I often describe wrestlers as “earnest.” Definitions of the word include “serious and zealous in intention, purpose, or effort; showing depth and sincerity of feeling.” So, of course, when I’m describing a wrestler as “earnest,” that wrestler is a babyface. That quality of guilelessness, of unwavering devotion to overcome by unmatched effort, of faith in the rightness of one’s purpose and certainty in deserving victory… fuck, I love earnestness in a babyface wrestler. It’s in stark contrast to a heel who embraces duplicity, who cheats and steals his way to victory regardless of whether he’s the better man. I enjoy the way pro wrestling can play with earnestness. For example, when an obviously superior physical specimen, or a clearly superior technical wrestler, gets low-blowed and upended, that twist of fate is lovely drama. Or when a steadfastly righteous babyface gets poked one too many times, gets cheated out of the victories that, by all rights, should have been his, and he gets seduced by the darkside, turning vicious and vile and shedding the shackles of his earnest belief in hard work, that play on the vulnerability of earnestness is an awesome hook for me in enjoying wrestling drama.

A very good friend of mine (who would like it to be made clear that he is NOT obsessively infatuated with Ryan Gosling) talked me into going to the theater for the first time in about 6 years to see the movie Barbie. This friend, who HAS seen all of Ryan Gosling’s movies (and can quote extensive sections by heart), assured me that Gosling’s oiled up bare pecs in Barbie would be sufficient payoff for me. And, fuck. Yeah. I’m a total mark for that deep, deep crevice between Ryan’s pumped up pecs. He’s been building that rocking hot bod of his bigger and more beautiful, movie after movie. I think I noticed it first in Blade Runner 2049. He’s always had a pretty body, but, fuck… more muscle looks fucking good on him. My friend (who is NOT obsessively infatuated with him) confirms that in the sequence of when Gosling’s movies were filmed, he’s been steadily getting hunkier and more action-adventure muscly. The strategically pre-released teasers showcasing his hot shirtlessness and gorgeously displayed cleavage in Barbie should have been enough to drag me by my dick into the theater. But it helped that my friend (who may have made sure to be first in line for the very first screening he could possibly get to), who knows me well, assured me that I’d enjoy Gosling’s stellar body and probably broader themes in the movie.

Gosling plays Ken. Not “the” Ken. Just “a” Ken. And in Barbieland, the Kens are support players, at best. Kens are one dimensional, with little self-awareness. They’re serious and guileless. They focus on doing whatever they’re doing (e.g., “beaching”) to the very best of their ability, and that’s their whole ambition. Over and over, they’re mostly just window dressing for the real stars of the story, there to make them look good like an accessory. In other words, they’re earnest. Earnest babyface jobbers.

There are a lot of actually cool and sophisticated themes in Barbie, but the one with a homoerotic wrestling analogy I like best is the folly of the discontented jobber. Ken (Gosling) gets a glimpse of what life might be like if he were the master of his own fate. Spoiler alert… the Kens (all of them babyface jobbers) take over Barbieland in a misguided effort to claim the mantle of patriarchy that woman-centric Barbieland had remained immune to before then. They act bro-y and insensitive. They’re entitled and nasty. They leak piss down the side of the toilet and assume someone else will clean it up (<– that last one isn’t in the movie… Kens don’t have genitalia). They make their own rules and ignore the consequences. In other words, the jobbers turn heel.

But here’s the kicker (more spoiler alert): Ken’s just pretending to be an insensitive dick. All the while, deep down, he’s actually still earnest as hell. It’s not exactly that he wants to be dominated. He doesn’t want to be loser. He just needs to be earnest more than he wants to lie, cheat, and steal his way to being a winner.

I think that’s what must motivate any babyface jobber to keep climbing into the ring, time and time again, to get demolished. In a pro wrestling universe that transparently rewards might over right, deep down, a Ken has to be more devoted to his own earnestness than to winning. He has to love his earnestness more than he treasures his own dignity. He doesn’t want to get beaten. It’s not masochism or self-hatred. It’s just, deep down, he is, tried and true, earnest.

Barbie clearly isn’t a homoerotic wrestling movie, of course. Well, there is the epic fight scene with lot’s of over-the-top flashes of shirtless flexing and muscle posing. And Ryan Gosling has certainly starred in a lot of my homoerotic wrestling fantasies. And he’s oiled up and flexing and posing throughout almost the entire fucking movie. But it’s not a homoerotic wrestling movie. But if you’re like me and my friend (who may or may not be the amazing artist who rendered the image of Ryan Gosling as beach Ken above, and the pre-fight stretch of Gosling below), you might find it just kenough to make Barbie thought-provoking and titillating at the same time.