Dolls vs. your Culture/ethnicity

I'm Midwestern American... I brought some of my dolls home for the holidays last year because I was planning to do a meetup in my hometown. My mom was neutral to them, she kind of just nodded along while I was trying to show her its not that weird of a hobby lmao. My dad thought they were creepy.

 

I'm from Asia and to be honest many Asian people also consider dolls "creepy". I have never shown pictures of my dolls to one of my friends because she is so scared of them. Interestingly, she is okay with the dolls' body she just cannot stand the eyes.

In my culture, there's a ghost festival in the seventh lunar month, and many people will act more "carefully" when that festival is coming, for example avoid going out late at night. Some BJD collectors may also put away their dolls and avoid playing with them until the festival is over.

 

So I was born/raised in the U.S. but I am South Asian (Bengali) and doll collecting is definitely not okay in my community but I decided I want to do it anyways, lolol. Well, they seem to have an issue with anything that is considered out of the norm though so I’m not surprised really. I pretty much hide my hobby though because no matter who they are I seem to encounter a lot of judgement. My dad doesn’t know about my dolls but my mom does and she’s been very against them since the beginning but we had some progress the past week (it felt unreal, lol), where she sowed a little scarf for one of my dolls~

 

I'm also American, but my grandma is a chinese immigrant. I think she'd either love the dolls or be like 'thats absolutely ridiculous'. No, actually I'm pretty sure she'd love them. She loved it when my cousins and I were little cause she could dress us up, and in asian culture you almost want to look like a doll. I don't know if she'd like the male dolls, she might think thats weird, but the girls I think she'd like. Maybe when I get my Rudy Souldoll I'll show it to her and update on how it goes.