Lately, I have seen a lot of stories popping up about
Valeria Lukyanova, a Ukranian woman a.k.a. “Human Barbie.” When I read My First Black Barbie: Transforming the
Image by Sharon Raynor, I of course thought of the extreme Human Barbie. The way that the author compares herself to
black Barbie dolls is the complete opposite of Valeria’s mentality.
The author of My First
Black Barbie described herself as the “alien child” and an “oddity.”
(Raynor) She “never possessed the desire to look like a Barbie doll” and
defined her “own standards of beauty and acceptance.” (Raynor) Her first black
Barbie doll gave her something that she could relate to and made her
comfortable in her brown skin in society. She speaks of her image being
portrayed as unacceptable and alien. She grows up to “embrace (her) uniqueness”
and be “comfortable in (her) own skin”. (Raynor)
According to an article on E! Online, Valeria Lukyanova,
Human Barbie, made a comment to GQ magazine about children being
“’unacceptable’ and blaming race-mixing for the ‘degeneration’ of beauty
standards.” Sound familiar? Valeria says that looking like Barbie “just makes
the non-aliens more inclined to hear her message” about saving people from
superficiality and negative energy.
I found it interesting that how Raynor called herself an
alien… and Lukyanova said the same thing about how she wants to share her “time-traveling
spiritual guru” skills with something that is not an alien. I also found it
interesting how Raynor is comfortable being black and feels beautiful in her
own skin- in comparison to Human Barbie talking bad about different races
bringing down beauty standards. The article and the short story both speak of
Barbie’s and beauty but in two completely different ways. In my personal
opinion, Valeria has lost her mind, and I hope her actions and looks actually inspire
young girls to not want to look like a true Barbie doll, because she looks
ridiculous. Natural beauty is what matters more, and hope this real life
plastic look is not what girls strive to be.
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