Making Boy Dolls....Boys! [~Small Edit~]

Most dolls seem pretty androgynous to me...unless they're extremely masculine/feminine, I have to puzzle over their gender. My friend is getting a girl doll, and I thought she was a boy.
My boys are all feminine, but when I have one of them with me, most people don't talk to me, so they haven't yet been referred to as "she." XD

 

My Angel Street Zazean, Lee Dawnstar, is constantly mistaken for a girl. It is quite embarrassing, and then I have to explain to people he is a boy and has parts. The next question I get is "Oh! Can I see" ... which adds even MORE embarrassment! Hopefully, when I buy my next doll, I will have no such issue!

 

I personally don't get why people make their male BJD's look like girls.

 

I agree completely with this! I like androgyny as well, especially to the point where it is confusing-in that way, I actually think it's fun to see what people(especially BJD owners)guess about the gender of some of my guys/girls. Some others don't even have a 'set' gender, like my Muse and people can call him/her/it whatever they want-I know people who call my Muse a different gender based on 'his' clothing of that day, or the photoshoot itself. I love that! I also have a few 'boys in jeans' who I think are a lot of fun, and I'd be a little surprised if someone thought my Mihael/SSDF hybrid or Puki Chichi(after his mods/tattoo's/face-up-with-stubble is done)was a girl, but I wouldn't get offended. It'd be amusing, I think XD

 

I think, without any hints, I might have been a bit confused whether Fable was a boy/girl/it

Might just be that picture though ^^ Usually I am pretty good at telling, but I mean, we're subjected to the androgynous look all the time. We're used to, either if we're in any underground group (goth, cyber, etc) or has east Asian interests (anime, manga, JE, Korean boybands etc) to look at really feminine guys, and have a completely different view of what is feminine, masculine, or boarderline. I don't even view skirts as a prominent female clothing anymore, so xD But here in the west, for a bit older generations, that is not so. They have grown up with strict female/male categories, and keep judging by that.

Fable might be feminine or no, but to someone he looks like a really cute doll with a long wig and pink lips Of course conclusions are drawn.

 

All my dolls are a bit different. Zaphod is actually a manly boy, but for some reason always tought of as a girl. While he had rather short spiky hair, leather green pants, torn outfits and heavy boots. The people who thought of him as a girl must have a wrong image of girls in general xD

Skellde is a Bygg, so in fact gender neutral. He doesn't really have a gender, but I speak of him as a he. He's just a bit more male than female :p But yeh, he has the basic outfit, which has a small skirt xD So for my BF he's a girl. His long hair are probably also a reason :p I just like him the way he is, a bit confusing ^^

Less is 100% male, but he's the most girly doll I have xD even though he doesn't dress extremely girly, normal pants and a loose shirt.

And my only girl, Lynxx, is more of a tomboy xD She does wear dresses, corsets etx, but still xD Maybe it's the fact that she still uses a stolen male body that make her so. I'll have to revise her when I buy her an own body one day :p


I don't really mind people asking me what gender they are or confusing them a bit, as long as they accept my opinion of which gender my doll is. My doll, my character, I decide how he or she looks and nobody should interfere xD

 

Eirian has a very pink/feminine faceup, though he's a boy. I bought him third-hand that way. He's been mistaken for a girl by my uncle, and even after correcting him (and even after my friend correcting him) on Eirian's gender, my uncle still insisted on calling him 'she'. I can't blame him though. Eiry looks very girly, and doesn't have a muscular body. I did consider making the head into a female and giving the body to Mikel, but once he arrived in person I couldn't bring myself to do it. He just ended up being my first true girlyboy.

My other 1/3 boy, Mead, has never been mistaken for a girl. I'm amused by this, because I don't think his character would have taken well to it.

I don't really care if people mistake my boys' gender. I'll correct them automatically if I feel like it.

 

I think the preconceived notion for most people is that dolls are girls. Couple that with the fact that many male doll sculpts have softer, more stylized features and it isn't surprising that many are mistaken for girls. I only have one girl doll so chances are if I am out with a doll it is male. Most people still refer to them all as girls. With some I understand, they are "pretty" and have long hair. I do wonder when people refer to my DZ Yuu as a her though. I know he has long hair but the mold isn't exactly feminine and neither are the DZ 70cm bodies. It doesn't bother me though. I just correct them and move on. My oldest son has been called a girl since birth, he will be 9 in two month. I have plenty of practice correcting people on gender.

 

Hahaha iris0110, my little sister got called a boy until she was like 7 because she had short hair. The awesome part is she wore dresses EVERY DAY. People just aren't used to looking at the details for gender, because they usually don't need to. I mean, I've noticed that if I can't determine someone's gender, I usually don't even REALIZE I'm confused about it until a while later. (Like maybe when I have to refer to the person in conversation and can't decide on "him" or "her".) It's just so subconscious and automatic, you don't even think. We get the overall impression in a glance and that's why it can be wrong if certain major clues are off, especially in the face and hair. But like others are saying, people who are used to Asian aesthetic use different clues when they're looking at an Asian-style figure.

 

I think it doesn't help that the faceup element of BJDs generally means there's "makeup" on a boy doll, no matter how subtle it is. If I saw such slender, soft-featured, large eyed, no-adams-apple having, painted-face folk in real life I would go ahead and assume they were female too...

I think there's a lot of idealizing of the male form in this hobby that stems from the bishounen culture where slender, soft femmy boys with long hair are the pinnacle of male beauty. It makes me think a little bit of that dissonance comes into play between the West/East culture too I'm sure.

 

Honestly, I've made that mistake and was mortified when I found out. It's just so hard to tell the difference with BJDs unless the face sculpt is very distinctively male. I even look at my own doll occasionally and think he looks too feminie.

The one time I showed my doll to a family member, they knew it was male because at the time, he was naked and in his box where I keep him when I am not using him for photos. So it was obvious that it was a male doll but if he had been dressed and because I do favour long hair on my male dolls, he could have easily been mistaken for a female.

 

well, my boys (except one, he has short hair), get mistaken for girls, most of the time I don't even bother to explain they're actally boys, unless people are really interested. But most of my guys got long hair.
But I don't really mind.. anymore, most of the time i'm just amazed that they don't get they're boys, but I guess that's just because i'm used to my boys..
and sometimes I make mistake with genders of other dolls, but sometimes it's just so hard to tell.. -.-' so at some point I get it that people make this mistake..
(but I didn't make that mistake with Fable, but I already knew him.. )

 

I don't actually have my doll yet but um...he's sort of, meant to be girly
I spent months digging through sites trying to find the right face and mold for him, he's a crossdresser, and based off a character of mine. So I don't think I would mind in the end, since he's suppose to look that way.

 

Eh...it doesn't bother me. Most of my guy friends think my two boys are on the feminine side but they knew they were boys because I don't dress them in feminine clothing; at least non-femenine as far as the BJD world goes. My musician friend actually thought they looked David Bowie and Skwisgaar Skwigelf from Metalopaclypse. There are worse things...

 

This. All of this. My parents are convinced that EVERY boy I have (and I have 4) is either a girl, or just plain gay. I brought Edissen out to show them, and they went "yeah, that new wig makes him look a little less gay... not much though." Honestly, it's apparently the BJD aesthetic to be androgynous- and getting your doll's gender mistaken is just something you'll have to deal with. It honestly doesn't bother me at all- especially since the first time I took Morghan to a BJD swap meet, a girl took his picture and went "Awww, she's so cute! Put her with my boy!" Yeah. This was a doll person. So pretty much, there's no getting around it.

 

It's interesting trying to explain it, especially to older people.

Hey, it's your doll. Let it look like any gender and be any gender you want.

 

Well, your boy's definitely got everything it takes to be a girl. It's not a bad thing. Personally, I get a kick when I look at people's faces after I tell them my Hewitt is in fact a boy and not a girl.

 

I think his face is male - he's lovely.

 

Alec often gets mistaken for a girl, since his wig is kind of blond and wispy, even though he's a dude...and I can't even have him drop trou to prove it, since he's on an angel body and thus lacks bits. xD So I just have to say "Trust me, he's male."

Hmm...perhaps I'll have him cosplay Loki from Dogma...

 

I get a little upset about people thinking certain molds look like girls, but if someone isn't used to them, I can definitely see why they think so. Haha.