Real-Life Barbie? Model Created Look to Spread Beliefs

[Rusty Edge]

Previously, I would have said that she was pretty, she was pursuing a vision, etc.

At this point I can't tell her from computer animation, and my "this doll gives me the creeps" reactions are kicking in, as if I'm seeing a Twilight Zone episode where somebody is trading places with a mannequin/ventriloquist's dummy/doll. In this episode, becoming slowly transformed and entombed in a doll's body.

[Buster's Uncle]

Pic where she's lightly made-up are definitely less off-putting.  It's less the freakishly small waist and general skinniness than the Barbie makeup, I think.



There's a custom faction idea in there somewhere...

[Buster's Uncle]

I mean, the occasional pic you see -where she's not in Barbie drag/heavy makeup w/ the super-vacant expression on her face, but instead looking like she experiences human emotions- she isn't all that bad.



Now I wonder how much the creepy uncanny valley thing she evokes in people is on purpose - I've read that she used to troll Ukrainian boards as a witch, and I tend to believe it, given some older pics I've seen.  -And that would be consistent with like, trolling the whole world with presenting herself as this fragile-looking delicate thing --- with something off and wrong and creepy about it.

If so, you'd have to admit that she's got a very successful Uno-esque goth pink thing going...

[Buster's Uncle]

On the other hand, maybe she's got pretty extreme body dysmorphic disorder, like people tend to assume.  But assuming you can tell between that and publicity-desperate model committed to an extreme look when you've never met the woman seems fallacious to me.

Still, human emotions w/ lighter makeup = not disturbing - but where's the fun in freaking people out with those photos?



I'm still trying to figure it all out, besides.  Shock artist or sick lady?  (Both?)  What is the deal with people's revulsion reaction to a skinny woman in too much makeup?

[Buster's Uncle]

And note - the woman has actual (proportionate, not enhanced-looking) buttocks, her hipbones do not protrude alarmingly, and her cheeks are not hollow when she's that thin and pushing 30.  She obviously doesn't eat enough to keep one of my legs alive, but we're not talking anorexia-level self starvation, I daresay; she's just too healthy-looking.  And her look is consistent enough that I have to rule out photoshopping.  Nobody's that good at shooping stuff that she could post several pictures a day for many years on end and never screw it up or be inconsistent.

She doesn't even pretend that her chest isn't store-bought, and she's definitely had a (pretty good) nose job since her teen beauty pageant days, but she looks enough like her mother and sister that I think the waist is just a skinny model working at being skinny; she had a more believable waist when she first became famous in Russia, but it was always pretty thin.  [shrugs]

[Buster's Uncle]

Her mother, I believe - and almost a smile.



Rusty, I stumbled over a way to look through her older Facebook shots that doesn't crash my machine so far - and I'm hoping to turn up something new where here body looks extreme but her face and expression doesn't, to gauge your reaction.  You may conclude that I'm having a dull evening, to bother...

[Buster's Uncle]

Where does this register on the otherness revulsion scale?



Heavier makeup than I'm looking for, but not weird Barbie eyes, and that there's an actual smile.

[Buster's Uncle]

This just looks like a model...

[Buster's Uncle]

Interesting quote...

[Buster's Uncle]

This here's actually a more authentic Barbie look than she usually sports.  Barbie has never, as far as I recall, had a blank expression on her face - the original had a haughty pout, evolving into a big-eyed pleasant smile by the early 70s, a lot like this.



But I don't think Barbie ever actually had that much to do with what she means to be performing - ethereal, if plastic, perfection with a profound distancing effect.  People take Barbie from that, and she rolls with it, but not exactly the point of what she's doing.  That has more to do with the flying saucer people and her other spiritual beliefs, eastern European standards of beauty, and yes, her personal issues.  -Also, trolling.

I'm in awe of the virtuosity of the trolling, if I'm right about this.  I enjoy watching an accomplished artist at work, whatever the medium...

[Rusty Edge]

Where does this register on the otherness revulsion scale?



Heavier makeup than I'm looking for, but not weird Barbie eyes, and that there's an actual smile.

That bikini top is hideodious , and she looks like jailbait. Beyond the make-up, which isn't that unusual, more or less normal.

Generally speaking- Her nose looks unnatural to me, but it looks like her mother's. I suppose that could be genes or a family plastic surgeon. Don't know.   Perhaps there's a fetal alcohol syndrome vibe here with their faces. The bikini picture ( presumably younger) doesn't seem to have the verticle cleft between the nose and lip.  Also, her hands seem over-sized.

[Buster's Uncle]

Her original nose looks almost exactly like her mother's, but the difference mostly shows in profile.

I take it jailbait and large hands indicates a less than perfect score on repulsion?  Yeah, the visual cues in that shot, taken in isolation, do tend to signal youth - her head looks big, indicating shortness, and factoring in the skinny arms and legs, she looks like a 15 year-old who's just gone through changes.  It is not that unusual for a young girl to get big in the chest before she builds up adult muscle mass.  ISTR that she's actually a pretty normal height, so she must just have a big head/hands.

Agreed about the top.

[Rusty Edge]

Well, I'm presuming the skinny blonde teenager/aspiring model in too much make-up/ passed off as an adult  thing in that picture.

Nobody likes it any better than children's beauty pageants, but they buy the magazines with them on the cover anyway.


I guess it's logical- the more face-paint and silicone you add to the body, the more it's going to look like a doll. It's the crossing of the barrier between human and doll that makes me anxious.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm pretty sure that shot is recent - as in, before she started seriously hitting the gym about two years ago, but she just didn't look like that as a teen beauty queen.

[Buster's Uncle]

It suddenly occurs to me to wonder if I should be digging up pictures of Jayne Mansfield to post for compare/contrast purposes.  The first thing I ever saw her in was a western where she HAD to be wearing a tight girdle - her waist was circle-your-hands small, on a parody-of-Marylyn-Monroe buxom body, and the ultimate effect was similar to what Valeria has in her more attractive moments.  Just didn't look real.

No one ever accused her of anorexia, and she definitely wasn't trolling, but there's some decided intersection of viewer reaction. 

Both women, in their presentation and the reactions their extreme appearances elicited and the societal pressures surrounding them and informing their careers, have a lot to say, on some meta-level, about women's role in the world and people's perceptions of beauty and those fuzzy boundaries of otherness and when artifice goes too far - and interesting stuff like that.