Pediophobia

I have always found baby dolls with little teeth weird looking, I don't know why, but I won't buy a doll if it has teeth UNLESS those teeth are fangs

On the subject of touching relatives; try having to kiss you dead grandma... if that doesn't give you a phobia, nothing will!

Maybe that's why a really dislike dolls that look like old people, they give me the creeps, even the witch dolls you can buy as Halloween decorations, I just can't bring myself to bring one of those things home with me even if I like them. Some are really cool but I just can't have them in my house... just writting about it gives me the willies...

This thread will never die... MUAHAHA!!!!!

 

THREAD RESURRECTION! MWAHAHAHA!

::cough:: This is a really fascinating thread, and I enjoyed reading it. Which means it's time for Tama's Two Cents! Which is code for big ol' looooooooooong reply. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! *achem* (Oh, and fyi... I don't like euphemisms. I use "dead", "died", and so on. No one "passes away" up in here. ^^; )

Things you should know: I don't have a problem with death or preserved dead people. I think that older ways of body preservation especially are fascinating, and forensic anthropology is really interesting to me, but contemporary ways of dealing with death and the burial preservation process and actual burial ick me out. It seems to fake and covered up. I've always been very comfortable in the woods, and I have no problems with small children. It's usually just interesting coming up with something to talk about, but I'm really good with little kids. It's usually the older people I've found to be unneccesarily spoiled, greedy, and attention-hungry, especially considering that little children often have problems communicating their situation to others, and are just so young. I've also never been really afraid of dolls in general, just specific dolls. I had a suitcase full of Barbies when I was little, stuffed dolls, and porcelain dolls. I loved watching Pinocchio as a child. The only times I remember being truly upset by a doll were when my sister got a porcelain doll of a clown, which creeped me out for a little while, and after I read a particular horror story about some dairy farmers and a straw doll named Harold that they made. The story was in this book.

Dolls are made to resemble humans. When something not human has a human shape, people are going to be thrown off. Scifi and horror movies and stories are to blame for some people's problems, I'll admit, but there has to be some kind of them to these stories to make them universally frightening. A doll coming to life is terrifying; it defies set rules we have for reality: Dolls are not supposed to be able to think and move. It becomes even more frightening because, not being human, the dolls are even more unpredictable than a drunk on a bad day. What if the doll is malicious? What if the doll wants to kill me? What if it wants my soul?

I personally feel that most people's pediophobia stems from the... I guess wrongness of something looking so close to being human and yet not being so. For all of our imperfections and possibilities of being handicapped, something that looks *too* perfect, but is so very very wrong; it won't breathe, it doesn't move, it's stiff and glares down at you, never blinking, not quite human enough-- it's frightening. There is no life in this tiny human, there is no soul or intelligence in them. With dolls that aren't quite perfect, there is just the wrongness about it, the feeling that something has gone horribly wrong with this tiny person; why are they so small? What's wrong with them?

I don't want to sound cruel, but it's the same thing as seeing a clearly brain-injured child at a young age, when you can't understand why a person would look and behave so different than everyone else. Children especially will either lash out and discriminate against something different that they fear, or they will shy away from it. It's also similar to some people's fear of the elderly, or being thrown off by someone in a coma or vegetative state; there is no way someone not experienced with that type of situation could relate without making a deliberate effort to do so. People are naturally afraid of things they cannot understand or relate to, or deviate in any way from the norm. It's a useful survival instinct, and some people are better at managing it than others.

Dolls also smack of the reanimated dead. I agree that a large part of the fear surrounding dolls has to do with issues with fear of death, and dolls looking like beautiful dead children. Dead children are a terrifying thing for humans to deal with as well, because there is a beautiful little person whose life was ended far before it should have been. But when dolls remind people of the dead, and then are moved around or played with, it's disturbing. To bring up "wrongness" again, it doesn't feel right when something that seems dead (NOT inanimate, but dead) is moving, or a person is playing with it. This is creepy with children, but it's very creepy when adults "play" with something that seems dead, because they have more knowledge and wisdom as to what that means. Even seeing the image of a dead child or something that looks like a dead child can be very haunting, and follow you for years afterwards. Blank eyes or eyes that lack depth can be very frightening as well, which is pretty common in dolls.

Basically, whether your doll looks dead or alive, people will be very put off by it, unless it looks just like... a doll. Like Raggedy Ann and Andy, I suppose. Does that make sense? People aren't afraid of dolls that look human enough to be recognized as what they are meant to be, but tend not to like anything that deviates from that too much.

The humanness of your doll will also be a major factor in whether or not people find it frightening. lucybond mentioned that ventriloquist's dummies are often seen as frightening and Kermit the Frog generally is not. Hand puppets of cartoony animals are far more pleasing to most people than a detailed marionette. As lucybond said, it has to do with the suspension of disbelief. I have never liked ventriloquist's dummies. I've never read a book with one, and I've only see an episode of the Twilight Zone with a dummy in it and no other film, and I wasn't bothered by the episode. I just don't like ventriloquist's dummies. Yet, when I was a child, my favorite person in the whole wide world was Big Bird. Big Bird was my personal hero. Nutcrackers never scared me because of the association with Christmas, and the fact that they were never made to talk or move (except for the ballet, which involved magic).

And of course, the ties with Yoruba and voodoo. How do you do that voodoo that you do? (I know, I know... inappropriate joke. -_- )

This usually requires a piece of whoever you were going to curse, usually hair. The practice really isn't widespread, but it's out there, and because of exaggerations, usually by Hollywood, any very realistic doll could potentially become associated with this. This is part of the reason I refuse to use human hair wigs on a doll; I don't know whose hair it is. That's too personal, and too outright strange for me to do.

Specific to BJDs, I don't know why people are freaked out by the wig thing, unless it's just that permanence of hair is the paradigm for humans AND dolls. It's just a big shock to people, and it kind of messes up their mental picture of you and your doll. The eyes were mentioned before, but lack of eyes is pretty unique to BJD, since they can be removed. A lack of eyes just seems wrong to most people, and personally to me, too. If I don't have eyes available after I finish making my doll, I'll make some myself; while I'm waiting, or if I can't do that, I'll either wrap the doll's face in a blindfold or make temporary sleeping eyes. The customizablity of the dolls could probably be frightening because change indicates movement indicates life, and as I mentioned before, moving dolls = not good. Especially because with the flexibility and posability of BJDs, if the movement is akward or particularly floppy, people will freak out. Have any of you seen the first "The Ring" or "The Grudge"? (Not the Japanese ones, the American ones) You know how the dead girls moved in those? Yeah, it throws people off like that.

Specific to doll owners, I'm not going to address the pedophelia thing, because I feel that there are other psychological things going on with people who sexually desire children. However, some people feel that the suspended childhood that is created by reliving playing with dolls, etc. is a sign of insanity and a dangerous mind. Because paradigms are so powerful in the human psyche, role reversals throw us for a loop. An adult playing with dolls and a child speaking about death in a morbid way frighten us far more than the same things would if done by an "appropriate" person. An adult talking about death isn't frightening, and a child playing with a doll is commonplace.

Side note: The pictures of Rosalia Lombardo didn't frighten me unless I thought into the fact that all of these people are dead and on display. What really frightened me was the picture with the very young children (babies?) in their cribs, with one child sitting upright and looking rather grey colored. And of course having no eyes, but since the eyelids were either gone or opened, the effect was very scary. I would never want my body preserved like that, or cryogenically frozen, or DNA cloned. Just a personal preference, reinforced by this thread.

Also remember that the reaction you may be getting is also because the doll is in contact with the person in real life. On a television screen, things are far less frightening; the response you get in real life could be way different than you would normally expect.

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This, I realize, is a lot of information. Some of it has already been said. I'm sorry if you feel like this is wasting your time, but because of the powerful stuff dolls are associated with, even small differences in views can mean a major difference in outlook and opinion on dolls. For real. Just skip over stuff you've read already or don't care about.

 

Wow, that's like... a page I just typed. I need sleep....

 

I don't want to look at those links/photos either *eek*
I cannot handle looking at dead people, their images become inscribed into my braind permenantly :cry: ready to pop up and traumatize me wahh!
I have accidently come across a few dead people photos and I can't ficken handle it, I would claw scream and fight to get out if someone tried to make me.

The photos from "The Others" didn't scare me because they wern't real. If I know something is real, its another story.

However, egyptian mummy's don't bother me because they are so decrepid and SO old it looses it's scaryness. Of course, I wouldn't want to be alone in a room with one.

I think pedophiles who truely collect dolls and enjoy them probably do so not because they want to lure children or whatever but because they have an association between dolls and children, or they remind them of children so having them/looking at them is fun for them (sorry to be weird). Someone who has dolls just to lure kids would have cheap crappy ones they toss in the closet when they aren't doing their luring *ugh*

Like, the same reason I do.. I like dolls that are childish, because I love kids. I think they are so cute and adorable, I just want to moosh em and hug em hehe.
I get nervous around kids too but thats normal I think.. for me my dolls are sweet, adorable things I can look at and appreciate the cuteness without feeling creepy (I can't stare at real kids or people, its weird) and also no real responsibilty like if you don't pay attention to them for a few days no big deal wheras a real kid or person its way different! I kind of want a kid just to look at and dress in cute clothes, which obviously is a silly childish view heh cuz I will probably end up with a screamer who hates wearing clothes. lol.

But I don't know, its a weird subject.. I think its normal to think kids are cute and like dolls, and other cute things, for anyone really..

Me too, I have loved barbies and dolls all my life. I still wander up and down the barbie isle getting twinges of "gimmie" but I don't becase I feel too old for it and dumb lol..
but hey my boyfriend has a 7 year old daughter so i can play with her dolls with her and have an excuse hehe.

The only dolls that give me the willies are the ones with blinking eyes, or eyes that float around changing direction on their own. I also don't like huge lifesize dolls that are realistic.. I guess my theory is if a little doll DID come attacking me I would just kick the thing, and easily defeat it lol. But if its a huge ass doll, yeah I think thats scarier.

Chucky doesn't scare me at all because hes small.. I would bunt his little butt off a cliff hehe.

I had a "walking doll" when I was a kid and I used to worry it was going to move at night, so it went in the closet, and then I would nervously stare at the closet door, but feel guilty and not tell my parents because i didn't want them to be mad after I wanted and asked for it.. lol

It also had blinking eyes and i hated that.

My favorite kind of dolls as a kid were playdolls like barbie, and baby dolls like ones that pee, you can feed, change color, come with a birth certificate in their diaper etc.. and especially anatomically correct dolls :

lol....

My boyfriends afraid of my bjd's and even more so my big Himstedts, which makes me kind of upset but I guess I have to respect it.

One of my himstedts, is the size of a REAL 6 year old.. I was putting some outfits on her (clothes i actually bought for my boyfriends daughter) and as she was laying on the bed lifelessly I had a weird thought of her jumping up with a crazy grin on her face and i was freaked, i was like omg i am alone in the house with this... lol

But i calmed down, and put her away lol. I kind of don't know if I will keep her cuz she really is kind of freaky.. this is the doll if anyone wants to see her and remember shes like size of 6 year old kid.. 4 feet tall.. and I am only 5 feet!

 

I don't remember who it was, but one of our family friends supposed my mum was afraid of my dolls because she had grown up watching 50's horror flicks where the monsters were often people in elaborate costumes. I mentioned this to her. She thought about it for a minute or so, and then said we were probably right.

I am working very hard to end her pediophobia. I get her to participate in my photoshows, and she enjoys this now! I'm still working up to her willingly holding anyone. (I've convinced her to touch a Rovam Pullip, a Volks EB I was working on, and my Serendipity Shall.)

Oh, she is MUCH less afraid of Claribell (the Shall) than Talulah (Boding Sharmin), and likes my Pullips with "human" coloration much more.

 

I have never, ever, ever thought of dolls as being creepy. Unless they were made to look creepy, and even at that, they'd have to do a really good job. I have a lot of anxiety and fears, but never dolls. I don't know why, even when I read stories about "haunted dolls" They don't scare me. I don't know why. I've just always loved dolls.

 

What a great topic! So far, only curiosity and looks from those that think I'm weird. I put Soraya in the shopping cart like a child and people have either been curious or just thought I was odd. It's much easier at the fabric store It's fun to test the response though. No one has thought my girl was dead, but she's normal skin tone. Also, I have her eyes glancing to the side since I'm not fond of the the stary-eyed look myself.

I have a comparable size and proportion porcelain doll that really creeps out my neice. When she spent the night I had to turn the doll around. She loves dolls--but that one got to her. I don't know why, she has a very sweet face.

Some of the more vampirish and white dolls can look eerie, and some I just don't like--but that has more to do with the sculpt than anything else. I am very open to all the different dolls.

I've always loved dolls. They are a huge part of my life.

 

What's funny is, yes, I am intimidated by young children and I am often intimidated by dolls. I still want a BJD, though. She's going to be cool-scary. She's going to be awesome-scary.

 

I don't know what everyone else has said in this thread XD (its 12 pages!)

But I'm a pediophobic. Dolls scare the bajeebus out of me! I cannot look at porcelain dolls, clowns, baby dolls, anything of that kind! It freaks me out!

But, BJD have always been different. There are some BJD (in the Tiny Catagory) and some of the more "Anime-esque" (big eyes, small mouth) types that do freak me out to the point of anxiety attacks, but for the most part I am able to look at BJD because of their realism. It's not like I'm obviously looking at a doll.

I'm not sure why this is. I don't like small, real, children either. They scare me like some horror movies or ghosts would scare other people. I don't know why exactly, but its been that way ever since I was born (truthfully! My Mom got me a babydoll when I was about 10 months old and she has a picture of me beating it and throwing it away from me).

No clue why XD But, I hope that was a bit of insight for you from an Pediophobic!

 

I remember watching a show on them a long time ago...I don't find it scary for some reason, I find it sort of sad. Someone obviously loved her very much, so much that they couldn't part with her, couldn't let her rot away.

Looking at photos it's hard to believe she was alive at some point really...

ah enough off topic rambling.

 

Coming a bit late to this thread, but....

I'm the friend in question who got defriended by a mutual friend simply because I posted pictures of my dolls on LJ. Another friend who was a little disturbed by the pictures explained that he thought they were very beautiful but I posed them a little too lifelike; he asked me to put the pictures behind an LJ cut, which I was happy to do. However the girl lucy refers to was adamant that I shouldn't post pictures at all. Initially she threatened to take me off her default view if I didn't accede to her demands, all the while saying how creepy my dolls were and she couldn't bear to look at them. She went totally OTT about it, as if she was enjoying wallowing in the whole mess, telling me that I shouldn't take my dolls anywhere she would be going and generally being obnoxious about it both on LJ and off.

I told her she was being petty about it - after all, if everyone else was ok with the pics being behind an LJ cut, why shouldn't she? And at the end of the day, it's my LJ, not hers. So she defriended me.

I took Tal with me to B-Movie (a monthly goth nightclub) last Friday, and she happened to be there and insisted on making an absolute fuss. Several people observed she was being very melodramatic; my boyfriend told me I shouldn't feel guilty for taking Tal with me, as I shouldn't feel obliged to curtail something that brings me pleasure and joy just because of one silly girl. The club is a large place and she didn't have to stand only three feet away from me supposedly having hysterics.

Whilst I'm sure some people do have a legitimate fear of dolls, there are many more who are just attention-whores who find it a convenient excuse to make a fuss and get attention - and as a grown woman carrying a doll I'm the one made out to be a freak. And sadly, I don't think I'm the only DoAer who has experienced this reaction.

 

she sounds like a pest. good to be rid of her if you ask me ^_~

but I agree, you were being reasonable by putting them behind a cut. she couldn't see them so what's her problem? it doesn't sound like she was actually afraid of them at all, rather that she just wanted to cause a fuss.

some people are like that...pretend to have "phobias"/sickness/whatever so they can get attention and sympathy. Of course I'm not talking about people with real problems, so I don't mean to offend anyone.

 

Oh dear, I didn't know it had got quite that silly. I think I worry far too much about offending anyone... maybe I should try putting up an un-cut pic when my new girl arrives... I mentioned to this person that some of my icons are dolls, & she said she rarely noticed icons, so it didn't bother her. Maybe she protests too much?

I now have a co-worker who states that she is so terrified of anything that looks like a porcelain doll that she has smashed them, & cannot go into a shop that has any in it. She said she would try to destroy any doll I brought in, regardless of the cost.

I find her otherwise a perfectly sane & fairly pleasant person, but she is thinking of leaving, & I'm rather hoping she does, as I'd LOVE to take a doll to work, & certainly don't want to risk terrifying someone, or getting into a fight over potential doll-smashage!

Lucy

 

I suspect such people only protest when it suits their purposes to; and it's usually an attention-seeking measure.

As for threats to smash a doll, my response to that would be, "My, you must like prison food then - because where I come from that's called criminal damage."

 

Dolls that look like small adults or teenagers don't bother me. Its the vinyl or realistic porcelain infants that do. Its not a feeling of outright horror, its more of a shudder up my spine when I see them. I feel the same way looking at any of Anne Geddes' photographs. There's just something...not right about them.

When I was a child, I had one doll that was THE doll in my life, and she is more of a toddler/little girl looking thing. I had some Barbies, but I preferred stuffed animals and my Breyer horses above all else.

Now that I think about it...I DID have one doll that bothered me, a beautiful Effanbee bride doll that must have cost my grandmother a good sum of money. I got her for Christmas, and she's STILL in her box to this day, some 22 years later. It was the blinky eyes that got me. One night, they blinked on their own, and that was it for that doll! Still, I can't say that it was the doll that scared me, or the possibility of a ghost doing things to my toys that made me dislike her.

I do, obviously, lovelovelove BJD's. I find them elegant and heartbreakingly beautiful. My mother, on the other hand, can't look at a picture of one without saying something like "Ick! Their eyes....creepy! Get that away from me." The eyes are creepy to her. This from the woman who insisted that I keep the aforementioned Effanbee doll by my bed...

 

I concur..Plus, using ridiculous fear-based logic, wouldn't a doll that you personally injured be more likely to haunt/hurt you even more?

 

OMG HAROLD!!! I remember that guy... how I hate him!! He gave me nightmares for a long time!
And if you thought that was scary... try watching Jeepers Creepers, in the scene where the scarecrow comes to life and flies after the little boy

Well, to contribute to this thread, I have to say I was reaally scared of dolls as a kid, to the point where I couldn't sleep if one was in the room, couldn't get near it, look at it, touch it. I had to beg my mom to throw them away for me when I got them as gifts, because I was scared that if I did it, they would get angry and kill me... >__<;;

I'm alot better about it now... mostly because I've become morbid ops: I really enjoyed reading about the "uncanny valley" because when the fear was shown from a psychological standpoint it made a lot more sense to me. When I first found out about BJDs, I wasn't scared at all, and I kept telling myself that I should have been... it was very confusing. There's just something about them, that isn't menacing at all, even the ones that are supposed to look creepy. I just stare at 'em now, thinking how cool they are!

It's really weird considering I believe they have souls, yet I'm not afraid of them. I think a big part of it is seeing just how dedicated everyone on this forum is, and how much they love their dolls. When you see a doll in a store, it looks cold, unloved, very empty. A lot of the dolls I've seen here seem to glow and just look so alive. If they do have souls, they've been very well loved... They've got it better than a lot of real people do, I can't see why they'd be upset!

I still don't know how it's gonna be when Tantalus comes home... I've never seen a BJD in person, so I don't know how I will adjust. But I'll work very hard to overcome my fears! >_<

 

I honestly don't feel a need to show all of my friends all of my dolls, and if it freaked people out, I just wouldn't bring them. I'm not saying that it's not cool for anyone else to do that; I mean, mad props to all of you for being proud of yourselves and not letting people get to you. I just wouldn't bring a doll to, like, a restaurant as a specific choice unless it was a special occasion like a Halloween costume party thing, or somebody requested to see it. If a doll was in my bag or something, and I then went out for lunch and still had my bag, yeah, it's not a problem, but I know that people would freak out at the sight of a (mostly) anatomically correct 2 foot tall doll with glass eyes, removable wig, and high posability. My days of dragging my Big Bird doll around everywhere have been put to rest. ::sniff:: I miss you, ya big yellow bird! At which point, Tama was cast out of BJD society for clinging to a television character from a show which has long since jumped the shark.

 

JEEPERS CREEPERS! I love that movie!

I've always been... not morbid, but evil-type "badass" looking characters have always been cool to me. I played with dinosaurs as a little girl, and loved that Hildebrandt painting of Smaug. But... Harold bothered me because they guys were so stupid, and he's... big. Big, and didn't talk or change expression, but just killed them without looking any different. And the illustrations in those books just always freaked me out, even when the stories didn't. I'm also not too worried about the soul thing, because I didn't do anything to get a doll mad, and I'm pretty secure that no demons or angry spirits are going to come through my doll to get me. Plus, worst-case scenario, I can just kick a doll over and eBay it, or take it apart. "It'll be kind of hard to chase me without knees, arms or a head, won't it?! HAHAHA, I am triumphant! You can Buy It Now, for only $29.87 plus shipping!" XD

 

I've always loved dolls, and never found any of them creepy or scary. Now, my mother, a very no nonsense person and a nurse, was very disturbed by a baby doll that came out several years ago. It was soft vinyl, and weighted , it was advertised as feeling just like a real baby. According to my mother, it felt a little too real...just like the dead babies she had to deal with when she worked in the delivery room. It really creeped her out!
I just found it heavy and awkward, but then I've never handled a dead baby.:wink:
Sadly, my mother is dead now, so I don't know what her reaction would have been to my BJDs.