BBC America is doing a documentary on "Unliving Dolls" and the women who collect them. This may be an example of the creepy dolls to which Megs-gh refers.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Speaking of Dolls....
BBC America is doing a documentary on "Unliving Dolls" and the women who collect them. This may be an example of the creepy dolls to which Megs-gh refers.
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7 comments:
Um, in fact, these dolls are WAY creepier than any of the creepy dolls Megs and I encountered on the creepy doll shopping trip. The original creepy dolls in question moved, talked, sang, ate, and pooped, and they were, indeed, creepy. But none of them could be mistaken for a real baby. The picture you included, P-duck, is horrifying to me. Isn't the point of a doll that it is a doll? I think I will be avoiding this documentary.
Okay, so I found the story on MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26970782/), and I'm intrigued. Putting aside my own sense of the dolls as "creepy" because they're too lifelike, I'm more interested in how one of these collectors describes the fascination. She suggests that the hobby of collecting the dolls, playing with and talking to them, is no different than what girls do in childhood. Looking at it from this perspective, it makes sense, especially if we take into account that some of these women were never able to have children of their own or have children who are now grown. Isn't this somewhat therapuetic in these cases? I'm also wondering if this behavior can/should be seen as a type of arrested develoment? Or, is it akin to men who collect toy soldier, trains, model airplanes, etc.?
To clarify my point, I didn't mean that the behavior of the women was creepy (I saw the story you refer to, Academama, this morning). I find how lifelike the dolls are creepy.
Okay, maybe I'm being insensitive, but I do find the women's behavior creepy. If they wanted children and couldn't have them, why not adopt? Many of the women have many dolls they rotate regularly. With each doll costing $4000+ they could have afforded to adopt. BUT unlike a real baby, these dolls never grow up... While this could be compared to men who collec trains, etc., that one of the women interviewed likes to take her doll(s) around in the car (in car seats of course) and stroll them around the neighborhood, seems to suggest some deeper issues rather than just a hobby. sorry for the choppy response. My REAL baby is crying and I must run
Think about it this way, P-Duck; before you had the Duckiling you thought of your pets as your children, and if I'm remembering correctly, you have since told me you still do. I too think of my pets as my "babies" and have taken great offense at people who have told me that is "creepy" or "weird." Granted, my feelings for my pets has changed somewhat since Wild Man's birth, but I would do still anything for my pets, much the same way I would do anything for Wild Man. I think the way that these women are responding to these dolls is quite similar to how lots of people respond to their pets.
As for the women who use these dolls as replacements for children they didn't have rather than adopting, I wonder if this isn't a generational issue. In the short bit of the documentary I did manage to watch (yep, there I go contradicting myself again, but I was intrigued), most of the women who had dolls and had never had children where in their mid-50s or early-60s.
m: I think your point about the possibility of a generational issue is really interesting. If we take it a step further, we have to think about the intersection between these women, their childhood, and the messages they heard about what it meant to be a little girl when they were growing up, part of which very much included the standard message of "little girls play with dolls". Playing with dolls is then transformed from being a simple part of childhood (for girls anyway) to being part of a larger concept of femininity, which these women carry with them even as they age. That is, it goes from "little girls play with dolls" to "women (can) play with dolls".
Don't know why this is interesting to me right now, but it is.
Academama: I think it is relatively safe to assume that in most cases women of our mothers and grandmothers' generations were taught strict gender roles--the precise roles that you, P-Duck, and I hope to avoid teaching our own children. For example, my grandmother thinks it is highly strange that I bought Wild Man a baby doll because boys don't play with baby dolls. Similarly, my MIL is really uncomfortable with the fact that Wild Man plays dress up in my clothes--little boys don't wear high heels, M! But neither of these women is uncomfortable with Wild Man doing things that fulfill male gender stereotypes.
On some level, I think these women, particularly ones who were unable to have children, are fulfilling a role that they were, until purchasing one of these dolls, unable to experience. Again, citing my grandmother and my MIL, many, many women in their 60s and older firmly believe that the primary role of a woman was to be a wife and a mother. By using these dolls as surrogate children, these women may feel that they are finally doing what it is they were meant to do as women.
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