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09th Apr 2014

GQ Russia Editor Answers The Question “Is The Human Barbie Sexy?” After Interview With The Infamous Breatharianist”

It's not that often that we're amazed by GQ.

Alanna Alexander

When we met Valeria Lukyanova (in articles on the internet), we thought she was crazy in every way that a woman can possibly be crazy. 

After her interview with GQ, we found out that she was more than that: “a racist space alien” is how the writer described her, but that’s not what we’re going to dwell on here.

GQ Russia’s Editor Michael Idov said everything feminists have been saying for ages in his article about the “human barbie.”  This is what he wrote:

“Evolution has taught us to think of big eyes as beautiful—it’s a so-called neotenous feature, implying youth—but tweak that delicate scale just a little and you’ve got a wraith, or an insect. A living Barbie is automatically an Uncanny Valley Girl. Her beauty, though I hesitate to use the term, is pitched at the exact precipice where the male gaze curdles in on itself. Her features are the features we men playfully ascribe to ideal women; it’s how we draw them in manga and comics and video games. Except we don’t expect them to comply with this oppressive fantasy so fully. As a result, she almost throws our idea of a supervixen back in our face.”

While no one has to tell us that attaining the impossible standards of a doll (who never asked for the responsibility of acting as a role model) is unreal, Idov could not have been more insightful or eloquent about his experience.