* text from News.com.au
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at 16
Even before he found global fame as a human Ken doll, Celso Santebañes’ physical appearance had made him a star in his native Brazil. As a child, Celso Borges Pereira (the name he was born with) was feted for his beauty, his perfect features refusing to fade with each year that passed. At 15, he started entering — and winning — modeling competitions, eventually catching the eye of a Sao Paulo talk show talent scout.
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at 17
The show gave him entry into the world of celebrity, and within a year, he’d taken up acting and changed his surname to Santebañes after his favorite Mexican sitcom character.
It was around this time that people started telling him he looked like a Ken doll. It happened so often that Santabañes became fixated on the toy, lining his bedroom shelves with dozens of the plastic figurines. He later explained that his family’s endorsement of the bizarre comparison inspired him to recreate himself as a “human puppet.”
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at 18
“Obsessed with the perfection of physical beauty, Santebañes started to identify features of his face that didn’t look like the Mattel brand doll,” the Latin Times said. “(He believed) his nose was too wide and his philtrum — the crease of the upper lip — simply too natural.” Multiple plastic surgeries and an estimated $60,000 later, Santebañes had fixed his “imperfections” and joined a growing number of adult men aspiring to look like Ken.
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at 19
In an interview with a Brazilian newspaper after he was discovered, the former miner said: "This is so magical. My life has changed. I feel like the whole of Brazil is supporting me. People are sometimes frightened by the way I look, and stop me to say how much I look like a doll. I do suffer a lot of prejudice. But the world is full of judgmental people, I don't care."
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Before long he was charging up to $20,000 for public appearances at party houses, clubs, weddings and children's plays, even launching a line of Celso dolls in Los Angeles, much to the envy of rivals Justin Jedlica (aka Ken 1) and Rodrigo Alves (aka Ken 3).
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“He daydreamed about making a film with Valeria Lukyanova, the Ukrainian ‘Human Barbie,’” the Latin Times said. He was negotiating an "advertising campaign for a huge fashion house". But despite his success, he said he wasn't entirely happy. "I think I'm 90% of what I want to be," he said last year. "I intend to do more surgeries, but do not know what. For now my investment is being in the gym, for Ken is strong and I am skinny."
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Human Barbie Valeria Lukyanova
But late last year, Santebañes received a reality check in the form of an unexpected cancer diagnosis. A rare and aggressive form of leukemia had been detected during blood tests in preparation for surgery to repair a leaky filler in one of Santebañes’ legs. He was only 20 and suddenly he was dying. The impact was immediate.
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“Today, I start a new cycle in my life,” he told reporters in January. “I am starting chemotherapy and I admit I’m a little concerned about some side effects, like hair loss, nausea, my body’s rejection (of chemotherapy), among other things, but I am no longer concerned with the issue of aesthetics. For me that doesn’t matter. What matters is my health now, and I will fight for it.”
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Santebañes was told he had a high chance of beating the cancer, and though finding out he had leukemia was surprising, the doctor's words made him feel reassured. "When I'm cured, I plan to release a book," he said in March of this year. "Before, I struggled and did everything to be perfect. Today, God is showing me that there are other values. I think each day of treatment will be a great learning experience. I'll be a new person. Not that I was a bad person, but I will certainly be a far better person than I was."
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The Times observed: “In his five-month battle with cancer, Santebañes immediately had to confront his own physical deterioration, the undoing of what had become his personal identity and national image. It started with dark spots on his skin and bleeding gums, symptoms of the blood cancer. Once in treatment, his hair fell out. He’d later be confined to a wheelchair, a scrawny pale shadow.”
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On May 18, Santebañes, wearing a hat and heavy makeup and close to death, reflected on his tragic quest for physical perfection. “Everyone who wants to be pretty, who wants to be perfect, to call attention to themselves, to supplant this lack of … of love, perhaps,” he told Hoje Em Dia. If he survived, he said, he wouldn’t do any more surgeries: “I wouldn’t do any more, what’s done is done.”
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the last photo
“I want the simple pleasures of life and, if I am told I'm better, I will run to a waterfall,” he said.
last interview
Santebañes died last Thursday after contracting pneumonia. He was buried in his native Sao Paulo over the weekend. His father, Celia Borges, told reporters: “When he was starting to fulfill his dreams, he discovered his illness and his dreams were interrupted. He had plans but God had others.”
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*
p.s. Hey. ** James, Hi. I don't know if this is interesting, but I just thought about how things and people that particularly interest you here on the blog often remind you of you and of your past, and I thought about how things and people that interest me almost never remind me of me or of my past, and how strange that very well could be of me. Anyway ha ha. Ouch, I hope your headache has dematerialized down to its tiniest atom if not even less. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Yeah, the Gustav Hoegen thing was crazy, right? Oh, cool, thanks for the link to more of his stuff. I wonder how long it takes to get a ... degree (?) in animatronics. ** David Ehrenstein, Analog animatronics rule. Thanks for the link to the piece on the Gates book. That looks very interesting. ** Tomkendall, Hi! Oh, man, waiting for responses from publishers, so stressful. Fingers crossed into total abstraction on your book's behalf. Your new novel sounds delicious. Wow, yeah, that sounds potentially amazing! My novel has been sitting on the sidelines for, gosh, eight months now waiting for me to find space to go back to it. I've had a ton of other really exciting projects/work -- a film, experimenting with gif fiction, a theater piece, etc. -- and they forcibly removed the novel from my desk, but I'm raring to get back to it and finish it asap. I'm so glad you're doing so good, pal! When do you move to Peru? And where in Peru are you moving? ** Steevee, Hi. Well, if you're looking for someone to address the social construction of race, I can only imagine that a memoir written over the course of a year, years, by someone who set out to share their experiences and insight into their experiences would be more useful than a weeklong media scandal about someone who did something privately and in secret, only a tiny percentage of which has come from the topic herself and under intense media spotlight/ pressure. Maybe it's a fiction writer thing, but I'm interested in thinking about her, what she did, why, the good and the bad, the secrecy, the possible reasons within her own life and immediate world and circumstances that caused her to do that. People's interest in decontextualizing her actions, ignoring whatever her personal motivations and reasons were in order to make her a poster girl within the history of blackface and minstrelsy doesn't interest me very much. I don't trust generalizations, not in this case, not in the case of pretty much everything. That's not to say that I think you or I are right or wrong in our approaches to this. I'm just explaining where my interest is coming from. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Yes, I was all over that Alton Towers roller coaster accident like a hawk when it happened, and, probably like a lot of people, it only made me really want to ride that ride, ha ha. And I think I might just get to do that in the next couple of weeks, if plans work out. Thanks, man. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Well, ha ha, the Wire being better than the Adam Lambert is not the biggest shock in the world. Yes, your birthday! Happiest of the happys one day late! Did you have big fun? 35's good. Dig it. Very cool about your progress on the Sypha Nadon twofer. ** Misanthrope, Oh, okay, IRS Man, that rings a bell, and, of course, good old Bam Bam and Ted DiBiase, awwww. Mm, that makes sense about the McDonalds thing. So weird and exciting that McDonalds is in a tailspin. Never imagined that would happen. It's like what happened to Microsoft. Never in my wildest dreams of even ten tears ago did I think Microsoft would become so deservedly rickety. I can say that I am not shocked that you gravitated to the fuck machine, and that you are absolutely correct in your assumption about my assumption. Sorry, bah, sorry. ** Keaton, I think if you want to go thin, you need to go vegan rather than vegetarian. Overweight vegetarians are a dime a dozen. Guilt is dumb, yeah. Nachos aren't creepy. I can't explain why, but they just aren't. I ... think I do remember that Seth Green on The X-Files thing. What does Seth Green do now? I just said 'Bonjour' to someone literally ten seconds ago! Ten seconds! What are the odds? ** Okay. I came across the story up there in the post last week or something, and it interested me enough to gather up what I could find of it and reorient it as a blog post for reasons that may well be obvious or not. See you tomorrow.
at 16
Even before he found global fame as a human Ken doll, Celso Santebañes’ physical appearance had made him a star in his native Brazil. As a child, Celso Borges Pereira (the name he was born with) was feted for his beauty, his perfect features refusing to fade with each year that passed. At 15, he started entering — and winning — modeling competitions, eventually catching the eye of a Sao Paulo talk show talent scout.
at 17
The show gave him entry into the world of celebrity, and within a year, he’d taken up acting and changed his surname to Santebañes after his favorite Mexican sitcom character.
It was around this time that people started telling him he looked like a Ken doll. It happened so often that Santabañes became fixated on the toy, lining his bedroom shelves with dozens of the plastic figurines. He later explained that his family’s endorsement of the bizarre comparison inspired him to recreate himself as a “human puppet.”
at 18
“Obsessed with the perfection of physical beauty, Santebañes started to identify features of his face that didn’t look like the Mattel brand doll,” the Latin Times said. “(He believed) his nose was too wide and his philtrum — the crease of the upper lip — simply too natural.” Multiple plastic surgeries and an estimated $60,000 later, Santebañes had fixed his “imperfections” and joined a growing number of adult men aspiring to look like Ken.
at 19
In an interview with a Brazilian newspaper after he was discovered, the former miner said: "This is so magical. My life has changed. I feel like the whole of Brazil is supporting me. People are sometimes frightened by the way I look, and stop me to say how much I look like a doll. I do suffer a lot of prejudice. But the world is full of judgmental people, I don't care."
Before long he was charging up to $20,000 for public appearances at party houses, clubs, weddings and children's plays, even launching a line of Celso dolls in Los Angeles, much to the envy of rivals Justin Jedlica (aka Ken 1) and Rodrigo Alves (aka Ken 3).
“He daydreamed about making a film with Valeria Lukyanova, the Ukrainian ‘Human Barbie,’” the Latin Times said. He was negotiating an "advertising campaign for a huge fashion house". But despite his success, he said he wasn't entirely happy. "I think I'm 90% of what I want to be," he said last year. "I intend to do more surgeries, but do not know what. For now my investment is being in the gym, for Ken is strong and I am skinny."
Human Barbie Valeria Lukyanova
But late last year, Santebañes received a reality check in the form of an unexpected cancer diagnosis. A rare and aggressive form of leukemia had been detected during blood tests in preparation for surgery to repair a leaky filler in one of Santebañes’ legs. He was only 20 and suddenly he was dying. The impact was immediate.
“Today, I start a new cycle in my life,” he told reporters in January. “I am starting chemotherapy and I admit I’m a little concerned about some side effects, like hair loss, nausea, my body’s rejection (of chemotherapy), among other things, but I am no longer concerned with the issue of aesthetics. For me that doesn’t matter. What matters is my health now, and I will fight for it.”
Santebañes was told he had a high chance of beating the cancer, and though finding out he had leukemia was surprising, the doctor's words made him feel reassured. "When I'm cured, I plan to release a book," he said in March of this year. "Before, I struggled and did everything to be perfect. Today, God is showing me that there are other values. I think each day of treatment will be a great learning experience. I'll be a new person. Not that I was a bad person, but I will certainly be a far better person than I was."
The Times observed: “In his five-month battle with cancer, Santebañes immediately had to confront his own physical deterioration, the undoing of what had become his personal identity and national image. It started with dark spots on his skin and bleeding gums, symptoms of the blood cancer. Once in treatment, his hair fell out. He’d later be confined to a wheelchair, a scrawny pale shadow.”
On May 18, Santebañes, wearing a hat and heavy makeup and close to death, reflected on his tragic quest for physical perfection. “Everyone who wants to be pretty, who wants to be perfect, to call attention to themselves, to supplant this lack of … of love, perhaps,” he told Hoje Em Dia. If he survived, he said, he wouldn’t do any more surgeries: “I wouldn’t do any more, what’s done is done.”
the last photo
“I want the simple pleasures of life and, if I am told I'm better, I will run to a waterfall,” he said.
last interview
Santebañes died last Thursday after contracting pneumonia. He was buried in his native Sao Paulo over the weekend. His father, Celia Borges, told reporters: “When he was starting to fulfill his dreams, he discovered his illness and his dreams were interrupted. He had plans but God had others.”
*
p.s. Hey. ** James, Hi. I don't know if this is interesting, but I just thought about how things and people that particularly interest you here on the blog often remind you of you and of your past, and I thought about how things and people that interest me almost never remind me of me or of my past, and how strange that very well could be of me. Anyway ha ha. Ouch, I hope your headache has dematerialized down to its tiniest atom if not even less. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Yeah, the Gustav Hoegen thing was crazy, right? Oh, cool, thanks for the link to more of his stuff. I wonder how long it takes to get a ... degree (?) in animatronics. ** David Ehrenstein, Analog animatronics rule. Thanks for the link to the piece on the Gates book. That looks very interesting. ** Tomkendall, Hi! Oh, man, waiting for responses from publishers, so stressful. Fingers crossed into total abstraction on your book's behalf. Your new novel sounds delicious. Wow, yeah, that sounds potentially amazing! My novel has been sitting on the sidelines for, gosh, eight months now waiting for me to find space to go back to it. I've had a ton of other really exciting projects/work -- a film, experimenting with gif fiction, a theater piece, etc. -- and they forcibly removed the novel from my desk, but I'm raring to get back to it and finish it asap. I'm so glad you're doing so good, pal! When do you move to Peru? And where in Peru are you moving? ** Steevee, Hi. Well, if you're looking for someone to address the social construction of race, I can only imagine that a memoir written over the course of a year, years, by someone who set out to share their experiences and insight into their experiences would be more useful than a weeklong media scandal about someone who did something privately and in secret, only a tiny percentage of which has come from the topic herself and under intense media spotlight/ pressure. Maybe it's a fiction writer thing, but I'm interested in thinking about her, what she did, why, the good and the bad, the secrecy, the possible reasons within her own life and immediate world and circumstances that caused her to do that. People's interest in decontextualizing her actions, ignoring whatever her personal motivations and reasons were in order to make her a poster girl within the history of blackface and minstrelsy doesn't interest me very much. I don't trust generalizations, not in this case, not in the case of pretty much everything. That's not to say that I think you or I are right or wrong in our approaches to this. I'm just explaining where my interest is coming from. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Yes, I was all over that Alton Towers roller coaster accident like a hawk when it happened, and, probably like a lot of people, it only made me really want to ride that ride, ha ha. And I think I might just get to do that in the next couple of weeks, if plans work out. Thanks, man. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Well, ha ha, the Wire being better than the Adam Lambert is not the biggest shock in the world. Yes, your birthday! Happiest of the happys one day late! Did you have big fun? 35's good. Dig it. Very cool about your progress on the Sypha Nadon twofer. ** Misanthrope, Oh, okay, IRS Man, that rings a bell, and, of course, good old Bam Bam and Ted DiBiase, awwww. Mm, that makes sense about the McDonalds thing. So weird and exciting that McDonalds is in a tailspin. Never imagined that would happen. It's like what happened to Microsoft. Never in my wildest dreams of even ten tears ago did I think Microsoft would become so deservedly rickety. I can say that I am not shocked that you gravitated to the fuck machine, and that you are absolutely correct in your assumption about my assumption. Sorry, bah, sorry. ** Keaton, I think if you want to go thin, you need to go vegan rather than vegetarian. Overweight vegetarians are a dime a dozen. Guilt is dumb, yeah. Nachos aren't creepy. I can't explain why, but they just aren't. I ... think I do remember that Seth Green on The X-Files thing. What does Seth Green do now? I just said 'Bonjour' to someone literally ten seconds ago! Ten seconds! What are the odds? ** Okay. I came across the story up there in the post last week or something, and it interested me enough to gather up what I could find of it and reorient it as a blog post for reasons that may well be obvious or not. See you tomorrow.