What would you do
if you were
Andrew McCarthy
in Mannequin?
In 1987, Hollywood made an Oscar-nominated film about a young artist who creates a department store mannequin so exquisite (imagine a young Kim Cattrall if you will) that he falls in love with it and gets a job as a stock boy at the store that buys it. As creepy and obsessive as this may seem, the gesture is rewarded when it turns out–via magic!–that the mannequin transforms into a living breathing woman whenever she and the artist are alone together.
Hijinks then ensure. Here’s the trailer:
Now in the film, McCarthy’s character finds his plastic paramour so bewitching that he is able to endure the constant humiliation that comes from dating a person who everyone else in the world believes is inanimate.
Could you do the same? Imagine you were in this same situation. The person you have spent your entire life dreaming about becomes real to you–you are not imagining them and you are not suffering delusions or any kind of mental illness–but to the entire rest of the world they are a fiction and you appear to be highly disturbed.
Would the love you experience be enough for you to put up with the rest of the world thinking you’re crazy? Or would you have to give up your fantasy for something people can actually believe?
Oh, and I wasn’t joking about Mannequin being an Oscar-nominee. The worst part is that it was actually nominated for this: