A Male Dominated Dollfie World?

Overall, I don't notice much difference in the number of male vs female sculpts released. Certain companies will release more males, others more females, and others about the same number of each.
I do notice that the male LE's seem to be a bit more spectacular than the females though.

But the thing that bothers me is that male dolls in general get more attention from the community. Don't know how many times I'll see beautifully executed photos of a stunning female doll in the gallery go mostly ignored. Meanwhile the next thread down is full of blurry, dark, repetitive cellphone camera pics of a male doll and people are ranting and raving over it. I don't get that at all. Not saying that the male doll isn't wonderful, but... it seems unfair, you know?

One thing I have noticed though, that even though it seems to be a mostly male-doll dominated hobby, it seems infinitely more easy to find clothing and accessories for girls. It's one of the main reasons I haven't jumped over to male dolls yet (aside from the 10 year old face on a muscular 25 year old body thing).
I find it really difficult to find a variety of things like shoes that to me say, yeah... a real guy would wear that. Or wigs. Even the shortest wigs still look a bit feminine (exception being some fur wigs I think), but that's the nature of wigs, there's not really much to be done for it. If I ever get a male doll I want him to look like a him, but that's almost impossible in MSD size XD

 

I've often found myself wishing molds were released with both female and male bodies as an option.

I'll admit I've only ever had boy dolls (I prefer boy faces most of the time, I often find the girls are a little doe-eyed for my liking, but to each his own! The more realistic girl faces i do quite like however), but I fell in love with Zaoll (Luv) dolls, but as boys! But they are only released as girls, so I'm having the opposite problem and am going to have to mod him (...her) when he gets here

I guess I could hybrid, but Zaolls are the most awkward size and colour *sigh*

 

In my case I have almost as many boys as girls, I guess also because finding boys I like is way more difficult than finding girls I like, precisely due to the fact mentioned above - boys tend to look like girls, and I like my men to look, well, 'manly'. Now trying to find a manly MSD boy is a bit of a challenge...so far ony Iple, Withdoll and Souldoll's Shaun seem to have made it/

 

A pretty boy is not the same as an effeminate boy. I really don't get that at all - when people complain about male dolls looking like women ;// for me an affeminate boy is when a boy doll is in women clothes....Guys can be beautiful too and still be a man or manly looking. I don't link being beautiful to being a woman.

Come to think of it, I'm in this hobby only because it's different. I saw boys BJDs the first time and that was enough to make me interesting in acquiring these dolls, otherwise, I think I'd have moved on and ignored the hobby if I've seen female dolls first.

And I agree completely about the subjective part! the dolls are what you make of them.

What are the very effeminate features?

In real life, not every girl has a small nose, petite and demure figura and not every boy has sharp features or macho-men bodies...also consider the fact that most dolls (especially MSDs) are in their teens and boys at that age can look very delicate. Yo-SDs should not even be discussed because in real life, most little boys and girls are pretty androgynous.

 

I think the problem I've seen is the fact that people will either over make up a boy doll's face or just straight up use a female head mold and just put it on a male body. I think that makes things very confusing. If people would stick to male heads or, at the very least, tone down the amount of make up on male faces, it would make it easier to distinguish male and female dolls. Half the time, with clothes on, most male dolls just look like small bust female dolls.

 

To put my opinion in perspective, my collection consists of all girls and one lonely boy (Delf El). I bought El when he was all the rage back in 2004, and while I do love him and won't be selling him unless I leave the hobby, I haven't found a boy doll I liked since him. The two boys I did buy along the way have been sold due to lack of interest on my part. So, for all intents and purposes, I'm a girl-only collector.

Personally, I do not find there to be a lack of female sculpts in the hobby. On the contrary, I think they are more prevalent than male sculpts, but I don't have any numbers to back this up - pure speculation on my part. I certainly don't have any problems finding new and interesting girl dolls - just look at my wish list, that thing is a mile long! However, I tend to lean more towards more stylized sculpts, so perhaps there is a lack of females at the more realistic end of the spectrum.

 

Ok, color me amused at myself. I saw the title of the thread and wondered what it could mean, since Volks is the only company that makes Dollfies and they're off-topic for this forum (they're the 12-inch plastic models). Then realized that it had been used as a generic term for dolls.

If we were talking about Dollfie Dreams, I was wondering, too, because I have yet to SEE a male DD (and kinda wish they would try it since the male Obitsu body is ridiculous.).

As to the perceived overabundance of male dolls out there I think it's balancing out somewhat. However, the tried and true answer is that they make what sells

 

I didn't really bring up the Yo's. I was mostly referring to SD size. But that's pretty much my point: not every female doll has those doe eyed features, and when the sculpt deviates from the big eyed sweet innocent girl look, there (this doesn't happen all the time, it's just something I've noticed) is quite a bit of commentary that suggests the female sculpt is better suited as a male.

Take Soom's Dia. :> Soom Dia makes an awesome boy and even though her features lean towards what most would consider masculine, the sculpt also makes a stunning female, but her popularity is as a boy.

Then you have Crobidoll's Jun and even Zion, very feminine looking boys -large eyes, small nose, cute lips-. (I actually haven't seen too many of them on the boards and Crobi recently released a limited female!Jun) but from what I've seen from people that adored the sculpts the comments were along the lines of "He looks like a girl," but did not imply that the sculpt would be better as a girl.

I think... what I'm getting at, is that there seems to be more preference for androgenous male dolls, but not really with androgenous female dolls. And I wonder why that is.

Usually when you see girl dolls, they look female (noticeable bust or not) but a lot of times you see the more androgenous boy dolls looking quite girly either with wigs, accessories, and/or clothing.

Also, to refer back to your comment, I would argue that age is very subjective. I don't look at Iplehouse's EID/SID line and think teens. I don't even see Crobidoll's sculpts as teens either, they look mid twenties to me, maybe even older. And when I look at the Soom MDs? I think ANCIENT. Haha. It's mostly because of their presentation though. Most MSDs look more like children to me, even the 'mature' minis.

I try not to dwell on the "age" of dolls because people see things differently and especially since customization makes all the difference.

 

I haven't really noticed... it used to be so female dominant and people were begging for male dolls. So it might be that people are just buying up more male dolls to give their older girls some boyfriends, lol! It might also be up to the company sculptors preferring one sex to another. Also, some people might prefer one brand for females and another for males. I have a Luts El head (usually male) on and female Volks body... because that's what I had, and she looks awesome, except for the patty cake hands.

I still think it might just come down to the older collectors remembering a time when male dolls were rare and are so please to have a wide selection. Dolls are often traditionally girls. Bring on the boys!

 

I mostly stick to Obitsus,so I only noticed their lack of proper SD size male. But that's fixed now, so I don't really have any complaints.

 

My only problem with this is that I can't find any female centaurs (someone point me in the right direction if you know of any, please!). I know that I could just as easily stick a female body on the horse, but I really would like a sculpt that just came female so that I didn't have to pay the extra. Otherwise, I don't care. I like the male dolls and have no problem finding female dolls that I like as well.

 

I'm actually glad there is a male doll market.
I love male dolls, and always found dificult to find them.
Also, in a Hobby that isn't that accepted, My liking of male dolls made it many times even less accepted, as if I should only like female dolls and frills (which I do).
I didn't even noticed that there might be more male than female dolls right now, but I do enjoy seeing them.

 

The doll-market is dominated by whichever gender you don't collect. Everybody loves to feel persecuted, to give them some great Struggle Against Unfairness to complain about. Girl collectors think it's entirely male-dominated; boy collectors see more females & female clothing available than anything; they can't both be right.

Things look to me to be pretty even. Back in the day, dolls were almost entirely girls. Then the boys caught up. Today, I see tons & tons & tons of female everything; I see tons & tons & tons of boy dolls too. I have honestly never seen any shortage of dolls of either gender. The market is quite glutted with both.

The bigger question is-- does anybody really give a crap? Unless you're in statistics or marketing, who honestly cares about doll-gender demographics?

 

I think you're right.

 

Ten pages of people interested in discussing the subject, so I'd say yes. People are curious about doll gender demographics.

What I'm wondering is why companies decide what to do. Like, soom eventually made a female idealiean, but hasn't done a male rosette.
Bambicrony has male tinies but no males in the larger sizes. Which might be a good thing as I don't need another doll but resisting a male msd from them would be hard.

 

Hmm... I think a lot of companies that I've looked at only had female basic dolls in one or more of their sizes. I think a lot of companies just started out making only female dolls because of the stereotype that all dolls are girls... Now there is a lot of demand for male dolls, so I think companies are starting to cater for that, especially newer companies.

It really depends on which companies you're looking at, what the balance is. I think it's pretty even overall.

 

Well male dolls are just generally more popular and sought after, but I think that's pretty cool. With other types of dolls, the guy dolls, like Ken and Jeremy Voss would be lucky if they even got HALF the attention that the girls got. -coughbarbiecough- So I think the reverse effect here is rather refreshing.

 

I only notice the male domination in companies I collect (of course) in particular Souldoll O.o Oh man, it's so frustrating that they have 21 male zenith dolls and only 9 female (less than HALF!) especially because their Zenith girls are so incredibly stunning! But then they have only a handful of male dolls in their kids size and something over 30 female sculpts--of course this is the size I don't collect! I wonder if that means that minis in general tend to be more popular as girl sculpts and SD+ sizes tend to be more popular in male. I thought that was pretty interesting!

 

I think that the smaller sizes for msd are slightly less popular for males is because of the whole, Looking like males thing. The more mature mini seem to do well with male sculpts. Or so it seems to me, course, that's what I look for in mini's.

 

Well, they're Asian and frankly most Asian countries are male-centered with lots of emphasis on guys being 'macho' so something perceived as more feminine like dolls might tend to be made a little more masculine not because of any conscious decision, but as a natural effect of the psyche of the person(s) doing the sculpting. Aka, living in a male-centric culture, their mind tends to lean towards making more dolls. Besides, it seems a lot of people buy more female dolls than males, so it kinda balances out