Man who dreamed of being ‘human puppet’ dead at 20 *

* (restored)

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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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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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“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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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.

 

interview in happier days

 

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. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thanks for the review. Everything you say is pretty much what I expected. I already pretty much decided to avoid that film, and now my aversion is completely cemented. I thought I recognized love’s yesterday karaoke choice, and I was right. Nice buzz. Cry for the light, For the love that won’t come, You said that you’d never, Leave me alone, I gave you my heart, You cried for my soul, An Angel won’t come, This Devil won’t go, Something is wrong, G. ** James, Lustrous feedback, dude. I’m going to let myself get all old fashioned and take your disinterest in being invaded by discordant sounds as a sign of your mental and psychological good health. All hail us. Who better to hail. Yeah, dead is dead, so who cares, but I just don’t want to be burned up. Call it intuition. Very nice about the praise, in writing even. Gild that thing or something. Me, I’m off to make our film’s teaser trailer and submit the film to a film festival and do emails like you. 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Even though the response to the film has been extremely positive, it’s always accompanied by how strange and challenging the film is, so I don’t think we can get our expectations too high. We’re making the teaser trailer today! Happy day, pal. ** Uday, Haha, it’s true, even when French people try extra hard to pronounce my name in its American form, they have a lot of trouble making the ‘i’ not sound like ‘ee’. Escort sites? Well, the big EU one is Romeo. It categorises the escorts under the title Hunqz. In the UK, SleepyBoys. In the US, I guess RentMen. And there are lots of littler ones and message boards where you have to kind of hunt to find the sex seeking guys who charge for it. But there are some starting places at least. Warning: you’ll need to hunt pretty hard and carefully to find escorts like the ones I feature and who don’t just say they’re sexy and available. Interesting project, obviously. I’ll double knot my laces today, thank you for caring. ** Joe, Hi, Joe! Things are mostly okay, just super busy with a bunch of unfun duties re: my visa quest and the film. I saw Guyotat read at the Pompidou maybe, oh, 7 years ago or thereabouts? No, I never met him. I had the chance once because a friend of mine was kind of his handler, but I was too intimidated, stupidly. I like ‘Coma’ and ‘In the Deep’, of course, but they don’t excite me like his visionary books. The problem is that a lot of his greatest works are almost impossible to translate or would be a massive job to try to translate. For instance, ‘Prostitution’: Bruce Benderson was translating that, but it was so difficult that he gave up after one chapter, so there’s only that one chapter in English. And people here tell me there are seven or eight novels that are on the level with and even more complicated and dazzling than ‘Eden Eden Eden’, but I doubt they will ever get into English. Yes, I’m so sorry about emailing. I’m so far, far behind. I promise I will write to you today. I’m so sorry. I’ve just been really swamped. xoxo, me. ** nat, Hey! You made it! It does seem like the barrier around the commenting arena is thawing at least somewhat. I’d love to hear more if Cloudflare allows and you feel like it. Take care in the meantime. ** Okay. I found myself in some sort of mood that told me I should restore this old, strange post. There you go. See you tomorrow.