After images of a Ukrainian woman who, with elaborate makeup, bears an uncanny resemblance to a Barbie doll, went viral, people began to wonder if the Human Barbie is real. And is she, as Vice has described her, a "time-traveling spiritual guru"? Is she a Space Barbie (and what even is that?)? Determined to solve the mystery of the Human Barbie, GQ Russia editor Michael Idov profiled Valeria Lukyanova, who goes by her spiritual name, Amatue. He discovered that she is "the closest you will come to an alien encounter." Specifically, she is a "racist space alien."
Idov attempted to make conversation with Lukyanova by remarking on the dichotomy between the Eastern philosophy she peddles and the Western beauty ideals she literally embodies. "The beauty that you embody is very Western," Idov commented. "American, even."
"I wouldn't say so," Lukyanova responded. "Everyone wants a slim figure. Everyone gets breasts done. Everyone fixes up their face if it's not ideal, you know? Everyone strives for the golden mean. It's global now."
Then things take a totally unnecessary, racist turn:
"But that's a relatively new thing," I reply. "The ideal of beauty used to be different."
"That's because of the race-mixing."
So people need plastic surgery ... because brown people? Lukyanova expanded on the "degeneration" of the superior white race:
"For example, a Russian marries an Armenian," Valeria elaborates helpfully. "They have a kid, a cute girl, but she has her dad's nose. She goes and files it down a little, and it's all good. Ethnicities are mixing now, so there's degeneration, and it didn't used to be like that. Remember how many beautiful women there were in the 1950s and 1960s, without any surgery? And now, thanks to degeneration, we have this. I love the Nordic image myself. I have white skin; I am a Nordic type—perhaps a little Eastern Baltic, but closer to Nordic."
Perhaps less surprisingly, Lukyanova is also "against feminism" (though, unfortunately, she did not elaborate on that statement). The model and television personality has set her sights on the U.S., or perhaps Mexico. "I tend to cut off anything I don't need," she said. "The next step is to cut off Ukraine entirely, because all I get here is shit. Why waste myself on this?"
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