What gender of doll do you prefer?

Maybe due to my sense that masculine means *super* masculine (ie, defined jawlines, narrow eyes), I definitely lean toward wanting dolls that are all probably considered more feminine, even for the boys.

I'm guessing the reason for this lies in my desire for my dolls to lean a bit away from realistic (I like some of the really human-like ones in photos, but not to own - they're really cool and artful, but feel uncanny valley to me in person).

Therefore, I end up liking the really cute girls that I also don't consider hyper-feminine, but other people might say they are due to their eyelashes and big eyes. And for boys, I prefer they look kind of androgynous, which may seem to still lean toward feminine in some people's perceptions (it does in my opinion).

In spite of not being super interested in magical or fairy-like dolls, I do see dolls in kind of a fairytale-like space, so maybe the rules are different for who's-who in my head there.

 

Definitely boys! However, I don't think I really like the super masculine boys as much. I like to lean more towards to cute femboy type, but occasionally, I will enjoy the nice SD boy doll with a slightly softer face than what I'd expect.

 

I also wanted to add that this touches on something that me and my SO were discussing just a couple of days ago....

Evidently different cultures can perceive the "point" of androgyny at different places on the gender-presentation spectrum, which, when I look at some of the popular boy bands from around the world, becomes pretty noticeable.

It makes me wonder if people's preference for type of doll/presentation of doll also is related to the place & culture they grew up in, and what other factors might make them lean toward specific visual cues!

 

This is super interesting! I'm very curious what the differences are.

I like masculine male dolls, and also more feminine male dolls, and cute girl dolls. In that order. XD

 

i like both, i have plenty of dolly plans. though for boys i tend to go for the pretty instead of masculine, im not a fan of square jaws and muscles upon muscles. i just like all the girls, though i tend to like the more mature sculpts, i haven't decided enough to bring a girl home yet.

 

I chose "androgynous" because even though (so far) all of my dolls are either male or don't have a gender (pet doll/tinies), the few times I've taken some of my male dolls out, people who feel the need to comment always think they are girls. I guess since they're in gender-neutral fantasy clothing and have longer hair people just assume. Most of my dolls are older as well, and I think the more stylized faces have more androgyny, perhaps?

 

Male dolls, hands down. Doesn't matter if it's the gritty manly man or more feminine looking types, I like the whole spectrum.
If it's genderless, a pet or whatever I also tend to gravitate to masculine pronouns/IDing it as a male.

Female dolls I like to see on pictures, but they just don't do anything for me when I actually own them. Which is a shame
I still have two, and want probably two more, but the guys still outnumber them by far.

 

I prefer girls ^^ I do have one boy here though...well technically two but ones a troll
I like painting dolls, so I have free range to do what I like, heavy makeup whatever. (Not to say boys can have heavy makeup) then again I've always collected female dolls.

 

I’ve personally always gravitated toward mature male sculpts, although I do have a few girl dolls. I’d love to own more genderless dolls, but for me the big issue is that outside of the Tenshi-series from Volks, there don’t seem to be any anatomically-non-sexed bodies. On top of that the Tenshi series are really hard to get a hold of, especially the bigger bodies! Doll Chateau’s unnatural proportions read ‘androgynous’ to me, but I know that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. I wish there were more options for realistic, non-sexed, larger-size doll bodies.

 

I have balance of both. I find that I don't like my doll to be alone and must have them all to be paired up. I’m romantic at heart and want them to be paired.

 

Looking at my collection, it would appear I prefer male dolls—I have 12 dolls total, 6 boys, 5 girls and one gender fluid.

But I like all of my girls better than all of my boys.

 

I went for "other" because, although I have way more girl dolls than boy dolls, it's not because I prefer girls over boys, it's because I prefer sewing girl clothes to sewing boy clothes AND it's also so much easier to find good girl clothes to buy than it is tio fidn good boy clothes.

If there was more of a choice of decent boy clothes to buy, I'd probably have roughly equal numbers of boys an girls.

Teddy

 

I’m so into reading these replies, because I love ONLY female dolls, and never could fathom how one could even like a male doll... I like female dolls because let’s face it. Bright makeup, beautiful bodies, colorful variation of clothing, endless hairstyles, and countless combinations of all these things.... the possibilities are as numerous as grains of sand on a beach.... but I have seen one or two male dolls that were so nicely done I considered it... but they would literally have to be near GIVEN away for me to consider spending any sort of $$$ on them...

 

I find myself drawn, with bjds, rather unexpectedly towards androgynous or hyper-masculine dolls. This kind of surprised me, as most of my non-bjd dolls are big-eyed females. None of my dolls are dressed in a hyper-femenine manner, but they're all clearly female. I think I like the realism in masculine sculpts (unpopular opinion, but I don't like the anime look for my dolls- especially the 'anime girl' look), and in many androgynous sculpts, I see a type of illustration-like creepiness (doll chateau's sculpts, for example [like someone else said, even their sexed body sculpts read more androgynously to me due to the creepy/beautiful exaggerations]) that I love as a horror fan- I see that less with gendered sculpts.

 

I didn't realize that not being into the anime sculpts was an unpopular opinion! But I guess I do see a lot of them out there.... I do like anime figurines.

For some reason, I just always kind of felt like the anime aesthetic doesn't quite translate to BJDs, but I can't really explain why. I'd be curious to hear if you want to share any detail on your opinion further.

 

I think I have preference for female dollies, though I have a few male dolls as well (and few as well coming in future). Maybe because I prefer feminine beauty in general and be more picky when it comes to male dolls.

 

Me either - I do know some people who have the odd anime sculpt among their BJDs but they're definitely in a minority. I have to say that they don't appeal to me at all. I have a couple that stray a little more toward the anime aesthetic in that they have bigger eyes and smaller noses, but they're closer to slightly stylised than to actual anime style.

Teddy

 

yeah, I don't know exactly haha. I've never watched anime, the art style just isn't my thing (though I still appreciate it!)-- I've always loved pen-ink style gothic horror animation or illustration, which usually features exaggerated lankiness and sharpness. Both anime and gothic horror styles have characters with exaggerated eye size, but I feel like anime exaggerates eye shape in favor of roundness (for female characters, mostly) and just very geometric shapes in general, while gothic art exaggerates eye shape in favor of distortion or added sharpness and simplified depth with more 'organic' shapes. and while gothic art features exaggerated either lankiness and sharpness or extremely short and wide statures, anime features exaggeratedly curvy softness for the bodies of their female characters and exaggerated 'thin yet built' figures for males. it walks a line between cartoony and realistic that just doesn't appeal to me, though I totally see why others love it. to sum it up, anime pushes realism to an exaggerated idea of ideal beauty and perfection, while gothic art pushes the barest sense of realism to whatever extreme it can- to make a caricature of beauty or creepiness.

just to make things more clear, I count both of these dolls as having an 'anime' aesthetic-- I don't think many other people would, though.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0582/0997/products/DSC089172.jpg?v=1603796619 and https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f5/ce/28/f5ce287d5cbe0445f7e67d6fff58350f.jpg