Figures (part 3)

The People of the Cruise


There's a crewman whose function on the ship I am yet to ascertain, but he’s notable for being so cartoonishly beefed up, so perfectly and conscientiously chiseled, that he’s more an architectural project than a human being. He wears T-shirts so ridiculously tight that he wouldn’t need to remove them to get a mole check. We originally thought that he might be a personal trainer in the ship’s gym, but he isn’t. I don’t know what his role is – he could be anything from a navigator to a launderer - but in himself he’s just another example of the extremities of Italian masculinity, a macho dynamic that knows no irony.


We call him Barbie Girl, since he’s “wrapped in plastic” and wears shirts that would fit in a matchbox.