A Mysterious Arrival

Here's a mystery woman. Last Friday, I found her at the Goodwill on Greenway and 35th Avenue, in a bag with a cheap Rapunzel so awful that I handed Rapunzel back across the counter as soon as I'd paid.

She was a long, cool blonde in a short, hot Swap Mart dress.

She appears to have the same face as these Barbie imitators on AliExpress, but unlike them -- and unlike the dolls with similar face-ups at the Park 'n' Swap -- she has articulated knees and elbows.

She had the kind of face that comes from China in bulk lots
and gets sold out of the back of a car.

She also has a distinctly dollar-store physique, with the narrow waist and triangular torso similar to pre-belly-button Barbies.

Her legs were a couple miles long and took unexpected turns.

I'll admit to liking her hair color to a stupid degree. However, it pulls out when combed, so the odds are good that she'll eventually have to be re-rooted. This won't be all that onerous, thanks to her sparse rooting pattern. (She'd be on the fast track to the body farm if I hadn't been fascinated with this face-up the Park 'n' Swap but not willing to spend $10 for the non-articulated version. Also, this find is so weird that I want to keep her physically intact. If I ran across a few more, though...)

She was the kind of blonde whose good looks depend on never changing where she parts her hair.

Bad hair days are compensated by capacity for posing. She has no trouble with back-to-front splits, and her hips rotate for side-to-side splits.

She could do splits without breaking a sweat.

And she always kept her toes pointed.

And of course, she can sit nicely in one of the 25-cent Park 'n' Swap dining chairs that I need to spray paint one of these days.

Nobody could beat her confidence in hailing a waiter at a nudist restaurant.

She's also a perfect fit in the thrift-store scarf dress that was meant for Hattie but looked good on nobody due to its loose, broad weave. Since she's most similar in looks to Hayden, it seems like time to introduce them. Here, they compare knee joints.

Hi five, girl.

Then they decided to have a kneel-off.

Social status is strongly tied to ability to do this.

It was a tie.

Introductions require a name. The mystery woman looks like a Julianne, don't you think?

Julianne definitely has the same sort of pointy little feet as Dolores the Dollar Tree Beauty.

She was always on her toes.

But their face-ups are different, and I think it's actually a different mold, with Julianne having a narrower nose. (Please excuse Dolores' hair. I started re-rooting her with yarn dreads over a month ago and never got back to it. It's not difficult, but it requires a couple hours in good light with some sort of audio distraction to stop it from being painfully boring. I'd do it on the bus, but it's too joggly.)

Hold out for nylon or Kankelon hair, Julianne!

Figuring out who Julianne is has proven challenging, for values of "challenging" that equal "impossible." Some versions on AliExpress have Renda on the package, but Chenghai Renda Plastic Toys says they make only remote control vehicles. Other possible names lead to similar dead ends. The one auction listing I found that matches the code stamped on the back of her neck called her "Barbie," although she clearly isn't.

Even her age is a mystery. My mother's hypothesis was that she was a Barbie knock-off from the mid-1990s, when gymnast Barbie had hinged knees and elbows. I'm not sure the face-up looks enough like Superstar to be intended as a knock-off, but with knock-offs, you never know.

Julianne does have similar eyes to a Mackie-faced Barbie of the 1990s, who came in a bag with an extra Fashionista Teresa bought for body-farming purposes.

We seem to have things in common. How do you feel about hot yoga?

Stacie stopped by for a visit because everybody was having so much fun outdoors.

Sure, we could go get froyo.

The most similarity in face-up appears to be with Elena Rodriguez, who's a Fashionista Sporty from the late 00's.

Finally, somebody who makes me look dark!

However, when I go looking for Fashionista fakies on AliExpress, I find dolls on what appear to be actual Fashionista bodies, who look like they may be the same doll sold as/by Linglier outside the U.S., so if Julianne is a Fashionista fakie, she's an even more off-brand.

Finally, Meygan interviews her for a job running the boutique publication's social media effort. Julianne likes the idea, as it should leave her plenty of freedom to pursue her love of dance.

Just remember: we've got to appeal to the non-articulated masses, too.