Poor body type representation in the doll community!

It would be nice to see more variety (especially since I would love a short male body that's moderately muscled rather than the always taller ones to go with a taller female body), but I think it comes down to business. Gotta make some money and too much variety costs a lot and doesn't normally make as much as, say, a more typical style body would in sales. But that's where artist dolls can shine, taking on the less 'popular' styles and making them unique.

I know some companies have made different body types before, but those are sadly not being made anymore, at least the ones I can think of. Others probably have a better idea than me.

 

I have some head sculpts representing people at 50ish, and I plan on making some older ones. I would also like some bodies for them as you’re right, the super fit 20 somethings don’t fit. Unfortunately, I guess companies make what they’ll sell most of and we seem to be a minority!

 

It seems that in general, the BJD community is quite conservative. I remember perfectly well how the Dollshe fans were unhappy with the appearance of David, they said that the master betrayed his style, sold out, and other nonsense like that. Then Ausley got even more than David, for being unusual. In the discussions there was dissatisfaction with her stoop, too low breasts, narrow face. I conclude that creating something atypical for a firm is a big risk. Rather, small authors can afford it.

 

Even with "attractive"/"artsy" bodies, additional variety kind of introduces additional logistics issues.

Like the stylized pear butt dolls need differently tailored bottoms or dresses only all the time.

And since not everyone sews and a smaller portion within that can draft their own sewing patterns, it does shut out some potential buyers to put out dolls that don't have a lot of clothing options. Not many people collect human dolls just to have them sit naked on the shelf.

I want to sculpt and release a chubby adult male body in the future (I still kind of suck at sculpting, RIP), but to make him more viable for doll collectors, I think I would have to draft sewing patterns for him and/or offer special edition clothing sets. I doubt I would be popular enough as a first-time doll maker to be able to commission a factory to make many clothing options for me.

And due to resin not squishing, it does introduce new engineering and design issues to do things like realistically chubby bodies that look natural and are capable of many poses. And in my experience with learning the arts, many never bother with how to deal with "non-ideal" bodies. It's like "here's the ideal Greek Sculpture Body. GOOD LUCK ON FIGURING OUT THE REST YOURSELF." Like even my art teacher who was fat was like "Don't use my body as a guide for drawing characters. *points at the skinnier students* Use those proportions."

So I think lack of variety is a mix of logistics issues and cultural hang-ups that not everyone has gotten over (both on the producer and consumer sides of things)

But we definitely have gotten more variety as the BJD hobby has grown in the past decade, so I hope the variety keeps increasing.

 

Yeah, resin not squishing meaning that mobility for larger bodies is difficult and the general difficulty/expense of resin casting are probably the two main sticking points.

Who knows, give it a few years and if 3D printed dolls can equal cast dolls in quality then doll-making might become more accessible to everyone. It's happening already with home 3D printers but that field is advancing and changing really quickly.

 

I think it's a little unfair to hold companies to such a standard when most of them have never made diversity their goal. Especially with these dolls being so stylized, and the prevalence of fantasy dolls, I think those wanting to accurately depict real life are in the minority. So the issue is being a niche within a niche. The vast majority aren't going to want to spend hundreds of dollars on a doll that isn't, well, attractive in some way to them. I think it's a little silly to fault them for that.

The handful of less stereotypical/conventionally attractive doll bodies that do exist don't seem to sell very well for obvious reasons so perhaps even the people asking for them aren't buying them But for dolls in general outside of bjd, there is a lot of variety already so if the market were bigger it would probably be more viable. I think the last time this topic came up there were some interesting compromises with resin and engineering to make chubby dolls possible.

 

@manabusama while I understand what you’re asking I can also understand why companies that do embrace diversity are few and far between. At the end of the day it’s a business and they need to make money in order to exist so most stick with more ‘bread and butter’ styles that sell well. As others have stated that’s why small independent makers are your best bet for other body types.

I also know for a fact that, as a few others have stated, plus size bodies lead to posing issues meaning compromises have to be made regarding realism. Flesh is squishy and movable, resin is not. Real boobies can be moved, lifted and flattened, resin boobies just stay where they are and resin arms don’t compress either so plus sized limbs and boobies really limit where the arms can go for example.
Many years ago I helped another member with the design for her plus sized tiny fairies. The design involved simple single joints as that’s what most companies used back then and the casting company who made them did quite simple dolls at the time. While the resulting dolls were lovely their posing range was very limited, even sitting was a problem. Big butts, boobs and bellies limit leg and arm range.
Nowadays double joints and mobility joints are used in many designs which certainly help but there will still always be certain issues when plus sizes are involved.

 

I agree with these. I think companies are more focused on profits and surviving the constant changing trends of what the majority of the customers may want. It would be pointless to make a doll that only appeals to a select few. You can get a doll I think commissioned and make it how you want, but that's more costly than buying what is available on the market.

These companies are small. I think it would be too much of a risk to make dolls with large varieties of body types, but i don't understand this sort of thing well. I could be wrong. I know a company I like reduced the amount of face sculpts offered because it was too much to handle for their company. I rather they stay in business then to try to please every type of customer and end up disappearing because they lose money or something.

I like diverse dolls as well, but I don't think we should expect all the things we would like to see in bjds such as a large selection of diverse dolls for now. It's like expecting to see every kind of food in a buffet. They wouldn't be able to handle all of that all at once to please every single customer and there would be too much uneaten food left over. Does that make sense?

There are non-bjds that include more diversity that can satisfy this desire for diverse dolls I think. Like those Barbie dolls with more selection of diverse dolls.

Maybe the bjd companies can make some diverse dolls, but have it a lottery system. That way whomever wins it has to pay for it and not back out without penalties. I don't know how this sort of thing works.

Maybe you can get oversized doll clothing and put it on a standard bjd doll then stuff it to make it more plumper. I mean that is what i might do if i wanted a doll more on the plumper side then i would leave it up to my imagination. I used to do these things when I was in elementary because I wasn't given many toys. I had to make do with what I had. If my small selection of dolls didn't have clothes i would make clothes with foil. If my doll didn't have a chair i would use a teddy bear as a chair and let my imagination do the rest. My mom mainly spent on herself or my older brother, so my sister and I learned to adjust and make things we needed. Although it was really really badly made and hideous it worked out. Maybe you can try out something like that... was this helpful? I hope I didn't come off as mean. I feel like I might have been mean.

I want Volks to have more variety in their Disney princesses like Jasmine, Mulan, Tiana, etc, but I don't really expect them to make these dolls if they don't want to. I can understand how you feel though. It would be fun to see dolls like Ursula and other villians with unconventional body types as bjds too, but i don't really expect them to be made. It's nice though to think about it.

Edit:

Another idea maybe you can use clay to add some plumpiness to your dolls. I don't know if you can add clay to bjds though.

 

I don't wish for more dolly diversity. I want my dolls to look as ideal as possible and have no interest in purchasing dolls with flaws. I don't mind if intentionally flawed exist, I just would never consider buying them.

The English speaking doll community is not the target audience of most BJD companies and is just a small bonus. It's a terrible business move for (relatively) large Asian BJD companies because the small number of customers begging don't always put their wallet where their mouth is and there likely aren't enough of them to justify the cost of developing a new body.

 

I understand that companies may be shy about risks for profit reasons, but I think exempting them from considering diverse bodies entirely doesn't provide the opportunities for standards to change. I see people talk about wanting more diverse bodies over and over on this forum - not as muscular, more muscular, skinny, fat, old, youthful. Clearly there's some kind of market for them! Not every type of doll currently around has always been around, people have managed to adjust to making clothes for slim versus standard MSDs, all the various SD sizes, YoSDs and tinies. And that's just dedicated BJD patterns, let alone if someone makes a doll body that can swap clothes with off-topic or playline dolls.

And with engineering? Sure, the fact resin isn't squishy presents logistical challenges for fat dolls, the same way it presents challenges for large-breasted or muscular dolls, but again, it's not like every skinny body is a masterwork of perfect engineering. I love my dolls, but it's a fight to get them to stand most of the time. If I'm going to have a choice of bodies that are all a crapshoot in regards to how well they stand or hold a pose, I'd like there to be some options between how they look.

As for wanting idealized, conventionally attractive dolls, they're only one form of attractive, and the biases in what is considered conventionally attractive are well-discussed. Pardon the language, but fuck the idea that only skinny or buff bodies (but only the right skinny or buff for the right genders) get to be attractive. I'm not here for a self-fulfilling prophecy of only making conventionally attractive dolls and then saying it's not worth it because nobody buys dolls that look like anything else because dolls can only be pretty because because because. I don't want my dolls' faces to all look like cookie-cutter airbrushed models, I don't want their bodies to, either. Look at all the dolls that are downright strange. Not "regular human that happens to not be conventionally attractive," but inhumanly exaggerated features, gore, fantasy parts beyond the standard vampire or elf or horse-based centaur. Someone's buying them.

The hobby has, time and time again, proven it can handle a different body type or size. It can handle imperfect engineering. It can handle a doll that doesn't look like the celebrity of the week. It - we all - can handle sagging breasts and rolls of fat. Perhaps we'll be better for it.

 

Agreed here. It's fine if someone wants to try it. Smart Doll has been doing it, not in body type, but with zits and stuff all over the doll's face. Hey, whatever people want, but they won't get any money from me.

 

I wish there was more diversity--my characters are regular humans. Sure, some are standard beauties, but others are middle aged moms and dads, grannies, I have two fat guys (and I don't mean have a "soft" look to them, but actually fat.) and none of these characters can be shelled because of the lack of diversity.

But I also understand why most companies don't offer those who stray from beauty standards--they aren't profitable. For example, I hear people say all the time that they want plus sized girls. I'm lucky enough to own an OfButterfliesNThings Paulette, she's gorgeous! I've seen maybe two other owners who have this body. If there's really so much demand, why is this doll not wildly popular? I think it's because even wanting a basic, like "a plus size doll", people are still really picky about them, so that turns into "I want a plus size doll, but not that face, not those hands, not those proportions, not my taste." That can be really discouraging, when it takes months or years to sculpt a doll, and make it very hard to justify the business risk.

 

As someone whose realistic characters are mostly old farts (endearing), I feel this thread immensely. I'd also love some diverse bodies to go with the heads. Head sculpts I can somewhat cheat with a faceup but bodies? And I mean, sure, some of them are pretty fit for their age (Shirou, for example, is 55 but has a decently built musculature courtesy of going swimming three times a week for over 30 years and Durga who is in his mid-late 40s does Krav Maga among other things -but has gotten a bit more lax in recent times) but they wouldn't be that young looking regardless of the fact. But that's hardly all of them. The rest I have to settle with for favour of having them shelled. At least you can often get the desired silhouette with clothes.

Alas, companies make what sells, and, similarly to how you will struggle to find a doll character not in some way adjacent to YA tropes, too young/ babylike, or a straight out of a fantasy universe (note; I am against none of these things, the other half of my crew can attest to that), it's not that likely that big companies will cater to the like of us that seek this sort of realism.

 

Short dolls too! Saw this mentioned further up the thread but I wanted a short SD to fit my 69/70 cm crew. For some reason they scale height with age, so most 62/3cm boy bodies are very young & slim. I ended up buying the broadest & switching his hands so they looked adult. Since he’s always fully clothed I just about get away with it!

My older dolls are customs though, made by commission or now by me. Honestly, companies are unlikely to cater to smaller markets so I decided sculpting or commissioning an artist is the way to go.

 

All of this! I would love to see some more stout-looking boys. It's usually only the girls that get SD scale 56cm-ish bodies and even those are extremely petite and rare. Short people exist!!

 

Just to let you know, if you are looking for granny bjd, there is an artist on IG thats making them and planning a preorder in Feb/March
They're walloyamorring on there and heres more info about their grannies.

 

People want their dolls to adhere to whatever their personal standard of beauty may be. Most of the time, this falls under a fairly idealized set of aesthetic brackets. Now, factor in low demand and low sales, ergo low incentive to create, in a craft with extremely narrow profit margins as-is, and it really should not come as a surprise why you'll never see a doll that's unattractive, overweight, and/or severely aged.

I have no idea how you came to this conclusion, unless you think every "conventionally attractive" doll is a minifee Chloe, and no other options exist. It's such a dubious argument to make when you have companies like Iplehouse, for example, with a long history of ethnically diverse faces.

This type of reverse stereotyping angle is neither flattering nor effective.

 

I want to start by saying that I agree that more diverse body types would be a good thing. However, you state that you think it'd benefit companies to have more diverse body types, but I have to disagree. Doll lines that have diverse body types nowadays are mass produced, mass marketed playline dolls that have a huge reach and huge companies behind them. Needless to say, these things to not apply to BJDs and BJD companies. It's important to understand how much time and work goes into sculpting dolls, especially their bodies. There's a reason companies usually have 1-3 bodies to choose from for each size, but tons of different heads to put on them: it's a very time intensive task to sculpt a body. It doesn't make sense for them to spend all that time creating many different body types, only for a few people to decide to buy them. I think most people who collect BJDs want an idealized body, and I think that most people wouldn't be willing to spend more money on the extra resin it would take to create plus size bodies, so I don't think more diverse body types would sell well (thus not making it worth the time to create a diverse range of bodies.)

Then you also run into the problem of clothing. Right now BJD clothing is fairly standardized, and while there are obviously exceptions to this, I can imagine more diverse bodies would make it more difficult for people who can't sew to be able to find clothes for their dolls. The dolls I have that I have trouble getting clothes for are ones with wide hips and ones who are slightly smaller or larger than standard sizes. I also know that people have trouble getting clothes for dolls with big boobs or shoulders as well.

Personally, I'm happy with the body types available now because I want my dolls to be rather idealized, so I can't imagine myself purchasing elderly, plus size, or chubby bodies, but I know this isn't the case for everyone. I will also acknowledge that I am a skinny person who likes to have dolls similar to my own body type, which I'm privileged to not have trouble finding, so I understand why other people, who have different body types, would want dolls who share their body type as well. Unfortunately, it logistically doesn't work well for there to be a more diverse set of bodies available to the community.