Dolls and feminism

I'll have to disagree with you about the "slender, big-eyed, full-breasted, plump lips" look. Yes, many of the dolls are thin, but resin is not as flexible as flesh, meaning that a plump doll would be tricky to pose without some advanced engineering. All of my dolls are female, and their bodies are not the same. Thick waisted, thin waists, flat chests, busty, long legs, ordinary ones, feminine and androgynous. With so many sculpts available and the ability to customize, doll owners are not made to stick with a single aesthetic.

None of my girls are portrayed as overtly sexy. One prefers short skirts and another may wear the occasional tube top, but they all stay well within the realm of tasteful.

 

A partial focus on realism does not necessarily imply a moral obligation for diversity on the part of doll makers.

And on the other hand, with several recent French art dolls and Leeke's Mikhaela, if anything there's been a sudden influx of bjds with really big thighs in the market... That said, with the relatively low bar for amateur resin casting and at least one major bjd maker that takes GOs for custom bjd bodies, I don't see that this alleged clamor for diverse body types has been translated into many material examples so far except for a few dolls like Tinybear's fat fairies or some homemade projects.

One of my BJDs is a woman warrior (with a pretty hime cut, just because), another dresses in lolita style, the yosd girl is either a tomboy or dresses in steampunky stuff. There's all sorts of feminities around.

 

When ordering my girl, I chose the small bust option because I did not want the very sexy/Barbie-boobs look for her. Then, when I received her, I couldn't have been happier with how she looks: slim, yes, but sassy and sarcastic, not girly and froofy (is that a word?). However, my friends continually point on her long, skinny legs and one friend has even jokingly cursed at her for them. In this instance, I can understand why they don't care for parts of Kayley's anatomy. They are unrealistic and I'd prefer if she were a little more proportional.

Now, I go to women's college, so we are all pretty much feminists here. I'm sure there are some girls who would think exactly as you do and want to mod off all those outward signs of femininity. I've even searched for dolls with unconventional anatomy and hope to buy one someday. But for now, I think I can be a feminist and still enjoy my beautiful doll. She is who I customize her to be, so I can make her personality anything that I desire. After all, we are all so much more than our bodies. Is this not true for dolls? Kayley has this look about her that says: "I'll kick your butt if you compare me to a Barbie." And I think she means it.

Additionally, BJD owners -tend- to be of the older crowd. So by this point most of us can distinguish between a play-thing and something real. A ten year old may well look at your BJD and want to emulate her beauty, but you hopefully understand that she's nothing you have to be. We're always likening BJDs to an art form, so think of them as art for a moment. Classical art is nothing but idealized beauties. The strong, tall, bare-breasted Greek and Roman sculpture. The similarly curvy, blonde, flirtatious Renaissance "belle". In art we often idealize everything, from bodies to landscapes. It's in human nature to express the ideal through art, and always has been.

I guess I'm more of an artist than a feminist.

 

I don't think dolls have anything at all to do with my personal ideas of femininity. I am lucky not to ever have had gender issues personally, so I don't think dolls have ever had much influence on me. I collected Barbies and their friends when I was small and was always wishing for more variety in choices. Looking back on my childhood, I had more of a longing to be a grown-up than a desire to look like Barbie. I knew I would never look like Barbie, but I wanted to grow up so I could do as I pleased.

There is actually great variety in doll choices among resin dolls, especially if one is willing to do a bit of modding. I have mostly un-pretty female resin dolls because I am drawn to unusual faces. There are also a few unusual bodies around if one seeks them out. Granted, the pretty and perfect ones are more obvious on the forum and loads of people love them, but others are there if you hunt for them. I now actually have a "pretty" girl on my wishlist as a sort of anomaly, but even so, she has an interesting and unusual face and is not slender. I think it would be a terribly boring hobby if everyone were attracted to the same dolls. I hybrid many of my dolls because of my desire for them to be perfectly to my taste. I have male and female dolls of all sizes and ages and a few fantasy dolls. In general, I believe that gender identity has more to do with mental attitude than actual physical appearance. Because dolls are not real people, I think lots of people strive for perfection in their collection of dolls that is not usually possible for actual humans, just as the artists who create resin dolls do. I don't think about these things much when looking at dolls and only buy the ones that I really love.

 

I don't see many dolls with large boobs and tiny waists, and in fact, see more people searching for dolls with larger assets. I don't see many female dolls with full lips, because, in East Asia, a beautiful girl is one who has a small mouth. I don't find that female dolls are stereotypically beautiful, any more so than the male ones, and I do think there is a huge variety of female head sculpts out there that are by no means 'pretty'. So I really don't see any narrow definition of beautiful in the BJD world. It's just that collectors seem to prefer getting conventionally pretty girls, and hanker after large cup sizes.

If I see a pretty female doll out there, I feel nothing about myself, because, hey, it's a doll. It looks like a doll, it is a doll, it does not even link in my mind to anything human. I cannot see that it's a representation of a human form, but rather, some other form of beauty that is judged within its own criteria?

What I find feminine in a doll... small lips. That may really be a cultural thing, but I'm rather fond of dolls with small(er), soft-looking lips. The wider the mouth, the more masculine it ends up looking to me. The neck to head ratio matters as well, a slender neck looks better on a female doll. The body must not have sharp lines, but rather, curves. I have a personal preference for flat chests, but I can't argue that breasts are pretty feminine. The wrists and ankles joints must be delicate and not clunky, preferably a little bit tapered. My perfect girl's body would be the Luts Delf boy body. With a torso joint, please.

 

Perhaps for you the hobby emphasizes realism. I have always thought it was much, much more based in fantasy. There are plenty of people who don't care about whether or not the full range of actual female or male shapes are represented in this hobby. I see no problem with this. These are high end adult collectible dolls. If adult collectors are finding their self esteem hindered by these dolls, they have bigger problems to deal with. It is not the doll companies' jobs to to somehow fix or validate someone's self esteem issues. The artists aren't required to have a full range of diversity. They are free to make what they feel is attractive or what calls to them.

For all of the complaints about doll bodies being the same, there is a huge variety within doll bodies already. People simply aren't looking and immediately rejecting any body if it's not that much vaunted overweight body as being more of the same. The same with female faces. I own several female dolls and I can tell you that one has fat folds sculpted under her arm pits and is completely flat chested with a nice round bottom. The other has shoulders as wide as the male dolls in her size range from the same company, has visible arm and abdominal muscles, and has extremely thick thighs and muscled calves. Their bodies are completely different in look and yet both are produced by the same company and are in the same age range.

I am an adult woman, and yes, I consider myself fat, and no, I don't think that that is a bad thing. I like food and I hate exercising lol. I am quite comfortable in my skin and don't feel the need to change myself to please others. I don't need to see myself in my dolls, and it's one of those things I have never understood. I never wanted a doll who looked like me. As a little girl, I found it boring. I already had myself to look like me. I certainly didn't need a doll as well.

As for what I consider feminine in dolls....it would be anything a female doll looks like? My own personal feminist take is that the really feminist thing to do is to not care about gender labeling at all and do whatever it is you like because you like doing it. Not because you're told to or expected to by different parts of society or your significant other or your family or anyone else.

As for Bratz and Barbie....they're clearly not representational of what actual humans look like. I don't get how anyone would think that that is something to aspire to, and if girls are thinking this, it's a failure of their parents to address reality vs fantasy.

 

I actually don't have much problem finding a diverse group of female dolls. Personally I think my Dollmore Eve has big thighs and huge hips/butt. Especially since the male DM dolls, the Adams are twig-thin...the girls are bigger than they are
In comparison to her, my Peakswoods Goldie is kinda chunky, they can't even share clothes. And none of my girls have huge breasts at all. Not even close, poor Goldie is as flat as some boys. As far as "perfect" face sculpts go, Dollmore has several that I wouldn't call classically pretty, as do other companies.

Personally I feel there is much less diversity with boy sculpts, both face and body. You can have skinny and ripped, muscly and ripped, or skinny and feminine...but not big and not ripped. So many males faces are starting to look the same to me from company to company as well that I've started to pay more attention to female dolls, tinies, anthros and more unusual dolls such as what Doll Chateau is putting out than I used too.

As for femininity in dolls, women are so diverse that I think it's impossible to miss with a female doll just because they're female. My girls are all different, one is a jeans/tshirt wearer and doesn't do too many dresses (she actually prefers to raid her boyfriend's closet), one only wears dresses, one is a pin-up style goth, one is little-girl cute....I love having dolls for every style. I am a jeans/tshirt wearing woman myself, but I love getting all girly sometimes. I've started to live in jersey dresses because they're so comfortable X3
Isis will probably be getting a few of them herself - she's the one of my girls who shares my fashion sense (or lack thereof) the most.

 

While I don't feel that every. single. female. doll is overtly sexualized and demeaning to the female psyche, I do see where you're coming from. Please remember though, that the source of the aesthetic on ABJD is Asian- women tend to be petite there anyways, and there's an unwavering idea that slender = beauty. If you look at art dolls from Europe or America, you'll find a large variety of more 'natural' figures emerging. Why? Because those body types are found more readily there. IMHO, I think there's also a pull to make the bodies emphatically 'mature' to distance them from baby or porcelain dolls, considering that the faces still look so doe-eyed and young.

I do agree with the fact that a doll with less bulk is more mobile, and that sometimes the design choices are based on what can be accomplished with the materials they're made from.

I do think that dolls of both genders can be unreasonably stylized, and as a result, I'm very picky about the dolls that I end up getting, especially about the girls. There's only one female doll in my entire collection, and it took years of searching to find the one that I was happy with.
As for what's feminine to me personally? I think graceful hands, slender knees, and curvy hips and thighs look beautiful on a girl. All things I suspiciously don't have, but in no way does it make me feel less feminine as a woman. I actually don't really like the look of dolls with figures similar to mine... I can see giant boobs anytime I want to, lol. I don't need to buy them.

 

I have never in my life compared my own body shape to a doll's body shape. I just took it for granted that dolls are meant to be copies of people, not the other way around.

I collect mostly minis and tinies so chubby girls (and boys!) are mine at whim. I find them to be more charming than the sleeker, larger dolls, but to each her own.

Yes, I took the heads off my Barbies, but I also recall (unsuccessfully) attempting to get the head off my American Girls doll. One is just curious about how they are put together. The beauty of BJDs is that they are meant to come apart.

 

Interesting question. There has been no good proof that dolls affect self-image. The influence of media is much more profound-- depictions of idealized "real" humans on TV and in magazines. I think the look of the dolls is an effect, not a cause. The dolls reflect what the culture finds beautiful or interesting. The diversity of BJD sculpts is in a fairly narrow range, but still wider than what is found in the media.

 

I was never a "doll" kid, I was much more interested in stuffed animals or plastic horses so I can't say that I was psychologically affected at a young age xD

For me, the fact that my girls are beautiful is just...the way it is. Why would I collect something that I, personally, don't think is beautiful? That sounds silly to me.

 

I'm so pleased to see someone raising issues to do with feminism; sometimes one gets the impression that everyone (young women?) thinks it's old hat.

I agree that the resin does impose limitations on the kind of doll that can be produced. As a large woman (very large!) for me the dolls enable me to project amongst other things my wish to be younger, slimmer, etc etc. I was not bought Barbie or Sindy as a child as my mother saw them (I think) as too sexualised. Instead, I had Sasha dolls, which are dark-skinned, with painted eyes and childlike bodies. (And designed by a woman artist who had been a pupil of Paul Klee).

I feel ambivalent about mass-produced dolls like Barbie and Bratz. But I think that children (not teenagers!) tend to be quite conservative (with exceptions) and that they will wish to be like their friends and not stand out from the crowd.

So I've rather changed my mind about stereotypical fashion dolls such as Barbie (or war toys for boys). I would hesitate to forbid them, but if I were a parent I would try to encourage a bit of critical thinking.

To return to BJD - it seems to me that they produce, as a rule, less stereotypical types of body-image (whatever the makers' original intention). It also seems to me that this is quite a broad community with some radical aspects, especially with regard to gender. The variety of dolls available reflects that, and not all of them conform to the normative Western body ideal.

I would also like to second whoever it was who said that the dolls are fantastic - ie they have elements of fantasy. Though there are androgynous, willowy male dolls, there are also some real muscle Marys out there, with huge pecs and fantasy genitals.

There have been discussions about producing dolls which show women with endomorphic body shapes, and I think some have been made by doll artists who belong to the forum. I don't think any of the doll companies has made them, though some, like Doll Chateau, have produced highly stylised dolls with slender upper bodies and wide hips and thighs.

I don't know. It would be rather nice to have a middle-aged male doll with a bit of a pot belly. I suspect that the proportions of the EID women (Elder Iplehouse Dolls) tend towards the plus size, in a way reminsicent of fashion dolls like Emmy.

There is a lot of room out there for development!

 

I find the type of dolls aimed at young girls far more troubling for feminism than Iplehouse's EIDs. Young girls grow up with either Barbies/other overly sexualised dolls or baby dolls thrust upon them. The choice is clear; sex object or mother. Those are your choices in life girls. Not to say that it is purely the dolls that cause this (the media and it's awful depiction of women being the most ghastly culprit and this is reflected in these dolls) but I will always find a little girl pushing a pram with a 'baby' in it one of the creepiest things imagineable.

BJDs don't set my alarm bells ringing and I'd consider myself a rather radical feminist. Yes many of them are idealistic in appearence but so are the guys so in that sense there is an equality not found in real life wherein the pressure for perfection is predominently upon women. The collectors also tend to be older and consider their dolls to be art or a way to create stories in other worlds, I'm not fooled into thinking I should look like a resin doll the way an impressionable young girl might try to model herself after her Bratz doll.
Perhaps importantly is that I feel that the majority of BJD females, as idealistic as they are, are not created to sexually titillate men (although perhaps this is where, as a feminist, I begin to feel uncomfortable about dolls like Dollfie Dreams).

If I'm honest, I do not collect female dolls for the same reason as the OP. I find their idealised, stereotypical look to be very dull and I was initially drawn to Leekeworld's Mikhaila when she came out simply because she was interesting. I definitely feel more varied body shapes should be encouraged because goodness knows we see do damn much of the same body shape in the media as it is!

 

I believe that dolls like Bratz and Barbie are an attack on the female psyche especially a form to implant into the mind of a little girl what society expects of her (since during that age we are especially impressionable). However Bratz to me are much more dangerous cause, while Barbie does standardize a certain type of beauty, she does also show that women can be what they want to be career-wise Astronaut, Doctor, Vet, she done at least more than a 100 careers. Bratz, on the other hand just center on aesthetics.
Now going to BJD realm of dolls with this theory... Like Saraquill said there is so much variety in BJD, and since they are customizable they aren't limited. There are also many types of bodies out there even though some are rarer that others. There are dolls with large hips and thick legs, narrow hips and thin legs, some that are big busted and others with flat chested. Highly "feminine" sculpts and very androgynous. Also since most BJd are over a certain age, there really isn't such room for suggestion.
I myself have two female dolls one is a Asleep Eidolon which would probably fit the ideal you have in mind and the other a Leekeworld Mikhaila which is flat chested, with wide hips and thick legs, and I don't feel like I have to look like the "pretty" doll at all, but also growing up I never felt I had to look like Barbie, she seemed to me like a sculpture, a piece of art. In my mind wanting to look like Barbie was akin to wanting to look like a Picasso.

 

Just to throw another facet into this conversation; Barbie is not only a party girl, but also an older sister, doctor, veterinarian, athlete...and I think in the past she's been an astronaut.

Now that I collect BJDs, I think it's made me appreciate my own body more. I've never really had any problems with it, but now, trying to pose my girl and my boy naturally, and wanting to improve the realism in my own faceups and body blushing, I find that my "imperfect" human body is a really great help! XD

As for femininity, I notice more and more that it doesn't matter to me. It's not that I have no concept of what it is to other people, but when I'm making an outfit or a faceup, or posing a doll, I don't use "femininity" as criteria. I tend to make those kind of aesthetic decisions based on more specific adjectives...do I want a delicate face up, or a confident pose? I realize that my characters would be the same people regardless of gender. If my boy was a girl, he would probably dress and behave the same, because that's just how he is. He happens to be a boy, because that's the doll I wanted when I had money. He could just as easily been another girl...

Personally, I think that the doll itself isn't what sends the message. My mother is a gardener, hiker, baker, construction worker (she and my father built our shed...where she keeps her potters wheel, which she also built.) and someone who pays attention to her style, but also owns more "work jeans" than any other woman I know. A friend who lived near me (whom I haven't seen since I was...six, maybe? We used to play adventure games with dolls.) grew up with a very fashionable mother, who preferred scrapbooking to hiking and watched shows like Jersey Shore. We're very different now, and I think we would be the same people even if we had never played with dolls.

A doll is a blank canvas, and the way a child plays with their doll will be influenced more by the way the people around them act than how the doll looks.

 

Same here. With toys like Barbies and Bratz, it's a question I guess of whether their good points (the ability to act grown-up, play at different lives and careers) are outweighed by the negatives (the sameness of the body types, the sometimes limited careers in the dolls themselves). My daughter is actually more into Liv dolls at the moment, which have more realistic proportions and still can wear Barbie clothes (brilliant strategy, that. Also their wigs can change like BJDs).

I think, as others have said, the willowy bodies of collector dolls are a bit less worrisome simply because it's an adult audience. (And I love that I can customize my doll for any personality and that some manufacturers offer a variety of bust sizes, etc.) I find myself wishing there were more options for dark-skinned dolls, though.

 

Personally I find it fascinating how femininity has become the antithesis of feminism in many people's minds because of traditional gender stereotypes and internalised ideas that the more a woman personifies masculine ideals the more seriously she'll be taken.
There is a lot wrong with the message dolls like Barbie and Bratz send in regards to impossible beauty standards but I don't think BJD's come anywhere near doing the same. BJD's already represent a broader range of body shapes than they're generally given credit for, especially when it comes to figures and bust size, not every girl doll is big boobed and doe-eyed as the OP seems to suggest, there's a lot of variation in figure as others have already mentioned. It's not perfect of course, there's a way to go if the BJD world was to represent a broader range of bodyshapes but at the same time, the last few years especially have seen much more variation in aesthetic come about in the hobby.

There's nothing inherently sexist about a doll or person, female or male being feminine or androgynous, if anything the sexism lies in the assumption that being feminine makes a person lesser somehow.

 

Deleted, because I can XD Interesting thoughts on this topic though!!

 

With Bratz dolls it's easy to see what the creators are going for, but as others have said, Barbie isn't near that same standard. While she is slender and feminine, I've never seen her as anything more than a fantasy image for girls to play pretend with. I never wanted to look like Barbie when I was a kid as I was mostly just having fun with the dress-up and hairstyle aspect of the dolls.

As far as bjds go, I have to say the same. These dolls are mainly meant for fantasy and to look pretty, kind of like people in video games (Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry, CV series, etc). There is some realism as well, but I'm guessing that the main objective for most doll makers is to achieve fantasy and beauty rather than what we see in real life every day. To me, this is what makes them so appealing. These types of things don't offend me or affect any image standards I have for myself. I buy dolls because they are pretty or fantasy-based, but I can honestly say I could never see myself buying a fat doll or a frumpy-looking doll for the sake of realism.