Dolls and feminism

The pretty female dolls don't affect how I feel about myself, because I always realize that they are a doll and most likely they were made to be beautiful and perfect. However, I do think my ideas of feminity have led me to feel differently about female dolls. I do not mean this in any sort of offensive way, but my personal feeling is that feminine women have long hair. Therefore whenever I have dolls, I prefer to them to have long hair (mid-back or waist length).

However, when it comes to the body type, I think any body shape can be feminine for a female doll. I have had two Dollfie Dream Dynamite girls (they have very large busts, wide hips and thighs, with slim waists) and I love their bodies and I think they're beautiful. Then I also have an S bust DDIII doll who I think is just as beautiful. From just looking at pictures, I think that clothing, wigs, and background can determine how feminine a doll is... But if a person creates a personality and history, then that can change how feminine they are.

Please keep in mind that my opinions are not meant to insult anyone, and I am not someone who judges other people's dolls by how "feminine" I think that they are. Most, if not all, of what I said is directed towards my own dolls and how I like to portray them as being feminine.

 

To be perfectly honest, I am infinitely more upset by the fact that human models are photoshopped in ads than by the fact that dolls are idealised. When you see a photo of a real person, you still expect it to reflect reality, and if this supposedly real person has infinitely long legs, a tiny waist, perfect boobs and perfect skin, it does sometimes make you look at yourself in the mirror and wonder why you aren't blessed with those, because you are made to believe that other people are (and that you can greatly improve yourself by buying certain products).

But dolls? Dolls don't reflect reality, any more than Greek statues and Renaissance paintings do. Dolls have no influence whatsoever on my self-image. I have played with Barbies as a child, but I've never once thought that Barbie might be sexualised or a role model or whatever. She was just a doll and a source of creativity for me. I have always loved my Barbies, and I still grew up to be a feminist.

Dolls aren't people. I'm perfectly fine with the fact that they are idealised figures. Do I sometimes wonder why some dolls have huge boobies? Why yes, and it's one of the things that can really put me off a doll. I also feel uneasy when dolls are presented in lingerie and sexy poses on their sales page. But dolls never hold up a mirror for me.

 

I can see with Bratz, Barbies, etc. They are usually really oddly proportioned, often in the worst ways.

Resin BJDs, female ones in particular, come in many different shapes and sizes, there are fat dolls, skinny dolls, frail-looking dolls, ugly dolls, pretty dolls, tall dolls, short dolls, stumpy dolls, super-twiggy dolls, and more. And guess what? Women, in the real world, come in the SAME sizes too.

Dolls are pretty, basically the 'ideals of female perfection', because it is more appealing to buy a more perfect, gorgeous, stunning doll than one that is frumpy and homely.

I don't think dolls had any effect on what I felt about sexuality and gender identity. I played with Barbies because they were fun and cute to dress up, and thats what my friends and I did. Not because "zomg, this barbie is so pretty, I want to be just like her". If anything, the Modeling and Fashion Industries are twisting the world's view of feminism and women, not dolls.

 

Seriously! Remember this mind-bending Ralph Lauren ad that had even the most diehard anorexics scratching their heads?
http://www.boingboing.net/assets_mt/2009/09/29/lauren.jpg
Rule 1: Hips should be wider than skull.

When you see a doll with a distorted/idealized body shape, your eye doesn't really register it as quite so effed-up... I think it's related to the Uncanny Valley effect.... i.e. the doll's inhuman face makes its body seem inhuman enough for your eye to accept its shape. But when you see a photograph of a human that's been pulled into a doll's shape, all your eye sees is WOW THAT IS EFFED UP.

So, the tricks of advertising/fashion photography raise my feminist hackles in a way that female dolls' sales page photos do not. When it comes to the lingerie, trite costumery, sexy poses, etc. used to sell female dolls, most of it just makes me roll my eyes and move on.


But I admit-- I get a kick out of the over-the-top photo shows that Dollmore makes for their mega-distorted "Glamor Bust" girl dolls. They're fun in a playful old-fashioned pinup way, with the dippy prehistoric charm of a 1950s Playboy. Like the one that had Bigtitty Zaoll Girl #1, having shot one of the Glamor Model men, stands over him with her handcuffs and ridiculous Sexy Policewoman costume... then appears to arrest the leopard-clad Bigtitty Zaoll Girl #2 for prostitution... And then the Bunny-French-Maid show with Bigtitty Zaoll Girls #3 and 4 doing the laundry, hanging up some men's underwear and eavesdropping through the walls... Even my blazing-hardest-core feminist side just rolls its eyes and laughs. Sometimes I get the feeling that Dollmore just likes to have fun playing with their dolls, & whether or not we buy anything is totally incidental.

 

My take on it is slightly different.

I was raised to believe girls could do anything boys could do, and to reject the idea of the "dumb girl" stereotype. I am a strong successful woman who earns her own money and paid for her own education. I have always actively avoided being super girly or dressing in sexy clothing because I don't want anyone to get distracted and think I'm a bimbo. Also, I'm a fairly shy person who doesn't like it when people stare or leer at me.

It's how I freely choose to be. And it's not just me. At my work there is a lot of criticism of women who show off their bodies or dress sexily. The men and women in charge at my job look down on sexy clothes and consider women who show off their bodies as making a "cheap bid for attention."

Now for the irony: Both of my dolls are Dollfie Dreams (among the sexiest and most busty SDs available) and both of their characters are feminine and sexy...one is downright scandalous. I get a huge kick out of dressing them in a naughty way, in short, scanty outfits and such, and making their characters exhibitionists! Call me a pervert but it expresses something really fun for me--something I wouldn't want to risk in real life (and that way of life wouldn't really suit me anyway, I hate attention!) So I enjoy the opportunity to have one little part of my life be "non-feminist"..... :-)

 

I own one of these "Bigtitty" girls, and I have to agree. In person her breasts are even more ridiculous than they appear in photos. It is really hard to capture their, uh, immensity, and the physics-defying way they are attached to her body. Pictures just don't do them justice. My Leah Cox (someone had fun with that name) has absolutely no hope of standing on her own, and that's rather the point, I think. It's interesting to see how uncomfortable she makes people.

For the record, I am a feminist and raising my son to be a feminist, too. We've had several interesting conversations about what this doll is meant (or not meant) to represent or poke fun at, and we've visited photoshop disasters to extend the conversation.

 

I've met one of those girls IRL once... From the neck up those Dollmore girls have such great personality, but it's lucky if anybody ever gets to the face. My reaction was "Ow, my eye!" Each knocker has its own gravitational field, so you really cannot look away, which is what makes a lot of people so uncomfortable. Who wants to be caught staring fixedly at plastic breasts, right? It makes you look like a pervo. But you can't help it. Those gazongas have the conversational effect of a far-out handicap, like a third eye or a massive pulsating tumor... everybody's trying to talk around them, and everybody's trying to look away from them, but all efforts absolutely fail.

Making People Uncomfortable story #2: Odd thing, but the time my friends & I wandered into the hentai-figurines corner of a shop in Akihabara, the boys all reacted to *us* the way that a Christian tea party would react to a Leah Cox on the table... we got the distinct sensation of Being Not-Stared At. And being navigated-around as though we were furniture. (Nope, no women in here, don't see em, especially don't see any big tall white chicks, nope, does not compute.) We were just there to get a look at those legendary little silicone-skin hentai dolls with the jointed inner skeletons, so we weren't to be deterred by a little freeze-out, but it's still good that we weren't actually looking to buy anything. Getting served by those poor petrified guys would surely have been a Beckettian comedy.

 

I'm sure the men in the store had never stood that close to actual flesh and blood women (as opposed to the silicone variety), let alone white women. It would have been so amusing to buy something--anything-- just to see their reaction. Smoke out of ears, perhaps? I can't wait to visit Akihabara. But by the time it happens I will probably be a grey-haired grandmother, however, which will make the cognitive dissonance/overload experienced by these guys all the more amusing

 

I had an extremely bad experience with a feminist professor once who called me uneducated, stupid, and subservient among other things because of my refusal to call myself a feminist. It's not that I reject feminist ideals, I don't think. I guess I just see that beauty is determined and reinforced by culture as a whole, not by individuals within that culture, though it's this weird cause and effect relationship: one day the cat eye mascara thing is in because some movie star princess wore it, the next day it's not. one day red hair makes you look old, the next day you're hot. Either way, I'm still sporting both and not giving a crap about what other people think. Big was beautiful...then Twiggy came along and now we all want to look like waifish little boys. Trends come and go. Athletic is in, earth mama is in. I find that most children don't seem to have half the issues with dolls and action figures that adults think they do. I used to be opposed to baby dolls...traditional gender roles..mama breeding blah blah blah. Then all the little girls I knew that played baby dolls grew up. One runs track and doesn't have the slightest maternal instinct. The other just wants to listen to music and dance all the time. Neither one was adversely affected by the toys she played with. School and societal pressures on the other hand do far worse. I hope to do for my future children as my mother did for me: love yourself, and know that you are beautiful. I know that for me my own self-esteem issues were created by the bullies I dealt with in school, not by my toys. My love of fashion? Totally blame Barbie. But who doesn't love shoes?

 

Carmarilla, it's a bummer that the word "feminism" has negative meaning in popular culture nowadays. If you think women deserve the same rights as men, then you're a feminist.

 

Many posters here are talking about wanting realistic doll bodies, etc. My take on this, being a 34 DDD, is that the bigger busted BJDs actually look much more realistic (well, some of them) than so many other dolls. Their boobs hold up better w/o a bra LOL but still - those Dollmore girls have HIPS, for instance I've met women who look less real (ok, strippers - some use to take bellydancing from me).
I had Barbie dolls as a kid. I learned to sew because of them - that was the long-term effect from exposure to the sexist toys. Oh, & learning that GI Joe was much better than Ken, due to flexibility.....

 

Yes, and men can still look like whoever they want, and be happy. Women are objectified and shown one single body type that may change over the years, but it's still just one single one, as opposed to the fat male geek who may be portrayed positively anyway(EX: Wade from Kim Possible), the atletic hero, and the scrawny cowardly dude who does have redeeming qualities.

You have a very good point about societal pressures, however it's important to realize that dolls and toys may become a part of them. All dolls avadible for girls seem to focus on few aspects: Shopping and boys. Oh, and being pretty, too, and it's even worse nowdays. Remember barbie when you were little? To you, she was probably someone you could be when you grew up. Nowadays, Bratz is marketed as the kind of person that little girls should be.

I remember being insanely bored with barbie(She couldn't do much, and all of them were nude because their clothes kept dissapearing). I would have been so much happier if I had had dinosaurs or lego, because I did like dinosaurs a lot, and I loved building things with lego. All of my freinds had giant boxes filled to the brim with sweet, sweet lego. But nobody gave me that, it was all "for boys", and never caught my eye in the Toys'r'us catalog(Because it was marketed towards boys), and thus I had to play with barbie dolls, because that was what I owned.

Yes, I did play with baby dolls, though. But so did my male freinds. And when we think about it, isn't parenting a more natural, everyday role as opposed to the rigid, empty life of the stereotypical bratz doll? We've seen parenting, we've experienced the person doing it, and most of us(hopefully) are fond in some way of the person doing it. They're a role model for us. I see nothing wrong with babydolls, it's the whole bratz-culture that creeps me out.

 

If you see that beauty is determined and reinforced by culture as a whole, not by individuals within that culture, your opinion doesn't contradict feminism at all.

 

Yeah-- if your beliefs are consistent with the general tenets of feminism, surprise! you are one. It's just the label that makes some people squirm, for a multitude of reasons, most of which stopped being true in the 1970s. You'd think Susan Faludi had never been born.

I once saw this text-crowded poster, which started with "I'm not a feminist, BUT: I like having a job, and I like voting, and I like that my boyfriend can't hit me, and I like getting to keep my own money, and I like getting to be able to choose to get divorced if I want, and I like owning property, and.... [litany of good things covers rest of poster]"...

 

really? I want women to have the same right as men because I want to be able to do whatever the hell I want. I would go insane to HAVE to get married then hear my husband tell me what to do. like every girl I believe. so are all women feminists?

 

Sunderland, you stated:
"...men can still look like whoever they want, and be happy. Women are objectified and shown one single body type that may change over the years, but it's still just one single one, as opposed to the fat male geek who may be portrayed positively anyway(EX: Wade from Kim Possible), the atletic hero, and the scrawny cowardly dude who does have redeeming qualities."
????
Lots of different types of women are portrayed positively as well - the smart but plain types (ex. the little nerd girl in Scooby Doo), tomboys, agressive career types, shy little wall-flowers, etc. AND just like the guys, unless a make-over happens in the film/TV show, that character is NOT the main one. This is JUST as true for guys as girls.
Take a look at the new Sherlock Holmes (hey, its fun). Jude Law as Watson illustrates perfectly the changing ideal in MEN. That character (Watson) was created by Doyle based on himself - go look at a picture of Sir Arthur. Doyle was a lady's man in his day, considered the ideal eligible man. So casting Law (a modern-day dreamboat) is genius because for about the first time since the early 20th century, one sees Watson as his creator intended - a very handsome but rather conservative manly man.
Or consider the rise of the geek in popular culture!
I do call myself a feminist, but I'm really very anti PC. I've seen so much nonsense written about sexism (& so many other things) over my life. I (figuratively) burned my bra back in the 60s, & joined NOW, but the rise of femi-nazis has disgusted me.
I'm not going to worry over Bratz dolls - I fight over equal pay, myself.
& as far as not getting Legos etc as a kid, blame your parents. I'm guessing you didn't have brothers or you would have known all about them....

 

This, exactly, sums up my feelings on the subject.

 

unfortunately not. a lot of women believe in the patriarchy and support it. those women are not feminists. it always surprises me when some women DON'T want to be able to do whatever they want!

@Harlequin-Elle they call a lot of that "choice feminism," in which it's our job to support their decisions if they made the choice to behave like that, but we have to be aware that those choices weren't made in a void, they were made in a society that doesn't really give us many alternate options to choose from. A choice without options isn't choice at all.