For a little over a week or so, many “citizen journalism” sites in the Indonesian media had been posting reports about a “bidadari” (a kind of female angel from Indonesian mythology) that had fallen from the sky and been found by fishermen in a remote village in the Banggai Laut Regency in Central Sulawesi.
Various accounts said the bidadari was rescued from the ocean or found on the beach. Some said she was naked while others said she wore a white sheet. All the reports mentioned the bidadari’s strange white skin and large round eyes. Some noted that its delicate features made it look like a Barbie doll. She was certainly unlike any other woman they had seen before in the village.
All of those early stories were accompanied by this photo of the bidadari’s porcelain head, swathed in a jilbab, staring into the camera with a slight smile.
The story became the talk of Laut Banggai and Indonesian social media in general. Soon, word reached the Laut Banggai police, who took it upon themselves to investigate the angel reports.
“It has been checked out by an officer. It is a doll, like a sex toy,” Banggai Laut Police Chief Heru Pramukarno told Detik on Friday.
Detik’s investigation found that the doll was originally discovered by a 21-year-old fisherman named Pardin. He found the doll on March 12, three days after a rare solar eclipse, floating in the sea.
Pardin then took the doll to his family’s home in the village of Pulau Sagu in Banggai Laut’s Bokan Subdistrict.
“There, because the doll became deflated, it was given clothes and a headscarf by Pardin’s mother, Hamni. They replaced her clothes every day,” Heru said.
Photos of the clothed doll made their way onto the internet alongside increasingly wild reports of the bidadari’s dramatic rescue, leading to the police investigation.
After discovering the angel’s true nature, police then confiscated the doll and took it to police station for “safekeeping”, saying that it could cause controversy and civil unrest if left in the village.
Now, look…. This story is, without a doubt, hilarious. We couldn’t stop laughing when we first heard about it.
But, consider, just for a moment, that when these “simple” villagers found an object that looked like a naked woman, they dressed it up and treated it with respect and reverence. But, because we are educated and worldly, we look at the same object and think “OMG LOL sex doll!”
And don’t forget, there are a lot of people in other countries who knowingly buy such dolls and go on to have extremely weird relationships with them.
