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Real Dolls: Love in the Age of Silicone Meghan Laslocky -- 10/17/2005  [ 1 ][ 2 ][ 3 ][ 4 ][ 5 ][ 6 ][ 7 ][ 8 ][ 9 ][ 10 ][ 11 ]But log some time in Hello Dolly, and a handful of dolls transcend the monotony of doll-as-hooker motif. Some dolls, it becomes clear, aren’t just sex objects. They’re the subjects of fiction from sci-fi to surrealism. Chiaki, for example, is a new doll whose owner, Darkland, posts comic-book style pictures of her in a bikini. She goes for a swim against a surreal tropical beachscape borrowed from a computer game. “Hang on to my glasses for a bit, would you,” she asks the viewer, her wire frame spectacles all but popping out from the screen. “Art, pure art,” declares one member. Another pronounces that Darkland has launched a whole new genre in doll photography. Or follow the trail of Lily, a doll who could be mistaken for a Real Doll Elizabeth Taylor. Lily watches ‘South Park,’ sits in front of a crackling Christmas fire with a mug of eggnog, and cuddles under an electric blanket with a cat named Pennie. (Cats seem to love Real Dolls.) The man behind the doll goes by PB Shelley, in real life Rob McKay. He designed her to look like the heroine of a surrealist novel he’s working on, although he laments that Doll Lily’s breasts are a little bigger than he had envisioned for Heroine Lily. “She’s been company without distracting me,” he told me, adding that he’s been taking a break from the drama of relationships since his last one ended in 2001. McKay says he hardly ever uses Lily in the sexual sense. “I don’t like seeing her in bed with her legs apart while I write,” he says. “[Dolls] take on a human persona, and you don’t want to hurt them. It’s not like dinging a car.” The Velveteen Rabbit of Real Dolls is Rebecca – long lashed, contemplative Rebecca, five years of loving maturing her in photographs. She’s topless in afternoon light, then politely dressed in a cardigan and skirt. In a head shot, a tiara sparkles in her ash-blonde hair. Rarely do doll owners show their faces in Hello Dolly photographs, but Everhard, Rebecca’s 49-year-old British owner, sometimes makes an appearance, as when he kneels in a plaid shirt before her, gazing at her affectionately while lacing up her ice skates. The caption reads: “Hurry up, Everhard, the other girls are already out on the rink. I don’t want to be last again.” It is not unusual for one Real Doll to spawn more, as Ginger Brooke did for Griggs and Rebecca has for Everhard. While Rebecca is old in doll years – to the point where her nipple paint has long since worn off and her freckles have needed touchups -- to Everhard, Rebecca is young, the 18-year-old daughter of his second doll, Caroline, who he imagines as about 34. In one photograph, they sit together, both in hats, dressed as though for an English wedding and enjoying flutes of sparking water garnished with lemon. [The caption reads, “What are you having, Everhard? Can we fix you a large screwdriver?” (Girlie laughter). “Oh, nothing for me, thanks. Too early in the day. “(I’ll be having two pink ladies later…).] While these mother-daughter scenarios read as mundane and even poignant, others of Everhard’s photographic vignettes are peculiar: When did you last see a naked 18 year old girl straddling her naked mother in a pillow fight? end of page 12 [ 12 ] read more ... [ 13 ][ 14 ][ 15 ][ 16 ][ 17 ][ 18 ][ 19 ][ 20 ][ 21 ][ 22 ][ 23 ] |
