Real-Life Barbie? Model Created Look to Spread Beliefs

[Buster's Uncle]

Jayne Mansfield in The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, the first thing I noticed her in as a kid.



What she was doing and what I think Valeria intends aren't that alike - Mansfield just wanted to be a big star, and got stuck into a Marilyn Monroe-parody career path, but wanted to be appealing and liked, while Lukanova seems to be trying to shock her way to fame.  Mansfield was notorious for having deliberately-engineered wardrobe malfunctions for the publicity.

But there are definite commonalities beyond the obvious not-looking-real thing.  Notwithstanding that Mansfield's clown makeup and extreme physicality were far more to the mainstream tastes of her time, they both overall give off a stank of trying-too-hard desperation for fame.  It certainly didn't end well for Mansfield, and Lukynova is not likely to still be famous in 10 years - women with that kind of career are finished as soon as they age much.

In my native culture, we have a term "showing your butt in public" (behaving inappropriately and in an undignified way)
- leaving aside the considerable appropriateness in these cases of applying it literally, looking like you're trying too hard to be famous is a form of butt-showing.  It's tough to put a finger on the line between a woman pretty for a living using what's she's got to get ahead and looking cheap and desperate, but both tend to cross it.



That waist mostly ain't girdle, and both DO play with extremes of physicality and inherently interrogate our perceptions of standards of beauty...

[Buster's Uncle]

Embed is working again - I think it was something YouTube was up to and nobody here did anything.

! No longer available

I understand Mansfield was a decent singer, so I don't know why they had Connie Francis dub her songs in the movie, unless it was related to her getting pregnant during the movie and maybe one of the things she was unavailable for was looping in post production - it's not so distracting in this number, but the two love songs with her costar were so obviously dubbed that it really ruined the scenes far beyond the value of Francis' probably far superior vocals.

[Buster's Uncle]

And this brings up Lonnie Anderson, who played Mansfield in a pretty good TV movie and was a good enough likeness that while I was googling images, I wondered several times momentarily if I wasn't actually looking at Anderson playing her.

...I 'spose this is an excuse to post pictures of Lonnie Anderson later...

[Rusty Edge]

That was well-expressed. I agree, but wouldn't have said it so well.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm a -whatchacallit- deep thinker, and I've been thinking about this for a long time.

I'm trying to understand the strange reaction I, and definitely others, have to Ms. Lukynova - I will come as no shock when I admit that I often like looking at her - but I do feel the repulsion, too.  My tastes in women strongly runs again fake/whorey-looking -I tend to associate the two- so when I see one who pulls off the clown makeup bleached-blonde look and manages to look good to me that way anyway, I'm intrigued on an intellectual level.  I have the same reaction to Heather Tesh, formerly of the Weather Channel.  (Now I've brought in a justification to go look at and post pictures of Heather Tesh, who definitely evokes Barbie comparisons without the edge to it.)

And the whole uncanny valley thing that I perceive Valaria plays with deliberately as a sort of meta performance art, triply-so; it's fascinating the reaction we have to overly-realistic dolls and overly unreal-looking people.  It offends something deep in us that doesn't like having perceptions of reality challenged.

[Metaliturtle]

She's actually a very odd person, with a strange draw.

[Buster's Uncle]

Sorta the point.

[Metaliturtle]

Have you ever tried sungazing as food?

[Buster's Uncle]

No, and I wonder what she was trying to pull when she claimed that.

[Metaliturtle]

My brother actually tried it and said he did feel full, however in WI we don't get much sunlight.  He claims to have gone 48 days on just water.  I tried it for 2 days and then overslept, which is my excuse for eating breakfast that day

[Geo]

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Human facial expression, check.  Non-freaky makeup, check (though the eye makeup is poor).  Looking curvy but not freakishly so/starved, check.

I'd say this is one of her better shots.  I believe that's her real nose, too.

[Buster's Uncle]

This one is win on the same grounds at the last, except new nose, better eye makeup, and no ugly black Synyrd pseudo cowbow hat.



I think her hair looks good here.  Cute pic.

[Buster's Uncle]

Mostly interesting for it could be any youngish normal-looking blonde taking a selfie.

[Buster's Uncle]

Clown makeup & weird pseudo-bindi, but note the look of actually having human emotions on her face...



That's 'Beta Barbie'/sidekick Olga beside her in truly hideous clown makeup - normally, she serves to make Valaria look more ethereal; in this shot, she makes Val look beautiful and restrained and normal.  Olga's normally a lot better-looking than this, in her fake-but-less-fake way...

Uno?  See the bat necklace?