Benign Girl Lives!

OK, so this is cancer-related silliness, but I think we're entitled. We have to get some humor out of our situation, and Benign Girl, a Chinese Barbie-doll knock-off, so perfectly fills the bill.

When you have a tumor, which in and of itself is not cancer, the big question is whether or not the tumor is cancerous (bad) or benign (good).

Most of the people who read my blog have been in cancer territory for some time, and for one person, at least, they were ALWAYS there.

I think I started paying special attention to the comments and posts of my friend and fellow cancer blogger, Amorette, when she drew my attention to the existence of Benign Girl, and then again when she commented that she had never had a chance to be Benign Girl. Because of some nasty industrial polluting by Dupont, Amorette has had cancer since before she was born.

Her mother also has had some five or six DIFFERENT CANCERS.

These simple facts boggle my mind. At the same time, I can't help being fascinated by Amorette, and how she has managed to fashion an interesting life for herself despite numerous deep disappointments (having to drop out of medical school, for one). Amorette is the bento artist I've mentioned before.

A bento is a Japanese box lunch, always a work of art, but Amorette's go way beyond the bento you can find in any Japanese train station or department store basement (the food is always in the basement). Since I've spent something like seven-plus years of my life in Japan, and Amorette has a life-long fascination with Japan, that was a bond as well.

Yet another side note: I'm planning to spend at least three weeks in Japan next October, the treatment gods willing, as part of my efforts to Boycott October. Amorette is hoping to join me for part of that trip. I'm going to create a new category on my blog dedicated to the trip soon, because if it is going to happen, I need to start planning.

Back to Benign Girl
So, Benign Girl.

Amorette told me months ago that she had seen these dolls at a swap meet or dollar store, I forget which. Then, when she wanted to actually buy some, they proved elusive. We had to satisfy ourselves by making our own and with the purchase of Benign Girl accessories, such as toy phones.

Then, finally, just a few days before Christmas, a huge, pink (but that's another story--Amorette, do you want to tell it?) box arrived on my front porch. Inside was Benign Girl. Success! Thanks, Amorette.

She looks very much like the original Barbie doll, made by Mattel, but slightly out of focus. Maybe they (the folks at the Chinese factory) made a mold from a real Barbie, and this is the result. Or maybe Benign Girl is made at the same Chinese factory where the "real" Barbies are made, using the same molds, after hours, and then shipped out the back door, out of sight of the folks from Mattel.

I understand this happens with knock-off shoes and other manufactured goods, so it's not so farfetched. The Nikes go out the front door, the Nike knock-offs go out the back, both made by the same workers using the same (or cheaper) materials and machines.

Anyway, Benign Girl.

I also love the thought that this doll was named by some Chinese factory manager, possibly dressed in a Mao suit (although I understand the Chinese no longer wear Mao pajamas, as the Western press used to call them, as they go about their daily lives) ... Anyway, dressed in a Mao suit, flipping through his Chinese-English dictionary, looking for the right word.

And he came up with "benign." He must have wanted something like "sweet." Or "innocent." But the dictionary spit out "benign." Any Chinese speakers out there who have an idea of what the original Chinese word might have been? Or the characters?

And then I love the slightly wonky English on the box: "Best Gift for Children." "Battery Operated. Creative. Various Music." Note the complete lack of any articles, definite (the) or indefinite (a, an).

As a long-time Japanese-to-English translator, I can attest to the difficulty of making translated material sound natural in English. And who's going to make all that much effort for a doll? These are actually pretty good, except for the howler of naming her Benign Girl, which is what started this whole silliness in the first place.

Read more:

Prostate Cancer Ken and Breast Cancer Barbie: The Happy Couple, Together at Last

Amorette's blog

(Go to her blog; she's having way too much fun playing with chocolate over there. Of course, it's chocolate with a political message, which makes it OK, right? This is truly a food artist we have here.)

And I need to rejoin the real world, at least for the rest of the day.

Support this blog:

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.

Comments

[Amorette]

I'm just glad you like it! You don't know how many people looked at me like I was insane when I said I needed to find "Benign Girl".

The pink box is a travesty, as far as I'm concerned. It's part of Tiger Direct's toot-the-hell-out-of-their-own-horn
"Pink Friday" campaign. Unfortunately, "Pink Friday" wasn't enough...they had "Pink Friday II" and "Pink Friday III" before finally deciding to devote the next month or so to pink this-or-that for Komen.

My boyfriend works for a Tiger Direct affiliate and his company bought into the pink thing in a major way. Not only were they donating to Komen, but they also changed the user interface for all of the employees' computers. Day in and day out, my boyfriend has to look at a hideous pink-ribbon theme.

When we ordered some of our Christmas gifts from Tiger Direct, we found it was even worse. They weren't content with big ads and pink-themed catalogs; each and every single SHIPPING BOX was a sickening pepto-bismol pink with a giant Komen ribbon on the side.

It was absolutely ridiculous. Even the styrofoam peanuts inside were pink!

When the time came to surprise Jeanne with Benign Girl, I looked all over for a box and, as luck would have it, the pink box was the only one that fit Benign Girl's package. I decided to suck it up and send her in it, but not before I took a big black Sharpie and X-'ed out all of the ribbons and Komen logos I could find. Then I pasted blank label stock over the self-promotional ads on the sides, so these Komen companies wouldn't get any more free advertising.

Then I emailed Jeanne and told her she was going to need a sense of humor for the package that was on its way. I could only imagine what her reaction would be if some mail carrier delivered that hideous pink eyesore without my warning her first.

Going to fuel a bonfire with it, Jeanne? ;)

[jeanne]

I kind of love that box, because you went to so much trouble to make it less offensive to me. But I'll probably just recycle it--this is Seattle, after all!