Brazilian ‘human Ken doll’ Celso Santebañes, 20, dies of leukaemia

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 — modelling competitions, eventually catching the eye of a Sao Paulo talk show talent scout.
The show gave him an entry into the world of celebrity and within a year he’d taken up acting and changed his surname to Santabañes after his favourite 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”.
“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.
Before long he was charging up to $20,000 for public appearances, 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.
But late last year, Santebañes received a reality check in the form of an unexpected cancer diagnosis. A rare and aggressive form of leukaemia 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.”
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.”
Santebañes died last Thursday after contracting pneumonia. He was buried in his native Sao Paulo at the weekend.
His father, Celia Borges, told reporters: “When he was starting to fulfil his dreams, he discovered his illness and his dreams were interrupted. He had plans but God had others.”