Images of and stories about this "human Barbie" have been floating around the internet for a few weeks now, but today on the quality news source Yahoo!,
this article considers to what extent the individual in question used plastic surgery or Photoshop to achieve the "Barbie" look. I have discussed women falling into the Uncanny Valley
before, but what I find notable about this story is not at all that a Russian model wants to look like a doll. As the Yahoo! article itself says, Valeria Lukyanova is neither the first nor the only human Barbie in the world. Interesting to me is the fact that there is somehow a difference between the falsity of makeup (a minor, hardly noteworthy one), and the falsity of computer or surgical manipulation (much more fake!). The article accuses Lukyanova of "
possibly manipulating the public in the process" of showing the world her Barbie-ness, apparently because she claims to have had no plastic surgery, though "experts" are sure that she has. Perhaps her insistence has something to do with common claims that no real woman could match Mattel's Barbie's proportions. At any rate, I am led to consider the difference between "honest" artistic embellishment (makeup, airbrushing, contacts) and "fraudulent" bodily manipulation (Photoshop or plastic surgery). Does it matter which Lukyanova has undergone in order to look more like a piece of plastic? And if it does matter,
why does it matter? Is your "fake" different from my "fake?" Are both different from Lukyanova's?
