The ethics of photographing 'children' in BJDdom

ok when I posted my last post I was enterelly going for an artistic discussion becouse of my point of view, american lawsuits its a hole diferent suject of the inicial post, and yes I am awear of that americans can get their hands on any cainds on lawsuits for the most absurd reasons and what not. but my point is how can they get away whit something like kidy porn when they are not hiven kids? thats like making a lawsuit on the venus the milo becouse she is nude (and I am not refering to the origins of the paiting becouse yes I know she was a 14 year old girl, I am refering to the fact that it is in fact a paiting it not real). or maby make a lawsuit on some guy that took a picture of a turnip that looked like a boys parts, like come on.
your understanding me roung I do undestand how they can make the lawsuit I don't understand however how they can get away whit it. like my neese takes pictures of her barbie dolls and babyborns all the time how can that be considerate in anyway iincorect? but then again I guess I just don't understand some people, like that guy that has a site about Spore and Will Write being evil becouse they think that they are promoting something out of the chatholic way of thinking. along whit all the parents that make lawsuits agains gaming companies that have violent games, an that their childreen are in danger when it says on the cover that the game is made for ppl aged 18+

I don't think I am abording this discussion on the point of view of an hobbiest if u think so then be my guest. I don't hiven know if I may be consider an hobbiest becouse I don't hiven own a doll lol. can I ?

and I desagree what is important is what u want the picture to transmit the others, the reaction of the viewer is implicit in that its called (hope I write this right in inglish since I am thinking in my natice laguage) artistic process, the process when u think about what your gonna do why u wanna do it how u want it to look. and like I sead earlier that is conditioned to whom your gonna show it. in this case a big chunk of american persons.

But then again and still on the subject I think that if sallys mom would be horrified of seing a picture of a young doll whit a tatoo on her beheing, she would just go into a coma when seing some of the photostorys that are here in doa and some photo galaerys lol, where ppl expose theire dolls after a "hard nght" whit some otther doll. or an explicit relation betwin dolls of the same gender kissing and feeling each other. if u are worried u might has well direct your atention to thouse since they are already instaled (and there are lots of them) in the forums. and there are clearlly sexual, becouse u can see that and it was the persons intention to be erotic and explicit.

 

I like to search the internet for pics of Dollfies a lot, since there are some spectacular photographs out there, done by devoted owners. And as much as I'd like to go to that 'they're just dolls' excuse, I can't.

To me, if I saw a naked doll, 13yrs or younger, naked in any way, it creeps me out a little. I'm also not thrilled by doll story lines where a minor is with an adult - though I haven't seen any, yet.

I feel, if I'm going to make a kid doll, I'm going to make it do kid things. I'm going to dress it in adorable clothes. And I was a little turned off when I saw Volks made 22cm doll bodies with breasts that looked outrageously large. Now, I bet some kids at 11 can look like that, but I'm personally not interested in making a kid look sexually attractive.

But the fact that you have a 15yr-old type doll, like a lot of others, a butt is no biggie.

 

First and foremost, I'm an artist and I know very well that censorship is the death of art. And these dolls are very much an art for me.

I might be a little late in this but I'd like to make it known, nudity does not equate sexuality. Simply because I posses nude photos of my child [their first bath, birth, and etc..] doesn't make it perverse in any way.

I feel I should be able to take nude photos of my dolls regardless of their presumable age and it should be up to the discretion of the viewer to head warnings.

Also, these are dolls, not actual children. A nude doll in a slightly suggestive pose is extremely different than if it were an actual child.

I'm not asking for the censorship of that, rather I feel a nude doll with an age presumed to be that of a child in a sexual situation is a crossed line best left to controversial doll where it can better appreciated. DoA has always stressed the use of artistic nudity when posting on this site and I feel this applies to all BJD dolls.

For instance, let's say I own a Latidoll Cookie and I want to do a bath photoshoot. The idea of the photoshoot is bathtime fun, bubbles; cuteness, suds and rubber duckies.

 

I agree that nudity is not sexuality. I also think that if you take actual pictures of a naked child, you are hurting that child, but if it's a doll, you're not hurting it, because... it doesn't really care. For this reason I think it's something that should never be censored. (Recent legal battles make me want to punch things). If you're doing no-one damage it is a grey area and you are the only person concerned. That makes it your decision.

 

Yeah, having a kid naked in a bath because they're taking a bath's no biggie. Most of us have that picture our parents took of us in the bath that they use to embarrass us in front of our friends.

I am not into seeing them naked in a bath for a reason that is intended to be more adult.

 

The argument against the "it does no harm" defense is that by tacitly condoning the behaviour, both of representing children in inappropriate situations, and of looking at representations of children in inappropriate situations, even a doll photoshoot contributes to people being able to say "no, my behaviour is okay." While I certainly find it highly disturbing when parents are targeted for having legitimate pictures of their offspring out of this fear, I do feel like the counter-argument is an important one to keep in mind. It's not as cut-and-dried as saying that because the photoshoot doesn't involve a live child it's totally fine. Of course, it's also not as cut-and-dried as saying that anything that might possibly be enjoyed for the wrong reasons is inappropriate...

 

Of course child pornography in any form is /disgusting/. But I don't think it should be illegal, as It's too subjective. In fact, I have images on my site that could be interpreted as (drawn) child porn. It's just that I'm not very good at drawing and sometimes people come out looking younger than they should do. My poor drawing skills making something illegal? Seems unreasonable.

Also, I secretly feel pedophilia, like homosexuality and foot-fetishism, is not something you can just control. It's something you should obviously seek help for, and so on, but not something you decide one day to become. I think if I was pedophile, having pictures of young-looking dolls or drawings, etc. might make it easier for me to pacify myself, and therefore avoid hurting a real child. It's the methadone of pedophilia.

 

Any doll, no matter what the age, posed in a sexual situation is somewhat odd to me. Not because these dolls are particularly realistic, but because they are, at heart, dolls. My grandmother collected dolls, and she always let me play with them as a child because "a doll's greatest joy is being loved by a child." She felt like her matronship of her collection was insufficient to keep them happy, and I was a very careful child, so she let me love them in the way that children do. Her extremely rare Asian Cabbage Patch Kids, her delicate Mme Alexander's, the dolls she played with as a child, nothing was off limits, no matter the value. Because, no matter how special or valuable, dolls are at heart children's toys, and she believed in that firmly. The dolls in the glass case were a favorite of mine, and I inhereted several when she died.

But she passed on her belief to me: dolls are toys, and have an innate need to be played with. So posing any doll in a sexual situation is a little strange, because it's not something I would have done as a kid, but I aknowledge these dolls are more grown-up toys. I'm sure I would take sexy pictures of Juli, but she is not a minor. Any image will offend someone, and you can't please everyone. I have no qualm with sexualized children, and if people choose to masturbate to the photographs taken, whether that was the artist's intetion or not, is their decision. There is a fetish for everything. A friend of mine is really turned on by innocence, and while he does not seek photographed child porn (he has the decency to be turned off by the reality, he says), he likes to look at the fake images--hentai, dolls, etc.

Also, being an artist and going into therapy, I have a vendetta against censorship. People need to express themselves, and art is a wonderful venue for doing so. Censoring someone's feelings because they're too disturbing is a terrible thing. If I needed to express my fantasies of less-than-innocent children in a non-threatening environment, and I chose to do so through photography of dolls, I would not feel as if I had done anything wrong. I would be hurt by others' disgust, because I was only trying to let out some of my guilt and desire. But I would also be understanding, and I would try to share my images in an appropriate environment.

I'd love to keep going on, but I feel as though I've ranted enough and I need to get back to work.

Angelkitty

 

I agree with you on this. Pedophilia, when it comes down to it, is a sexual fetish. It's sick and wrong, and people who suffer (yes, I said suffer, these individuals are socially reviled, hated, and feared and this must have a negative impact on their lives and no, I don't excuse their behavior or feel sorry for them I just acknowlege their suffering) from this particular fetish need help from a sex therapist or someone. And it's not just hard core pedos who like to look at youthful looking porn. I worked in a porn store for a while and some of our biggest sellers were the "barely legal" type of mags & vids. I firmly believe that sexual or any kind of exploitation of a child in ANY way is wrong and offenders ought to be punished as much as the law allows. But dolls, shota/lolita sexual manga, drawings, and animes are in a different realm. These things are not to be held in the equivelent of a human life, and therefore have no need to be criminalized like child porn is. There are venues out there where people may view and/or produce sexual images of child-like dolls, drawings, etc and I agree that these venues ought not be made available to the general public (ie they should only be available to an 18+ private forum or some such, not plastered all over your myspace page or whatever), but neither should they be criminalized & banned completely. But that's just my 2 cents, which in today's economy is more like 1/2 a cent.

 

the whole "he/she still looks like a child regardless of what age they are supposed to be" thing bothers me a bit.
what makes a doll look like an adult? boobs on female dolls? not every adult female has massive boobs some underage girls have massive boobs. who are you to say that a doll with a more flat chest HAS to be a child?

i think taking pictures of an underaged doll nude is fine, as long as it is not meant to be extremely sexual. parents have pictures of their babies naked in the bath, on the rug, etc. children run around naked/half naked all the time, no one really thinks anything of it. nudity does not mean sex. i find the human body beautiful and have no problem with it.

and the pedophile arguement is a bit.. pointless really. there are people who will find the most random things sexually arousing. your underage doll could be fully clothed, but the fact that it is still a child is what got them off. does that mean we have to make all our dolls adult age? no. i am not saying i support child porn in any way, but realisticly, there is not much we can do, someone somewhere will probably find ANY picture sexually arousing (regerdless of the doll's age)

 

I think this falls into a huge grey area. Addressing specifically the tattoo mentioned in the original post, you can't really say one way or the other that "no it is wrong to expose this doll" or vice versa. Dolls are not people. Who they are and what they represent can change at a moment's notice. It all depends on the situation and what the photographer wants to be seen.

If someone has an underage doll with a non "appropriate" (I use that term loosely, for lack of a better substitute) tattoo or mark and they want to show it off, it's fine. Take photos of that specific part, don't dress up the photos. Just post them. Show it for what it is.

It's different if you take that same photo and make it art. If you pose the doll so it's showing, photograph more than just the specific subject and imply that the doll is more than just that, a doll, and then it gets iffy.

If you want to publicise photos of a doll in risque situations or positions, it's only natural you're not going to imply that they are a child, while they are in fact a "child's toy". It's hard to give an opinion on this subject one way or the other, as, like I said, it's a huge grey area. Two people can photograph the same doll and it will turn out completely different depending on the photographer's intentions.

 

I think that is a very subjective issue. Take a look at MiniFee's new cutie bust, for example. Minimal bust, but the overall doll looks mature, the same way a young woman with a small bust would look. The same goes for TinyBear's Moona. She has a young woman's body, not a child's one. It doesn't mean I would be happy to see photostories featuring a Moona and a Hound though. The height discrepancy there indicates that the tiniest party is a child, not the maturity of the body. It doesn't matter if your Moona is a 1000 year old fairy or whatever, when she is lying suggestively in the arms of a much bigger doll, those pictures don't belong on DoA where 13 year olds (and their parents) can find them.

It is all about the look of the thing, as Flubbybunni said. If a parent/guardian/authority figure looks over your shoulder and feels that the picture is inappropriate because one party appears as a child, it won't matter how much you protest and say "Oh, the Moona is a 1000 year old fairy!", it still appears negatively.

This is an interesting debate for me because I'm going to be transforming my Bobobie Cookie into a chibi!tribute to Columbia from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Cookie is one of Bobobie's smallest dolls at 14cms and isn't mature at all. Considering the nature of the film, one could think I was creating a 'child' Columbia for dodgy purposes, but I know that it is just supposed to be a kawaii little tribute. I haven't bonded with this doll at all and this transformation is a last ditch attempt to bond before I simply have to sell her.

 

To me it's purely situational. It lies in regard to the characters age and personality. I wouldn't be able to photograph my MSD, Clover, naked. I just couldn't do it. She's 12 and wouldn't have any reason to be photographed naked. (In fact, I saw a picture of her that her old owner had of her in her underpants on the owners deviantart. It made me uneasy. Clover is a large busted body- but that wasn't mentioned when I bought her....)

 

Nude photography can get a LOT of bashing! (i know this because i do it all the time, and i get myself into compromising positions, situations, etc) I started at the tender age of SURPRISE SURPRISE: 16! Being nude, or having tattoos in specific body parts is not the same as SEX or SEXUAL or PORN. A lot of people seem to correlate nudity with sex. Even though there is no sexual act, penetration or even another person posing! In the dolly world, i suspect, is the same. Being a feminist, means you do what you think is BEST for your situation as a woman, that is your freedom. I dont think the same can be applied to a doll, because the whole concept of a doll,, is that it gives you the flexibility of not having rights or complains. You create a character based on your imagination. What is in yout imagination? what do you want to accomplish? And most importantly what do you wish your viewers to understand from your photographies?

Having said that, i can see why you would get a bashing from more puritan minds, but in the end it is your choice in order to create art. This types of photographies do not depict real acts, it is all a pose and i dont think u should worry about it, after all your dolly is not human, and i know you did not want to hear that, but it does give you a certain advantage ^^

 

Think of it this way. In society today, we idolize immature-looking bodies. All our models and celebrities considered beautiful tend to be hairless and sculpted. Flat tummies and a lot of the time small chests on women are also idolized. Especially the mature man's body is considered gross now. Humans were made to have a bit of a gut and yes, body hair as well.

The bodies you put on your characters reflect this part of our society. Your doll isn't underage. You make it underage. In reality, the bodies these companies sell could equally be used on an "adult" doll. If you photograph what you believe to be a minor in what would have blatant sexual connotation or slight sexual undertones, you might need to take a step back and ask "why am I doing this? Does this mean anything to me?" If not, you really don't have anything to worry about unless you continually stress the believed age of your character in such a situation.

Also, you need to think that ages 15 and 16 were considered a mature adult way back then and still in some cultures when the average lifespan was 40 to 60 years. Girls were marrying at that age and were considered old enough to handle a mature world. The only reason I see as to why that mentality has changed is the increase in lifespan and children now are considerably more sheltered. So does your character have the maturity of a 16 year old from the Victorian era or is s/he a 16 year old found in the lifestyles of the here and now.

Just throwing a few different views out.

 

I didn't read all the posts prior to this, and I certainly don't know the law in regards to human children being photographed.

I have seen a few books where the parent photographed preteen children (their own) and while it sparked debate, they were not charged with anything. On the other hand a recent museum in Europe pulled that work that featured Brooke Shields (at 11 or 12 I think) in a very provocative setting as pornographic.

I don't have an issue with pictures of anyone nude. I think that it all depends upon context and intent. If I get off on shoes and feet (people do you know) then shoe ads or pictures of nakkid feet might be "porno" to some.

Basically if it isn't illegal and it doesn't feel wrong to you run with it.

semirans

 

1. Pedophilia is nothing like having a foot fetish or being homosexual.

2. You can't 'pacify' a pedophile with anything that remotely resembles underage porn. If they get off to it it re-enforces their fantasy and only makes it less likely for them to seek help(not that you really can help them).

Geez, I really hope that it's not widely believed that pedophiles are the same as people born homosexual or with simple fetishes.

 

Food for thought: Over 2 million children are forced into child prostitution every year.
Why should any of us really care about how dolls are photographed? I mean, if you really wanted too, you could make your teddy bear sexual in pics. It's most likely been done.
Pedophilia is a disease, they are sick.

However, don't take peoples rights away. Parents should all the pics of their kids, bath time, when the kid strips off his diaper on his birthday...

 

As an artist, I know there is a big difference between nude art and a sexually explicit photograph. Nude dolls, even underage ones, can be done tastefully as a way to asthetically admire the human form. It's all a matter of intent.

 

· How do you feel about photographing your 'underage' dolls naked?
Age is just a number right? I have no problems taking photographs of Chidori naked or in sexual situations, cause I know he wouldn't mind, even though hes only 14. In Denmark its not uncommon to have sex at fourteen, so its not that big a deal here. My next doll will be ca the same age, but much more unsure of himself, so I probably wont take such photos of him for a while.
· Do images of naked underage dolls cause you any disquiet/moral dilemma?
Not at all, I might have had if it looked forced and was a real person..
· Are you concerned by sexualized images of underage dolls?
Not really..
· Or does the fact that they are, when you get right down to it, 'just dolls' mean that their (admittedly fictional) 'age' has no bearing on how they are/should be portrayed?
If its someone else's doll, then thats the case, cause I wouldnt know anything about the doll, but I would feel bad taking photographs of Chidori if I knew he wouldn't feel comfortable in that situation.