Walmart, that bastion of lower middle class morality, is currently selling a doll that is modeled on a real-life person who was once a well-known bondage model -- a fact that is widely known.
The WWE Ruthless Aggression series of dolls features one based on wrestler Candice Michelle. And prior to joining the WWE, Candice Michelle was a model for the Helpless Heroines bondage website and perhaps others as well.
Michelle modeled under the name Mackenzie Montgomery when she did bondage and fetish modeling. And that fact is well known to wrestling fans, as it has been publicized on the Internet and on television news, and probably in most shopper's guides as well. It is not a secret by any means.
The wrestling fans seem to be all right with that, strangely enough. And in fact, it is strange. I remember the media hubbub that arose when Sarah Kozer was a contestant on Joe Millionaire, a reality dating show, and it was revealed that she had been a model for Helpess Heroines. Oh, the alarums and excursions! Oh, the "what is this world coming tos!"
The producers at first disavowed any knowledge of Kozer's bondage past, but in the face of massive public disbelief, finally got around to admitting that they had known all along. (I don't know why TV execs bother with such obvious lies, I mean, nobody ever believes them.)
I read quite a few threads on general interest television message boards about the Sarah Kozer controversy ("scandal" seems too strong a term) because I was interested in the general public's reaction. The sense that I got of the reaction was "Meh." People generally found the whole thing titillating, but there wasn't a heck of a lot of moral outrage that a former bondage model was on a reality TV show.
I had expected Kozer to maybe get kicked off the show in the usual outbreak of phony morality that TV networks get up to when they think the prudes are going on the warpath. But she wasn't, I guess because there wasn't a rule about being a former bondage model, but more likely because they "heard" the titillation and the resounding "meh" that greeted the news of Kozer's bondage history. Kozer went on to be a finalist in the show, finishing in second place.
Nothing like the media hubbub that arose in the Kozer case has been present in Candice Michelle's case. I suspect that it's in part because Kozer sort of broke the ground in moving from porn modeling to the mainstream (not to mention Jenna Jameson) but because going from bondage model to wrassling diva is widely considered to be a lateral career move at best.
Still, I am a little surprised to see the Candice Michelle doll on sale at Walmart, which famously banned "laddie" magazines like Stuff, FHM and Maxim from its shelves (major supermarket chains, drugstore chains and such haven't been so picky, I suspect because they recognize that the laddie mag pics, which reveal no naughty bits, are no more risqué than the ads in many women's magazines, in fact, the ads are often quite a bit more risqué.
I have no idea if Walmart's execs don't officially "know" about the fact that their doll has porny roots, or if their position is, "What the hell, she's a wrestler now and it's being marketed as a wrestling doll, and if the kids want to tie it up in exotic ways, that's their business, not ours." (If so, would that they had taken the same laissez-faire approach to laddie mags.)
Of course, anyone with $9.99 can buy the doll for any reason they wish. And I have, to add her to the cast of my web comic "Tales of Lost Bikini Island." The first panel, by an amazing coincidence, is up on bondagerotica now and features Candy Michaels, a character not to be confused with Candice Michelle because they're COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. Check it out by clicking on the pic below.
