     | september 8, 2010
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| september 8, 2010
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Real Dolls: Love in the Age of Silicone Meghan Laslocky -- 10/17/2005  [ 1 ][ 2 ]Fast forward to the idealistic paintings and sculptures of the Renaissance and onward, when Virgin Marys that were a little too pretty caused a fair amount of hand-wringing. Several hundred years later, Russian dramatist Maxim Gorky wrote of kissing a statue of the Madonna “the wrong way” when he was a boy. Pygmalion’s desire for a meltingly soft lover points to the principal obstacle facing agalmatophiles over the centuries: materials. Stone? Outside of Ovid’s imagination, terribly hard. Wood? Same thing. Fabric? Too floppy. Wax, as Ovid hints, might have been a contender, but that too would have been less than ideal. Rubber? Close, but not quite the right feel. Imagine then for an agalmatophile the possibilities that arose with the invention of plastic. Soft, yet sturdy. Moldable to any shape. Even conveniently inflatable and deflatable, the better to hide an inanimate object of desire. Enter love dolls as we’ve known them for the past few decades: Cartoonish absurdities that are typically manufactured in China and sell online or in sex shops for $50 to $250. Sweet Spot: A Taste of Things to Come, a catalogue from Hong Kong, lists nearly 70 different models of blow-up doll, including Saucy Sondrine, whose hair, nipples, and genitalia glow in the dark; Betty Fat Girl Bouncer, to satisfy the chubby chaser; Brandi Sommer, with “super vibrating LoveClone™ lips”; and The Perfect Date, which is just 36 inches tall and is equipped with a mouth and a cup holder built into her head. There’s even a Dairy Maid doll who lactates and has short blonde braids reminiscent of Swiss Miss. Some of the blow-ups vibrate and, oddly enough, scream. But then, with their O-shaped mouths, they all look like they’re screaming. Even Miranda, a Cadillac among Sweet Spot’s blow up-dolls, “modeled from a real woman,” leaves a lot to be desired. Fine, perhaps, for the blow up fetishist -- of which there are many -- but falling far short for a discerning agalmatophile looking for true realism as well as experience of choosing every detail of his object of desire. (Strictly speaking, doll love -- minus statues -- is known as ‘pediophilia.’ An Internet search revealed that the term is frequently confused with ‘pedophilia.’ In order to prevent further confusion and stigma caused by a skimmable ‘i’, and because to doll owners, at least participating in the creation of the lifelike details of a doll is a significant part of the experience, we’ll go with agalmatophilia.) end of page 3 [ 3 ] read more ... [ 4 ][ 5 ][ 6 ][ 7 ][ 8 ][ 9 ][ 10 ][ 11 ][ 12 ][ 13 ][ 14 ][ 15 ][ 16 ][ 17 ][ 18 ][ 19 ][ 20 ][ 21 ][ 22 ][ 23 ] |
