So, there’s this doll… phenomenon. Asian Ball-Jointed Dolls, or BJD, are posable, customizable, collectible, and completely gorgeous.
I have a friend who collects them and takes beautiful photos to illustrate stories and poems. They aren’t cheap but each one takes on a character of its own.
I must admit, I am totally enchanted. There’s just one problem.
There are no fat dolls.
Granted, the doll bodies are all coming from Asia and are, technically, modeled after young adults and children. But 13-year-olds rarely have the boobs I’ve seen on some of these dolls, zomg.
No fat dolls.
There was a recent conversation over on etsy because a doll maker (plush dolls) was disturbed by a request – a parent had asked if she could make a doll with a scar on it. The doll maker couldn’t understand why anyone would want such a thing and refused the request. Other members of the forums posited that perhaps the child who would receive the doll had a similar scar. Because having a doll that looks like you can help normalize the things that make a child different from his or her peers.
That’s why I stopped looking at mainstream fashion magazines – I never saw any bodies like mine and it had an effect on me that was subtle and pernicious.
Now I’m a grown-up. Well, mostly. *grin* In fact, I’ll be 30 this upcoming Sunday. But it’s still important to me to see representations of bodies that are like mine in some way. This helps normalize my body.
The world of BJD is one of fantasy, so maybe no one has wanted to be fat in that fantasy. In that fantasy, everyone is beautiful within very strict confines. There is some amazing creativity and amazing talent within the BJD community, but all of the dolls fall into what I would consider mainstream attractiveness.
There’s nothing wrong with having a conventionally beautiful doll. But I want a fat doll. A fat AND beautiful doll that I can dress and make things for and use to participate in the fantasy. Because fat is not antithetical to fantasy.
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…that’s why I stopped looking at mainstream fashion magazines – I never saw any bodies like mine and it had an effect on me that was subtle and pernicious
Oh yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. I gave them up when I realised they were actively ignoring women of my size and always had.
And what kind of a mean-spirited dollmaker would refuse to make something that would help a scarred child feel better about herself? Couldn’t bear to create something that wasn’t “perfect” I suppose.
I don’t know that she was genuinely mean-spirited – just really unthinking. My guess is that she has never dealt with a scarred child and so she only has her idea of scars=painful and bad to fall back on. It functions, on a smaller scale, I think, a lot like privilege.
I hope the child wound up with a doll with a scar. I had a doll with giant pigtails and glasses and she was an unending source of comfort to miniature me for years.
You might want to check out Robert Tonner’s dolls. He makes some in a bigger size, like he has a doll of Emme, the model.
Granted, none of his “plus-size” dolls are what I’d call fat, but they’re thicker and more realistic looking than some.
“Because fat is not antithetical to fantasy.
”
This made me think about a comment I saw on amazon concerning a series of romance novels and what readers would like to see in upcoming installments.
Several people mentioned wanting ‘curvy’ (euphemism for ‘plus size’ or whatever) heroines — a woman that didn’t fit the typical “slender” archetype.
While I agreed, I felt a little odd for doing so — because the archetype is built upon the supposition that part of the romantic fantasy of the reader IS to be thin.
(*the slippery slope, of course is that the reader also wants to be often white, in her twenties, and in sometimes mysogniistic settings/times.etc, but I won’t go into that. Suffice to say that Sherrilyn Kenyon blew my mind when she actually had a plus size heroine.)
I’m pretty sure Sherrilyn Kenyon is plus size herself. I shelved her new hardcover at the store the other day. It had a big author picture of her on the back (that’s when you’ve made it big in genre fiction, when they publish your stuff in hardcover first and give you an author photo)
Anyway, she was wearing a corset and she had the fat girl angle thing going, but she’s at least in the inbetweenie sizes, I would guess.
It was a great picture if you like that romantic goth dressed all in black kind of thing.
But you know where you almost never see fat girls? My favorite genre- science fiction. Unless you’ve got an author makin some kind of statement about fat. No girls who just are and then they get on with fixing the hyperdrive engine.
Yee! BJD! I’m not a complete addict (some people really are a bit *too* into their dolls) but I just recently got a plastic BJD. The great thing about them is the almost infinite amount of customization that can be done. I know there are people who sculpt ears, horns, tails, new faces for their dolls, so I suppose if you had the right skill set, it wouldn’t be all that hard to plump your doll up a bit. The only real issue you would face after that, funnily enough, is that none of the clothes would fit her XP
Damn, now I want an Emme doll!
I have a pattern for a toddler doll that is chubby. I have 3 or 4 different heights for her (there’s an adaptation for a boy, and both are anatomically correct). It’s a soft-sculpture pattern and I got it (and several others) when I tried starting a doll business. But it’s very hard to sell dolls that have over 80 hours of work tied up in them, so I made a couple for friends’ daughters and the patterns have been sitting on my bookshelf for the last 9 years now. I just didn’t have the time to devote to them once I started working full time.
Sherrilyn Kenyon is plus-sized (not sure how much so) and her heroine in Night Play is 5′ 6″ and a size 18. Awesome book, but I really like that particular genre of romance (vampires and werewolves, oh my!).
I’m also having a big birthday this weekend (Saturday), but I’m saying goodbye to my 30’s instead of my 20’s. Gawd. Happy Birthday to you, though – the most enthusiasm I can muster for mine is, “Well hell, at least I’m not 50.”
Hm, may I totally disagree with you on the “completely gorgeous” part? The pictures I found on the dolls reminded me of manga, the comic strips originating from Japan. Typical of this: ridiculously thin bodies with big boobs, almost non-existing waist and endless legs (so your basic ad for a cosmetic surgeon) and a child’s – if not to say a baby’s – head on top: very thin nose, tiny ears & mouth & chin and *huge* eyes. (If I’m correct there’s also a porn side to manga, the idea of that I find rather scary.) Remember Betty Boop? Same thing (Betty Boop had the childish whore thing as an “extra”). I think these images – Boop, comics and dolls – are contributing to the standard non-real beauty myth right now! But maybe I’m just being paranoid.
As a BJD collector, the ‘no fat chicks’ thing has been driving me nuts – but sadly, I’m not remotely surprised by it. Most BJDs are pale, slender, and caucasian. (Volks, I am looking at you.) There are asian-looking BJDs, but I’d actually say that they’re a minority compared to the caucasian-looking ones. The paleness is usually excused by the fact that making darker resin is harder than making lighter resin (or something; I can’t remember the technical details); but even so, even the tanned dolls that exist just look like caucasians with a sun tan. The only exceptions I can think of are Ipehouse Cocori and Aaron.
I love BJDs, but the ’stepford cuckoos’ thing is icky.
Technically, the only thing against making a fat doll is that it would make them heavier to handle (although if they can make a 70cm doll, I don’t see why that should be too much of a problem), and that they wouldn’t be able to fit standard dollfie-sized clothing. (One of the reasons why I think dollfie bodies are so generic is so that they can wear eachothers’ clothes easily.)
I collect Blythe dolls. I love BJD’s as well as Momoko and Tiny Betsy McCall, but Blythe is where my heart is. If you’ve never heard of them, they stand about the same height as a Barbie doll, but with a humongous head, with eyes that rotate and change colour and position at the pull of a cord. Her body is about the same size and development as an old Skipper (Barbie’s little sister), with small A cup breasts and narrow hips.
I’ve thought a lot about my feelings around dolls and my body image. I loved my Barbie dolls growing up, and continued collecting them into my late teens and early twenties.
When I was a child I had precocious puberty, starting to menstruate at the age of 7 and being a C cup by age 8. I stood 5′5″ and wore UK size 12 clothes. Barbie was a doll I was starting to look like and gave me an outlet to play around with my own self image.
My struggles with my own body images and fat acceptance have been mirrored in my attituded toward Barbie. I developed PCOS when I was around age 11, due to my Endocrine system being very screwed up. Only then did I start to develop the fat body I am now. Suddenly Barbie wasn’t something I could identify with anymore and became a symbol of someone I should try to look like like.
I’d had Bulimia beginning around the time my periods started and my body became an adults. I’d also been very badly assulted, sometimes sexually, and bullied from around the time my periods started. These other voices and opinions on my apperance and existance had becamecompletely internalised. I used these little mini me’s, whom I no longer resembled but felt I ought to resemble, to hate and castigate myself even more.
I often wonder what my inner thoughts and motivations are for wanting to collect dolls is now. Did part of me never grow up (whatever that means)? Did I become stuck and fixated upon a certain ideal of what it is to be a woman, that I couldn’t fulfill, but which I can keep alive in my collection? Was it that I am seeking to prolong my very short childhood? All I come up with is something about certain dolls touches me, Blythe being the most long lasting so far as an adult.
I think much of that love of dolls, of playing dress up and being able to practice my sewing, knitting, crochet and craft skills, is in the ability to see yourself in them. The child wanting a doll with a scar is able to play out her worries and situations with the doll. It becomes more than a mere assemblage of material and becomes a confidant and object to conjure with.
I know my dolls are that, in part, to me as an adult. What’s your take on your motivations for wanting one?
Liz A.
Christine – the way I understand it, life just continues to get better because we have more practice at it. Some of the most amazing people I know are in their 50s so I am not dreading my 40s, when they get here, or my 80s for that matter. *grin*
Dutchy, you can totally disagree. *grin* I’ve actually thought a lot about the ick-factor and I think my current opinions are colored by the particular doll circles in which I am moving – I browse and participate in the forums at Den of Angels and the dolls there are either children doing childrenish things or very much portrayed as adults.
There are porn sides to just about anything. Not all manga is porn or related to porn. And, honestly, I like a lot of porn so its existence doesn’t bother me as a general rule. Hell, there are porn sides to “traditional” animation styles, too.
SW – The dolls I’m seeing on Den of Angels, I think most people are doing a lot of custom body work because there are several different races being represented (and I don’t just mean elves *grin*). There IS most definitely a shortage of black dolls and I wonder if part of that is because, at the moment, this seems to be a very white and Asian hobby. So no one is thinking about it.
I would LOVE to see more variety in body types and, yeah, a fat doll would be heavier but I think it would be totally doable. I’ve been looking at the Obitsu vinyl dolls, but if I wind up with a resin body, I may just have to mod it with some sculpey. The clothing thing doesn’t really bother me – the biggest attraction is making the clothes anyway!
My motivations for wanting one…. A friend of mine on livejournal got into BJDs a while ago and she posts the most exquistie photo stories. I love the idea of being able to use these dolls to tell stories!
I learned how to sew as a young child through making doll clothes and being able to do that again is also a huge draw. I spend a lot of my time in business casual wear when I’d MUCH rather be wearing some sort of extravagant costume. And it’s just so much easier to make an outfit for a 60cm doll than it is for a 5′3″ person!
Okay, these aren’t BJD dolls, but they’re too cute not to share: http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g52/Hairspray-Movie-Musical/PlayAlong_Hairspray_Dolls_Group-1.jpg
I’ve made a couple of dolls, one for an adult, one for a child, both of which had scars to match the owners; it didn’t seem like a big deal to me.
I’ve been collecting Barbies as an adult, because they’re finally producing dolls that look like me! Talk about seeing no-one who looks like you; Mattel made African-American (and African) and Asian dolls before they made ones that look like me. I’m a black-haired person of pallor, and I guess there wasn’t a lot of call for them (except from black-haired, pallid little girls).
And Christine, thank you; I DID just turn 50. Now it feels more special than ever.
BuffPuff just emailed me this. I want the entire set!
I found full figured dolls for you..
http://www.bbdolls.com/dawn.html
Hi, this is very late, I just wanted to point out that while I’m not underepresented in terms of weight in the BJD market, I’m UN-represented in terms of skin color and ethnic features. I’ve seen 2 dolls that were darker than the pathetic “tan” Asian dollmakers term, and they were both Black dolls with odd features. (Cocoro and Aaron). The day I see mocha skin and a semitic nose on a BJD I will be overjoyed.
There were some dolls being made by a company called Big Beautiful Dolls a few years ago. You might check them out. I got the “Hairspray” Edna doll, and since she looks like John Travolta she’s no babe but she’s fun. I’m having a ball figuring out new clothes for her.
Did you win NANO yet?