Speaking of Plus sized dolls…
“Too good to be true, you say?
Unfortunately, you’re right.
While these dolls really do exist and really do come in the packaging that is shown in these images, only 24 were ever made. They were created by a Polish artist named Zbigniew Libera in 1994 (thus predating and possibly inspiring the Body Shop’s famous Ruby doll, which was popularized by Mode in 1997).
Much of the Web commentary concerning this doll is, understandably, in Polish, but the following English text offers one particular surprise:
Ken’s Aunt [was] produced in cooperation with Mattel Corporation complete with pink Barbie Doll boxes and clear plastic bubble wrapping. This “art object” was produced in an edition of 25 copies, and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Ken’s Aunt is [a] buxom version of Barbie, made up of “Sindy” dolls and complete with [wardrobe] and a hairstyle more likely to be found in Poland than in the United States.
A number of Polish sources relay the same information—that the artist created this unique series of dolls “in cooperation with Mattel.” Yet the fact (also corroborated by several sources) that the model’s face is that of a Sindy doll, not a Barbie, would seem to belie this, as in 1994 Sindy was being produced by Mattel’s rival, the Hasbro corporation:
Ciotka Kena / Ken’s Aunt” (1994) restores a realistic dimension to the (unnaturally slim) ideal and standard of beauty promoted by Barbie doll (in reality the artist used Sindy here).
Either way, the result is the realization of one of the fondest dreams of size celebration—a plus-size Barbie. It is simply incredible to see that lovely doll’s face coupled with such a sumptuously proportioned body.”
And:
“It is highly significant that this plus-size Barbie originated in Poland, because despite the preponderance of emaciated East European girls on the world’s fashion runways, the truth is that the traditional Slavonic ideal of beauty was most decidedly full-figured. Indeed, even in the Polish diaspora, second-generation Polish youth still express a preference for fleshier feminine beauty, despite growing up surrounded by postmodern cultural brainwashing.
Another Polish text about our full-figured Barbie highlights this cultural contrast, and correctly identifies the true reason why plus-size beauty is suppressed in the modern age:
First, Libera brought to life Ciotka Kena (1994)—a fuller-figured Barbie doll. Her full body negates the super-skinny ideal that Barbie promotes. The Barbie doll was conceived in 1959 by Ruth Handler, a co-creator of the Mattel company. In short order she became the symbol of female attractiveness (but not of femininity!), an unattainable ideal, which women nevertheless to this day attempt to attain, setting themselves up for frustration and developing serious illnesses, such as anorexia nervosa. In the Poland of the 1990s, the typical model of the hard and enterprising, career-minded “feminist business woman” that this doll [Barbie] personifies is chosen significantly more often than traditional femininity and motherhod, which is what Ciotka Kena symbolizes. “Polish motherhood” is today out of fashion.
Bingo. This writer perceptively recognizes the real force behind the imposition of the androgynous standard in modern culture. For all that the feminists decry Mattel’s Barbie, she is, at least in her figure (or lack thereof), an implement of the masculinization of women, of the physical erasure of their essentially womanly characteristics (hips, bust, and extra weight)—the very features that identify them indisputably as women, and which are oriented around their innate purpose and identity: motherhood.”
*Click pics to link to full article.
