It looks like Barbie's been reading "Fifty Shades of Grey."
A sexually explicit window display featuring Barbie and Ken in BDSM poses is turning heads in a Ottawa, Canada, this week, the Ottawa Sun reports.
Wanda Cotie, owner of Wicked Wanda's Adult Emporium, said a customer and local artist had approached her with the idea of doing a BDSM doll holiday display.
"[She] likes to do Barbie Stuff," Cotie said. "She has a barbie fetish i guess, and she asked if she could do the window." The dolls are are posed in ways that reflect the BDSM themes in E.L. James' best-selling erotic trilogy.
The salacious saga -- with its wealthy bachelor, virginal ingenue and BDSM themes -- has inspired a host of products, including a cookbook, a music album, makeup, jewelry, and, of course, sex toys. The series' overtly sexual content has even caught the attention of Christian conservative Pat Robertson.
Cotie added the books have certainly helped her business as well. "People realize that sex doesn't have to be that ten minutes before bed," she said.
In the case of the Wicked Wanda display, Ken and Barbie, while never actually displayed in their full, nude plastic glory, are shown engaged in whipping, bondage and oral and anal sex. It as, according to the Ottawa Sun's Denis Armstrong, about as "raunchy and hard core as doll play can get."
Not surprisingly, not everyone is a fan of the dolls' fetish voyeurism.
“I think it’s overstepped the bounds of propriety,” Shannon Lee Manion, who lives near the store, told the Ottawa Citizen. Manion, who said she was "shocked" by the display, also complained to the local business association.
But Portia Young, an employee at the sex shop, said that many people had voiced approval of the display.
“Our general response from the public has been positive,” Young told the outlet. “Most people are highly amused, and many have stopped in just to say how much they appreciated it.
And manager Lockhart said she sees no reason to take down the dolls.
“If this person had a legitimate complaint about the window, they would come into the store and complain,” she told Metro Ottawa. “We are a bondage store. And if anybody actually lodged a complaint into the store that has been in the surrounding area, I would talk to the owner and we would think of another way to do the window.”
Of course, this is far from the first time Mattel's famous couple have been sexualized. In June, a photo series titled "In The Dollhouse" depicted a possible "dark side" of the couple's life together.
Update, Dec. 13: In response to some complaints, the bottom part of Wicked Wanda's window has been covered so as to prevent children from being able to see the display.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this post, citing the Ottawa Sun, suggested that the store and its employees had set up the display. Owner Wanda Cotie has informed HuffPost that the display was in fact installed by a local artist.