The obsession with beautiful boys?

I'm pretty sure it has to do with the anime sub-genre of bishonen ("pretty boys") ...people who like anime sometimes seem to like BJDs, and generally I think that bjd companies like making dolls that resemble "bishies" as it's the general asian esthetic. Frankly, I think it's mostly just a mixture of hobbies, that people liked and more and more seem to be following.

there is also a couple other threads about the influx in boy-boy relationships and crossdressing...I'd check those out

(I personally think it's for the same reasons)

 

That's a whole sociology study rather than a simple doll question. I don't think you're going to a definitive answer because mostly, we just don't know.

Generally I think it's because, despite what men may think, a large number of women (Especially from the same demographs as doll collectors) really, really like effeminate men and boy/boy relationships. It also doesn't hurt that because there is a lot of cross-dressing and yaoi in the doll fandom, it's socially acceptable in the doll fandom to have dolls that are one or the other (Or both). Some members of the doll fandom are also fond of Manga/Manhwa/Anime, Japanese/Korean pop/rock music and Japanese/Korean culture, all of which (Especially those aspects directed at younger females with disposable income, I.E. Potential doll owners) emphasize petite, pretty, feminine men as the ideal of beauty (As opposed to the general Western ideal of beauty, which is usually tall, shapely and female).

Then again, I'm a man, so I could be wrong ^.^

 

I can only answer for myself, here... I can't speak for everyone who has a set of pretty-boys... but what it really comes down to at Turtle House is that I'm a bishi-fancier. I like the look.

I'm not a yaoi fan particularly (The majority of my characters, male or female, are heterosexual-), and the only fellows in my crew who cross-dress do so professionally (Sparrow and Rin are the resin avatars for two kabuki actor characters... A pair of onnagata.), but I still find the more androgynous male sculpts attractive. Likewise, longer hair. It goes well with the general look and style that I've choosen to give these guys.

So, for me it's strictly a matter of personal aesthetics and taste. 'Pretty much the same reason I dress most of my crew in traditional, period costumes, or give them all specific types of eyes... It's what I like and what I think looks best. ^_^

 

Crossdressing boys. Has a pretty good discussion going on.

Personally, I don't get it. And I think my guys are handsome, not beautiful, there's a difference I think...And some people would call that close-minded or old fashioned, but honestly I don't care one little bit. My dudes are dudes. Not that I don't read stuff with girly boys in it, I just couldn't do that to my own characters.

 

personally speaking I think there's an exotic appeal to pretty boys and since alot of male dollfies tend to be a bit androgynous, it's easy to have them go one way or another.

That being said, all of mine crew are resin avatars for a story I've been working on for a few years now. Not all of them cross dress [in fact, only two in my crew do it] and the ones that do [i.e Fuan] it has almost everything to do with who they are. Fuan doesn't wear dresses because it's a trend, he wears them because it suits him and it's all apart of his personality. Hesue doesn't wear little mini skirts just because almost every mnf Shiwoo out there does, he wears them because he's ASexual, wears both male and female clothing -not to mention he looks cute in them and knows it.

as for the boy/boy thing, alot of peeps in the hobby now seem to have carried over from the yaoi fanbase so I think that's where alot of that comes from as well.

My crew aren't human - so the gender thing doesn't really apply when it comes to them personality wise [save Fuan -lol] they don't view love in terms of gender [love is love - regardless of gender is basically the whole base to the story] and most of them just happen to be in love with other boys because it's just who they fell in love with ^^

 

Androgeny in males is what I find attractive, so I guess the same goes for a doll.
Pretty girls, pretty boys, it's the same.
To me.

 

Yeah, what Nezumi said, especially with the androgyny of the molds. Many boy dolls get mistaken for girls by non-hobbyists.

I'm personally not a fan of the "girly boys". My boys are boys, they may not be human, but they are definitely boys and dress like them, [Aki is your average jeans and t-shirt kinda guy]. You wouldn't catch any of my boys in a dress unless it was a gag. Ikk may wear flowly robe things, but that's based more on the period he comes from and the style back then as opposed to him wanting to wear a skirt. He always has pants on under everything.

They are also pretty much bisexual, but again, they aren't human so gender restrictions don't apply to them like it does to humans.

A boy can be beautiful without being girly. I'll use Nezumitoo's Jenova for an example. He's got long hair, dresses in flowy things but he's ALL man and gorgeous, but no one out-seme's Jenova..lol. He's meant to be that way.

If you're looking for the psychological reasons... good luck, that's been speculated for a long time and there are many answers. It's like asking why most yaoi authors are women.

 

I had to laugh when I read this. Not with any scorn, but I just laughed.
I draw a line between gracile well groomed men, and effeminent men. Straight men who act like women are eternally frustraiting to me...
Lol, when I saw the limited edition Elfdoll K head on their website, all bloodied up and pissed off I thought "Now that's a doll I would be proud of".

In anime and manga I don't mind the occasional froofy guy though. I think part of the appeal is that there is a certain cute vunerability to a young guy in a dress, ^_^;;; Maybe it's just the girly need to want to baby everything.

I suposed if I had a boy doll that was young, the closest I would get to making him girly would be putting him in victorian schoolboy clothes. I don't think I could make an adult male doll into a girlyman unless he managed to show himself as nothing but that on his own...

LOL, now I want to go read FAKE. (I am so contradictory sometimes! )

 

Manly men or girly boys, it's all about personal preference and what each person prefers. I am a hopeless yaoi fangirl, and my one poor boy gets his share of skirted moments and such, but that doesn't mean overall, I only like girly men.

The only reason, in the beginning that he ended up with so many dresses was because I simply couldn't make him anything other than skirts. Pants are difficult. Then eventually, he got stuck with that image. the first dolls I saw were girls, and while my friend showed me all of her information, I honestly wanted a girl! Then I figured our that there were boy versions, and once I saw them I fell in love!

Because of how all the dolls themselves look, I have trouble making them not girly, and I have seen people who have pulled if off wonderfully, but the harder I try, the cuter he seems to look. The dolls are rather slim and distinctly effeminate. My next two dolls are going to be more manly than my Dai is now, but that is only because I purposefully tried to find one that I would consider a little more... fierce looking.

This time around, I hope I can get them a little more manly so my dad wont look at me as weird when he see's my boy in a maids outfit.
If you get through this far, I also have to mention that I am female, and my obsession with pretty boys I think comes from some weird part o me that is still little and never had time to play with dolls. I was the roughest, toughest tomboy out there and had no time for anything even remotely girly. If I did what would all the guys I hung out with think of me? I know it would have been easier if I had gotten a girl to play with at that rate, but I just don't think a girl doll would go with my personality at all. I am 17 and still have people who look at me in school and say, "oh, your a girl?"

Dolls are something no one can really question. you are already strange enough that you are the age you are to play with dolls, but they can't push the issue to far once the boy has on a skirt.

Sure, it's weird, but at this rate and where I come from, you are a freak if you don't love sports, it kind of kills me. I haven't been on the wrestling team since high school started and Love things like reading, D&D and my motorcycle. People love their dolls and can really do anything they want, it a way to express and just do.

...

Besides, it's good to shock people once in a while.

 

I think part of the reason the Yaoi, bishonen, visual kei, and all that fanbase is drawn to the dolls is because it's a perfect way to get exactly what you want out of that fandom. You can take two boys that you've carefully selected from the hundreds of options out there, give them your favorite hair style and color, and have them pose in all of your favorite girly dresses and sexual poses you want, and they will never ever complain. (well, some of them might throw themselves off the table in a fit of rage, but they'll be quiet about it)

 

My guys are 'beautiful' and they're so far away from being girly. Also, none of them are gay even though I love yaoi and I'm a HUGE fan of anime/Japan and all that stuff but I do admit that my liking with beautiful guys has something to do with anime

Then, why do I like my guys to be beautiful and not manly(physically speaking)? I actually like both types but i lean more towards the 'bishounen' type, 'cause I'm somehow fascinated with guys whose figure/aspect is delicate and feminine--> that's a matter of tastes actually^^

 

I have never, ever in my whol life been attracted to "macho manly men". Even when I was six I was like, "yeah but that's gross". Arguably, my Edan looks girly. But he doesn't, really, to me, at all. I guess it depends on how you define "girly" and "boyish". To me, "boyish" is all about flat planes, clean lines and hard edges, and "girly" is about roundness, softness, and a sense of gravity. (If my weird, arty answer makes any sense.)

These questions come up time and time again in the yaoi fandom, by outsiders and thoughtful insiders alike. One of the answers posed on Aestheticism.com was that alot of women like a more fluid sense of gender, and what "pretty boys" are is not quite male, and not quite female, but wholly beautiful.

As for the question of boy/boy stuff... Man, I think that question has been asked a billion times, with no definitive answer. Aestheticism said their piece on that, too, and alot of people have decided it's because there's no gender inequity in a relationship like that, no power struggle based on one being a girl and the other being a boy, and also some nonsense about how there's no one to be "jealous" of, while the role of "uke" allows some sort of identification...

Of course I think that might be true for some people, but for me, I like watching pretty people be pretty and do terrible things to each other. XD; I'm just as happy to watch girls who fit my sense of aesthetics (which is, er, rather "heroin chic" alot of the time, or kind of "new fashion model" quirky--anyone watch ANTM and remember the twins from the most recent season?) make out, really. >_<

 

Androgynous men who are effiminate without losing a cute kind of masculinity are hot.
I should know-I married a man who could have been the model for Unidoll Jace's head.

Mmmm bishonen.

I like this topic.

 

Hmmm. There is no definitive answer, of course, but here are some of my thoughts on the matter.

I am a yaoi manga and anime fan, but the roots of my fandom go further back than my discovery of the medium. As a lesbian in a patriarchal society, I find heterosexual gender politics irritating and sometimes offensive. I like love stories with well developed characters, and I find it more interesting when all of the characters are the same gender so that the individual personalities are the focus rather than the standard social roles. (I do find it just as trite when same sex couples are stuck in roles typical of the genre, but basic archetypes can't really be discarded in fiction.) Everyone could be genderless and be just as interesting as far as I'm concerned.

I also find that in patriarchal societies, while the critera differ, beautiful men are the ideal because they are both of the dominant gender and the most physically compelling. Sensuous curves are always prized, be it in perfectly proportioned muscles of a Praxiteles sculpture or the limber serpent limbs of the Wodaabe dancer in a geerewol.

There is a sense of exoticism in crossdressing simply because it is careful ornamentation to create a beautiful illusion. The awareness that it is an illusion, and that the hidden dimension is a direct contrast can add a frisson of confusion. It also allows the viewer to admire the subject in a way that is usually only reserved for socially acceptable sex objects (i.e. women).

That said, where I work I am usually surrounded by beautiful men, many of whom are crossdressers, so it seems pretty normal to me. They are still men even though they choose to emphasize lovely things about themselves that are usually assigned to feminine standards of beauty.

As for dolls, they are what we choose to make them. I know people who have dolls that are girls even though they have boy parts, and boy dolls who don't have any parts, and people who just have dolls. My Kaspar will put on a dress to get a laugh, my St. James likes the freedom of skirts for purely practical reasons, and my Sewek will get stuck in dress because I only have one mini and I want to put it in a dress. Conversely, my Delphine wears boy clothes because she's too big for girl clothes, and Anastasia wears pants because she prefers androgyny and a slim silhouette.

 

Good answer, St. James! (That's why I like topics like this--they require alot of thought, so they sometimes get nice, thoughtful answers!)

 

I like the bishounen look and I like yaoi (a lot). One of the greatest attractions of the whole BJD scene was the androgynous aspect that many male dolls have.

But for me it is a matter of balance. I like to see my doll in a dress but not dressed as a girl, to me there is a big difference. I like to play with the girlish boy look but I don't like high heels and make up with that look.

 

I don't like girl dolls and I also don't like manly men...so that only leaves feminine boys/men...I think the most of us are into Jrock/VK and Korean/Chinese pop and adore Yaoi and shounen ai, and well those guys aren't exactly manly so for us feminine looking guys and gay relationships is super normal.

And Kaoru is still a man no matter what he wears

Sabriell

 

I like pretty guys in real life. I dont know what i like about them maybe its the feminen looks or maybe its even the shock factor. I just LOVE pretty boys. I know when i get my dolls none of them are really the pretty type or at lease their character.
I know that when i get my boys i might just have to put them in a skirt once or twice i dont know why i like that either. But it must be done

TC