Justin Bieber was always unsure of his success. His own worst critic, he tried out different gender-bending octaves, he tried out different angles for his wisps of hair, but nothing could settle his child-sized stomach, the prepubescent stress of never being enough.
Then one day it all changed, when a (probably creepy) marketing guru decided there should be a Bieber doll.
Mr. Bieber was heavily involved in the process. He inspected every ridge of plastic hair on the prototype, then every button and bobble on the rusted machines, not wanting the Taiwanese factory kids to screw it up. Once the eight-year-old foreman and his crew had jumped through each of Bieber’s hoops, the switch flipped on and the ejaculate of plastic Bieber was in flight. Thousands upon thousands of dolls in his honour, to light up children’s eyes and fill their poor-taste hearts by Christmas 2010.
So Bieber made it, but what ever happened to me?
There is no Mattel doll of an office girl drinking Starbucks and trying to stab herself in the eye when Microsoft Excel randomly freezes. A solemn reminder that I never reached my dream of epic status.
But…I didn’t always feel this way. When I was growing up celebrity dolls made me happy, even joyous. An army of New Kids on the Block to be my twelve-inch boyfriends, a Rick Astley replica who would never ever give me up (it was actually a Ken doll but close enough), and what about my older brother’s Han Solo action figure? That shiny plastic toy was the birth of what is now my most important “old man crush.”
But like with everything else, wide-eyed youth turned into bloodshot pools of adulthood. Each celebrity doll, each action figure likeness of Christian Bale is a comparative measure, reminding me there will never be toys of us regular folk.
And so…how could we possibly be grateful that there isn’t a plastic “us”?
Enter my epiphany.
Continuing on with Justin Bieber as my case study, the doll will be a jacked-up likeness of the man-boy. But the man-boy has to grow. In fact with each passing minute Justin Bieber gets closer to death. Meanwhile his doll smiles on, its feathered hair immune to the troubles of dandruff and grease.
Even all those girls with Bieber-fever will notice. They’ll burst through security and hold up the doll to his face, only to find that there’s spinach in the real Bieber’s teeth. Plus heavily caked on make-up. Plus a pimple you can see through the heavily caked on make-up. Then of course, years later when the surplus dolls resurface as donations for African children, Bieber will have a run-in (during his Tanzanian trip of self-discovery). This time the comparison will destroy him. His Bieber beer gut, crusted lips, sad-man eyes and receding hair, right beside the perfect plastic manboy.
If I were Justin Bieber I would shoot myself in the face. If I was any celebrity with a perfect plastic version of me, a face shot…to the face.
Instead I can just be me, and no matter how I age or grossify with time, who will even know how shitty I look, when there’s no plastic miniature to point out my obvious decline?
Here’s to finally appreciating life below the radar…
Still traumatized by the creepy picture of Justin Bieber on the 
