take back control.

When the Barbies show up at the constitution vote to thwart Gosling’s plan to turn Barbieland into Kenland, Allan stands next to them and hangs out with the girls again.

Still, he’s no man hater either – when Ken runs into the sea and is sent back onto the sand, Allan lets out a concerned cry, anxious to make sure his friend is okay. He is a gentle, sensitive soul.

When I watched the movie, I couldn’t help but see my young, gay self in Allan, even if just a little bit. Making friends with the girls since the guys were just not a crowd made me feel comfortable. I felt out of place in a world that just didn’t seem to understand who I was.

I wore my emotions on my sleeve, because I didn’t quite know how to bottle it up the way other guys could—and often teased because of it. Growing up, I could see how toxic masculinity had distorted the world view of so many boys and men I knew.

Psychoanalysis aside, Allan remains as strangely coded as a doll with no genitals can be, thanks in particular to a few cheeky nods from Gerwig.

Despite the Allan doll supposedly marrying Barbie’s friend Midge in the Mattel universe, the film makes no reference to marriage at all, despite Midge (Emerald Fennell) starring.

In 2020, a tweet featuring Allan’s original 1964 box went viral. The box features a shirtless Ken standing behind Allan, with the tagline, “All of Ken’s clothes fit him!”.

They hung out topless and wore each other’s clothes? For today’s gays, that meant, you know, maybe Ken and Allan were more than just buddies.

It’s a line Gerwig deliberately included in the film, perhaps as a wink-wink-nudge to Allan’s strange connotations. Plus, let’s not forget the part of the movie where all the Barbies tend to all the Kens’ needs, with Allan himself helping out – by rubbing Ken’s feet.

Even Cera herself picked up on Allan’s historical strangeness, telling recently ScreenRant that he read Gerwig’s script as Allan who was “obsessed with Ken, if not in love with him”.

“I love that he just wants the best for Ken, even if that means Ken isn’t around him,” Cera explains. “He wants Ken’s happiness.”

In a Barbieland seemingly devoid of explicit weirdness, Cera’s fish-out-of-water take on Allan comes closest. He’s not perfect, but there’s only one Allan.