Pediophobia

The only experience I've had like this was when I took Violet to a store for the first time years ago. A man in a kilt literally ran away from her yelling to his very pregnant wife about how creepy she was.
She did have orange and yellow eyes in, though....

 

^_^

I love this topic! Everyone's replies have given me insight and made my usually boring mornings, better.

As to the topic of irrational fears; everyone has them. You (me), your neighbor (or mine), your family members("), your friends(").

I've had pretty possitive reactions to my bjd, Simon. The only time anyone was ever fearful of him, was when a friend of mine was adjusting his wig and realized that Simon had become slightly cock-eyed. It scared him so much that he promptly put him down, stepped to the other side of the room and told me to fix it before he'd come near him, again. >_<

I've never had an uncanny fear of children, or most dolls for that matter. In fact, my mom has a doll of a sleeping baby curled up in the fetal position on her bed, and I think he's sweet. I've never felt fear with him, or any of her porcelain dolls. I HAVE on the other hand experienced some sense of fear with very old antique dolls, AND some BJD's.

The only times I can recall, ever being scared crazy were:

(1) When I went to my aunts house for the first time and saw her enormous collection of specialty Clown Dolls (their eyes moved when you moved their heads, and if you squeezed some, they had a crazy laugh).
::shivers::

(2) ***The first time I saw a Bermann, Naripon, and Belladonna. My first reaction to each of them was one of horrified repulsion. They looked grotesque to me, at first. They don't scare me as much anymore (though I still fear them, I now have a respect for their uniqueness)

I respect everyone's opinions and their tastes. I TRULY TRULY hope not to have offended anyone by my instinctive reactions, I'm just trying to give an insight as to how others may feel about OUR dolls.

(((Forgive me, all Bermann, Naripon and Belladonna owners... I mean no disrespect. I know you all adore your beloved children. This is just an irrational fearful reaction from my overly sensitive imagination to their VERY different features. I have a friend who owns a Belladonna and loves her dearly, and have since learned not to fear her as much as I had in the past.)))

And finally or most importantly:
(3) When I saw the show they had on Key West Hauntings. They showed the Hemingway house and talked about a doll called Robert. http://www.askyewolfe.com/Robert-the-Doll.html
It still gives me nightmares, to this day!!!

 

I'd like to believe it is the concept of something so realistic that isn't real. As if this object, a doll, can come alive and perhaps hurt you. Also I bring my doll to school with my every friday and mostly boys where creeped out. Claiming he looked like chuckie, it took them weeks before they would touch him. (now they toss his wig around)

Also, back the the 17th - 18th century when bisque dolls where made people became outraged at the life the dolls seemed to of held. Since then it seems like the world has kept something... unnatural... in the dolls design. Even barbie can be seen for someone false for her long legs. Now bjds are defying those unsaid laws and comming out with excessivly life-like dolls that look to real to tell from a person in a photograph unless you can see their seams or joints.
(ex:

the boy I showed this to refused to believe they where dolls, and didn't believe until I pointd out the joints. He won't come near one now.)

Furthur more, it seems as if the propect of "tiny people" seems to creep out others from being so real along with the fact of their.. well.. correctness. Being the size of a baby and the way I hold him a few people have mistaked Hakuji for a baby and don't want to look at him upon finding out he's merely a doll. Possesion of such things probably influince the more supersitious people for many stories tell of children who died then took the body of their favorite doll and horror movies that show in our culture also reflect this theory.

My final point is some people are unhappy with their childhood and some therpists claim that it shows such. So perhaps their fear of the dolls merely brings up painful memories or rape, abuse, or mistreatment for if the object was near then the memory could be linked to it. Or the abuser could of given them a doll to lure them in. Their fears and wearyness is not for a bad reason though.

But that concludes my essay of why people fear dolls! lol

~suppi

 

I could probably make it worse > my best friend, who is obsessed w/death, collects those and has made all of us promise to get one of her when she dies. (She also has, um, interesting things planned for her funeral. I'm bring a camcorder...)

 

*shrug* when I was little I never much cared for Barbies. They wern't as jointed as my GI Joe's were. <=tomboy. I wish we would have had these kinds of dolls then, these are like the dolls I always wanted.

 

If pediophobia is the fear of dolls, then what am I? A pediophile?

 

I think she looks kinda cool. Not the sort of doll I'd carry around, but I'd like to have one like that.

 

I've given up on people _not_ thinking I'm a freak. I was one of those gothy people in high school, now I'm known to carry around a stuffed pink bunny when I'm not at work... I can't see anyone being afraid of your doll anyway, he's cool!

 

Fascinating topic!! I did go to the site with the preserved corpses--loved it and looked at most of the pics!! I found little Rosalie's body to be very beautiful--it filled me with sadness to think of her family mourning her. Death fascinates me--you look at the person lying there and know that the part that made them who they were is no longer with us, it has moved on. We mourn for time spent with that person and for each other. That being said, they continue to live in our hearts so are never truly 'gone'.


I've always loved dolls, from B@bs to babies. I think of my bjds as my 'kids' as I have no children of my own (I'm 41). That being said, sometimes when putting them back into their boxes it seems like I'm placing them into coffins.

I enjoy dressing my dolls like 'real' kids dress and don't really like the fantasy element.

 

Ah, that would be... The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, by Coleridge, right? In Part the Third, if I remember correctly. I know that this was already answered, but... my geeky heart won't allow me to not reply. XD Yeah, useless post.

 

Sorry, I just had to jump in to this fascinating thread.
Several years back, my husband and I went to the Cappucin catacombs in Sicily. It was horribly disturbing, to say the least; yet oddly peaceful as well. The Cappucin monks see it as their duty to 'care for' the dead, and were very cheerful and friendly to us as they showed us around. They even gave us a parting gift,a picture of a dead American ambassador who is one of the, er, residents of the catacombs (since we're Americans too; the monk thought it was cool we could speak Italian. Well, sort of, on my part at least ) I did see the baby Rosalie and was very disturbed. She looks very, very lifelike, but as many here have said, something was definitely *wrong*. This was before I had kids and I was creeped out, even then....

I have my own personal issues with dead babies. When my kids were infants, I would check on them constantly to make sure they were still breathing, sometimes even wake them up from sleeping. I could never ever own a sleeping baby doll-- yes, they look way too much like a dead infant. That said, my BJDs are not scary or creepy at all. The scale is all wrong, they are way smaller than a real human child, and as for mine or most of the ones I've seen here, their gaze is *not* blank and lifeless or threatening- there is a sparkle there, not a lifelike sparkle, but a doll-like one, one that looks beautiful and appealing in an artistic sense. The BJDs are beautiful works of art, to me mainly because they capture perfection in human form. My petite Ai Hanael is beautiful, a beautiful, perfect child. Her hair is perfect, her little face wistful and sweet, her clothes arranged so every fold falls just right. My real daughter? Dirty face, jeans with a sparkly princess flapper gown pulled over them, shoes on the wrong feet, hair all askew, crazy wild adorable little tomboy, certainly not a fashion plate, yet perfect, perfect in every way. The two are *definitely* not the same!!

So I guess the point of all my rambling is yeah, there are dolls that scare the cr*p out of me. And others that I love, cuddle, play with-- namely the BJDs. They look different enough from real human children to *not* be threatening or scary; just the opposite, they are idealized, artistic versions of human children. Even the dolls with vampire teeth, elf ears and wild orange eyes aren't scary to me, because they're endearing and lovely in that artistic way.

 

I've done a lot of performing Kigurumi in the past, and one of the reasons I've found for why both the dolls and kigurumi scare people is because of the large eyes. (Kigurumi = form of masked performance with masks with characteristically large eyes and small noses/mouths, "anime character" intentional look.)

At least, that's what people have told me. Something about the disproportionality of the eyes as opposed to the rest of the body just gets to people.

 

Please, PLEASE read Barbie's Queer Accessories by Erica Rand. Get a full understanding of the academic cultural critique of Barbie before saying that it's wrong, because the critique really doesn't work the way that you've stated it here.

(Easy Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/08...1?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v=glance )

 

i have to agree that i've never had a mixed opinion. people have either loved my doll or hated him. i've gotten plenty of 'he might wake up and kill us in our sleep' kinds of comments. a few of my friends ask about him all the time. my parents choose to ignore his existance for the most part. my father refers to him as 'the penis-doll' since i informed him that skah is anatomically correct. XD i have yet to take skah out in public, partially in fear of how he will be accepted by people around me. the other major factors being..someone stealing him or the beautiful boy himself being damaged.

i remember a thread somewhere on here where someone posted a story of walking through a store with her bjd and being called a 'whore' by an old lady who apparently thought she was carrying a small child...XD

this is a great thread, i hope to post here again when i have some more personal experiences to relate.

 

XD *snort* ahahah! 33

i guess that makes two of us XD rofl!

 

I'll be very honest and say that I have a true phobia of clowns and balloons. Even as a young child, I've been terrified of clowns. Terrified, meaning I would either a) start getting really anxious and nervous when I saw one without balloons, or b) start hyperventilating and run the opposite way if said clown had balloons. After getting away from said clown, I would be all jittery and nervous for another hour or so.

This was my in my childhood times. I'm 23 now and I'm STILL afraid of clowns. As an adult, though, I'm not forced to interact with said clowns and can avoid them if they are in my pathway.

Perhaps, it is this very notion of clowns being child-friendly that made me so much more wary of them as a child. As a child, parents and adults seem to like to assume that their young one will love to interact with a clown and get a balloon. In my case, this was and is definitely NOT true. The more my parents tried to get me to interact, the more I balked and the more frightened I became.

Society never taught me to fear clowns or balloons, and in fact, all my friends and peers at the time (and even now) seemed to love clowns and balloons. It was stupidly embarrassing to have to ask my primary school teachers if I could be excused from classroom parties that involved balloons simply because I would have panic attacks upon seeing them.

It was even worse when I went to a friend's birthday party once and hid in her bathroom until the party was over because a clown was making balloon animals for everyone.

The question is, WHY was/am I so scared?

I know that with balloons, it's only the inflated ones that make me go Eeeeep! And that's probably because they can be popped and I absolutely hate loud noises like that. It was also disconcerting to see them floating in the air.

For clowns... I'm not sure where my fear got started or why. I think that there's something disconcerting about someone all dressed up to the point where there's the human figure, but they don't... seem quite human. I'm also scared of mimes if anyone wants to know.

Anyway, I got super off-topic there, but I wanted to say that phobias of things like clowns DO exist. ^^;;;

And now, back on topic.

Maybe it's not surprising that I was also scared of dolls, too, when I was younger. Barbie dolls didn't bother me, but the dolls bordering on lifelike scared the heck out of me. I think it has something to do with the realism of the doll that makes it scary.

For me, the more realistic the doll is, the less I am likely to like it. I worked at Toys R Us for a year and this is something I noticed. The dolls that were semi lifelike freaked me out more than the dolls that were "completely" lifelike.

I'm thinking that maybe the pure realism of some dolls takes out a lot of fantasy-like or imaginative notions; they're just too "real" to really let your imagination run wild.

On the other hand, the dolls that border on lifelike, but don't look completely real (this includes ventriloquist dummies) - the exaggerated facial expressions, too-big eyes, etc - scare me silly and I think it's because the not-real aspects give my imagination room to run wild with horrific notions that aren't necessarily consciously acknowledged.

And yes, I've been scared that "sleeping" dolls might suddenly wake up or something or that there really are souls in the bodies!

This might possibly explain why the Elf doll is more acceptable; he/she has a humanoid body, but the elven/vampiric aspects keep the doll from being seen as lifelife or realistic and keep it firmly rooted in fantasy.

In all honesty, the BJDs don't freak me out at all (at least not yet!), and I think it has to do with the amount of realism and fantasy each doll possesses. Even the most realistic BJDs don't freak me out because I see them as works of art, though admittedly, seeing a more mature looking head on a childlike/teen looking body -does- creep me out a little. As realistic as they are, they aren't -that- realistic to me.

Despite my sometime-fear of dolls, I actually have a collection of action figures and old Barbie dolls (I don't like them anymore as their proportions and nearly identical faces now creep me out) and I recently "adopted" a 60cm Obitsu, whom I adore.

I'm not even remotely scared of him and I see him as the embodiment of one (or some) of my muses. He's a source of creative inspiration for me and where I can see my ideas coming to life on him or involving him, I couldn't even imagine him coming to life himself.

 

I agree with everything you said!

My mom had to put a mirror up to my mouth to make sure I was still alive because I slept so quietly and never cried at night after the first few weeks, so she knows how you feel. O_O really freaked her out.

They are like little people, since their proportions are like a child of 8 to 16-ish (depending on the doll model). Like you took the kid and shrunk them with a shrink ray. I think it's adorable! ^^ But really, most dolls REALLY DO SCARE ME...it's their creepy stares, like they could come alive and if they did they&#8217;d bite me, not their small stature. I would NEVER want to be left alone in a room with one of those old porcelain dolls&#8230;I&#8217;d SCREAM until someone came. The life-like baby dolls don&#8217;t scare me though, they are a little creepy to me but don&#8217;t scare me. The softer expressions of BJD&#8217;s are not scary at all, they are more like mini-kids, and I love kids! XD

 

Yeah, I'm like that, too. The really lifelike dolls never freak me out, but the old porcelain dolls or the old baby dolls do.

This sort of makes me wonder why the truly lifelike dolls don't freak me out. You'd think that if people make connections with dead babies *shudder* and whatnot, then the realistic dolls would be more freaky.

 

If they are dead I have a cemetery in my house.

My doll family: http://www.denofangels.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34523

 

On the barbie thing, it may have been discussed to death, but I was under the impression that she looked the way she did because she was a fashion doll, designed to display clothing. And on such a small scale, by exagerating the features the clothes looked more like they should. Barbie was never meant to be displayed as a realistic nude model back then.

Now, back on subject... I may find some dolls mildly creepy, like the 'reborn' babydolls people make that are supposed to look as realistic as possible. Or I might find a doll physically unattractive to me in various degrees, but no true phobia. Usually I'm more facinated than frightened.