Fake baby love

When I was about five years old I really, really wanted a Barbie for Christmas so when I saw Father Christmas putting loading up the boot of his car out the back of the church a few doors down from my grandparents house I shyly took up the opportunity to ask him directly if I could have one. 

As a kid who was always a bit terrified of the "sit on Santa's knee and have your photo taken" scenario this seemed like a good way of getting my message across without the anxiety usually associated with the process. 

If only I knew where Santa did his grocery shopping, perhaps I could "engineer" chance encounters so every festive season could be this civilised.

As it turned out I got a Daisy doll instead.  Which if you know your children's fashion dolls of days gone by, you'll realise she was a smaller, cheaper version of Barbie.  She was okay but was disappointing in that her boobs were actually in proportion to the rest of her body and she had catastrophically bad hair.

It was stitched on in only three places; down the middle of her head, and with a tuft behind each ear. Depending on how you "styled" her she sometimes looked like she had hairy blonde gills and a massive undercut.  Basically she looked punk, which is not something I'd have an objection to these days but as a little girl that wasn't really my aesthetic. 

Later on my interest in dolls expressed itself as an obssession with Kenner Star Wars figures, in fact, many persistent hours were spent one year trying to track down a Lando Calrissian and I grew more and more frustrated on the phone when toy store staff didn't know which one that was straight away. 

By the fourth time you've said "he's black and he wears a cape" you do start to feel a little ridiculous. But the point is that I'm not immune to the allure of small, fake humans that you play with. I am down with dolls.  Are you sensing that there's a "but" coming?  Oh, you know me so well...

That doesn't mean that I have any clue as to what is going on with people who collect realistic looking fake babies.  For those you who've never seen these before, they are dolls that are painted to look like real babies and weighted so that when you hold them they feel real.  You can even get ones that have a heartbeat.  And just like real babies some of them are ugly.  They really, really freak me out.

I think that any doll that tries too closely to approximate the human form is inherently creepy.  Every single time I go to the museum any diorama that features a human figure leaves me unsettled and avoiding eye contact.  Which maybe explains why I'm confused by but not weirded out by the orangutan, or the werewolf babies.

I've been trying to pinpoint what it is about these strange, fake babies that bothers me so much.  Part of it is the realism of them, part of it is the strange relationship that the owners seem to have with them. 

Owners have admitted that they talk and coo at their "babies" and carry them around as if they were real...like that log lady from Twin Peaks.  Which, if it were a cat or some other animal, I would find a bit funny but it wouldn't make me cringe with my entire body.  Also, children's baby dolls that wee and cry etc. don't give me the jeebies either because they don't look that real.  And as I say, I don't have an issue with an adult playing with toys.  I think it's just the spooky combination of all of these at the same time that makes it a perfect storm of freakiness.

What's your take on eerily realistic babies and the women who collect them?  Harmless hobby or unsettling obsession?  Do you find them freaky too, and if so why?

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