Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
I wrote several weeks back of the strange goings-on at RealDoll.com. Strange, that is, if the notion of paying 6000 smackers for a Stepford Wife who doesn't even make dinner is strange to you. I fear I barely scratched the surface.
RealDoll, you see, is not just a sex toy. Oh my no. RealDoll is a community.
If you were of a cynical turn of mind, you might assume that the reason one would invest several thousand dollars in a polyurethane playmate is lack of community. And there you would be wrong. After all, as RealDoll assures us, its clients are more than well-heeled perverts, they are art collectors and futurists. And the dolls are more than sex toys. They are water resistant, stain resistant ("nothing sticks to silicone flesh") and heat resistant, with the ability to withstand temperatures over 300 degrees. So when you find yourself in Hell, the doll will make a lovely companion. The "flesh" is designed to be elastic, and can be stretched over 300%. This may seem impressive, but it's nothing compared to some of the guys I saw down at IML last year. To illustrate the elasticity of the flesh, the RealDoll Studio page bears an animated gif of a pair of man's hands kneading and kneading and kneading and KNEADING a set of RealBreasts. It is positively hypnotic. That is, until you notice the coarseness of the hands and the homemade tattoo on the webbing between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand. Then it looks like something out of Cape Fear. The effect is heightened by the fact that the scene is watched over by a Doll modeled on Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Comes complete with boiled bunny! This is not something I want in my house, even in the safety of its own sarcophagus.
The one sponsor of the RealDoll site (as a commercial site it doesn't really require sponsorship, but there you have it) is Renee's Realdolls, Rubber, & Robots, a site that offers XXX Pictures, Videos, and Stories of all of the above. A visit to the site reveals a slideshow of images of men posing with RealDolls, women posing with RealDolls, and RealDolls posing with RealDolls. Although no faces are visible, some of the RealDolls are interacting with real penises, which is more than a little disconcerting. Membership to the site is $10/month, and although it is regularly updated with more than 10,000 pics, HUNDREDS of clips and live video! featuring DOZENS of Dolls in Action for you, I'm not forking it over.
Not that it's necessary. RealDoll has a links page, with connections to about a dozen sites selling lingerie, sex toys and THE best in fetish gear. Among the links is CharlieJoanne, the home of RealDoll Charlie Joanne and her RealDoll friends Taffy and Zoe.
This is where things start to get creepy.
A visit to CharlieJoanne lands you on the News page, where you receive a first glimpse of the photo shoots that have been added to the site over the past month. The shoots revolve around Charlie Joanne, or CJ, as she likes to be called, and Charlie Luanne, Vianne and Roxanne, who are all Charlie Joanne in different wigs. It's a little Sybilesque. Charlie's latest incarnation is as her own mother, Mrs. J, or MJ. Also in the crowd are Taffeta Charlene, aka Taffy, and Zoe Jae. Taffy and Zoe seem to be different Dolls from CJ and each other. The Dolls are all featured posed provocatively in a series of photo shoots with names like Spring Fling, Try It Once and Chez Doll. Excerpts from the shoots are available for free at Taffy's Doll Doll Club, but for the hardcore, unexpurgated shots you need to subscribe to CharlieJoanne. On one hand, I can see the fetish value of these dolls, and on the other, I can appreciate pornography as much as the next guy. But not only can I not see the attraction of looking at pictures of mannequins posed in sexual positions, no matter how well-built those mannequins are, I can't imagine a world in which I would pay for the privilege.
Which puts me in the distinct minority in the RealDoll world. CJ links to her friends, family and admirers, with names such as Sidore (of Kitten with a Whip!), Anjie (of The Synthetiks) and of course, Darcy Fabricca. Each of these sites links to others, and most are chock full of photos. These are not photos of people having sex with their Dolls, as at Renee's Realdolls, but Dolls alone, Dolls with other Dolls, and some Dolls going about their daily existence: cutting their hair, dressing up or hanging in the closet. It all culminates at CoverDoll, the online magazine for RealDolls and their fanciers. CoverDoll has recently gone private, after the URL was posted on a public forum, causing the site's bandwidth to exceed its owners' ability to pay.
Certainly the ultimate site is Slade's World. Slade is the Dr. Frankenstein of RealDolls. Slade worked on developing the first male RealDoll, and has posted on his site some rather horrific images of a dismembered MaleDoll suspended on his framework. Slade is now an accomplished Doll surgeon. He collects Dolls that have gone through the mill and returns them to the best condition he can. If you want to see shots of Dolls with their joints laid bare or faces torn off, this is the place for it. He writes casually of his work, such as "Fixed jaw hinges and neck bolts" or "She did have some sagging of her breasts and one knee that came unscrewed." Then he goes to work, and like a 19th century physician, records all of his operations for the edification of his followers. "Her skull broke at the bottom tab where the bolt attaches to the neck. Tawny's repair will be of great help for those people who have the same neck problem." Occasionally, even Slade will let his pride show, as when he says of one Doll, "She had major neck damage and I had to do extensive head work. A lot of patching and fixing seams but all in all she came out looking Great!" Even though you know these are just Dolls, seeing their flesh pulled away from their skulls or their leg joints cut clean through is a bit unnerving.
Slade has an extensive selection of Dolls in tableaux vivant throughout his site. The Dolls are clustered in such sections as The Den, The Library and The Living Room, making the site part fetish, part Clue. He has devoted an entire page to the adventures of his MaleDoll, Adam, "and his penis in action with some of the other female dolls I have had in the house." And yes, he has plenty of female dolls in the house. He gets right to the point when he writes, "you have no idea how hard it is to move two hundred and fifty pounds of sticky silicone around to get these kind of pictures." But whereas he says the photos "are intended for just that, fun," there are enough folks involved in this sort of RealDoll pornography that one must wonder if one is seeing a nascent fetish a-borning.
[Update: Slade's new site is www.realdolldoctor.com. The site is organized according to doll type and surgery type. Gone are The Den, The Library and The Living Room. Although Slade makes promises on the "Misc. Dolls" page, there are no shots of the MaleDoll in creation, nor of Adam. Still, there are plenty of shots of his other dolls, and the surgery pix are larger and better organized, and that's what we're all here for anyway.]
******************************
After spending all this time at the RealDoll site, I had occasion to do some shopping at the American Girl store. It scared me.
Like the RealDolls, the American Girl dolls come in a variety of skin tones, eye colors and hair shades. The basic brand features dolls from a series of times and places, such as Addy, the little black girl (and Oprah favorite) who escapes from slavery with her mother in 1864, or Molly, the pigtailed World War II era lesbian. New additions to the line include non-American Girls, such as French Cécile, Indian Neela and Cantonese Spring Pearl. The American Girls are big and lifelike and come with a plethora of clothes and accessories; the non-American Girls are 9 inches tall and come on a stand with your choice of display case or shelf.
Then there's the American Girl Today. These GirlDolls are 18 inches tall and are meant to mimic their owner's appearance. Thus, you have your choice of light skin, medium skin, dark skin; blue eyes, green eyes, light brown eyes, dark brown eyes; blond hair, light brown hair, dark brown hair, black hair or textured black hair. At this point there are 21 dolls to choose from, and looking at them spread out across the page like a palette, I was forcibly reminded of the collection of heads and bodies at RealDoll. Do I want sassy Stephanie or sultry Amanda? Exotic Mai or sophisticated Celine? Passionate Neela or inscrutable Spring Pearl? Light skin, curly honey-blond hair, hazel eyes or dark skin, textured black hair, light brown eyes? After a while, it all blends together. Now, both the American Girls and RealDolls have display stands available.
The difference is, RealDolls don't come with a book telling their story. That's for their Master to decide.
RealDoll, you see, is not just a sex toy. Oh my no. RealDoll is a community.
If you were of a cynical turn of mind, you might assume that the reason one would invest several thousand dollars in a polyurethane playmate is lack of community. And there you would be wrong. After all, as RealDoll assures us, its clients are more than well-heeled perverts, they are art collectors and futurists. And the dolls are more than sex toys. They are water resistant, stain resistant ("nothing sticks to silicone flesh") and heat resistant, with the ability to withstand temperatures over 300 degrees. So when you find yourself in Hell, the doll will make a lovely companion. The "flesh" is designed to be elastic, and can be stretched over 300%. This may seem impressive, but it's nothing compared to some of the guys I saw down at IML last year. To illustrate the elasticity of the flesh, the RealDoll Studio page bears an animated gif of a pair of man's hands kneading and kneading and kneading and KNEADING a set of RealBreasts. It is positively hypnotic. That is, until you notice the coarseness of the hands and the homemade tattoo on the webbing between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand. Then it looks like something out of Cape Fear. The effect is heightened by the fact that the scene is watched over by a Doll modeled on Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Comes complete with boiled bunny! This is not something I want in my house, even in the safety of its own sarcophagus.
The one sponsor of the RealDoll site (as a commercial site it doesn't really require sponsorship, but there you have it) is Renee's Realdolls, Rubber, & Robots, a site that offers XXX Pictures, Videos, and Stories of all of the above. A visit to the site reveals a slideshow of images of men posing with RealDolls, women posing with RealDolls, and RealDolls posing with RealDolls. Although no faces are visible, some of the RealDolls are interacting with real penises, which is more than a little disconcerting. Membership to the site is $10/month, and although it is regularly updated with more than 10,000 pics, HUNDREDS of clips and live video! featuring DOZENS of Dolls in Action for you, I'm not forking it over.
Not that it's necessary. RealDoll has a links page, with connections to about a dozen sites selling lingerie, sex toys and THE best in fetish gear. Among the links is CharlieJoanne, the home of RealDoll Charlie Joanne and her RealDoll friends Taffy and Zoe.
This is where things start to get creepy.
A visit to CharlieJoanne lands you on the News page, where you receive a first glimpse of the photo shoots that have been added to the site over the past month. The shoots revolve around Charlie Joanne, or CJ, as she likes to be called, and Charlie Luanne, Vianne and Roxanne, who are all Charlie Joanne in different wigs. It's a little Sybilesque. Charlie's latest incarnation is as her own mother, Mrs. J, or MJ. Also in the crowd are Taffeta Charlene, aka Taffy, and Zoe Jae. Taffy and Zoe seem to be different Dolls from CJ and each other. The Dolls are all featured posed provocatively in a series of photo shoots with names like Spring Fling, Try It Once and Chez Doll. Excerpts from the shoots are available for free at Taffy's Doll Doll Club, but for the hardcore, unexpurgated shots you need to subscribe to CharlieJoanne. On one hand, I can see the fetish value of these dolls, and on the other, I can appreciate pornography as much as the next guy. But not only can I not see the attraction of looking at pictures of mannequins posed in sexual positions, no matter how well-built those mannequins are, I can't imagine a world in which I would pay for the privilege.
Which puts me in the distinct minority in the RealDoll world. CJ links to her friends, family and admirers, with names such as Sidore (of Kitten with a Whip!), Anjie (of The Synthetiks) and of course, Darcy Fabricca. Each of these sites links to others, and most are chock full of photos. These are not photos of people having sex with their Dolls, as at Renee's Realdolls, but Dolls alone, Dolls with other Dolls, and some Dolls going about their daily existence: cutting their hair, dressing up or hanging in the closet. It all culminates at CoverDoll, the online magazine for RealDolls and their fanciers. CoverDoll has recently gone private, after the URL was posted on a public forum, causing the site's bandwidth to exceed its owners' ability to pay.
Certainly the ultimate site is Slade's World. Slade is the Dr. Frankenstein of RealDolls. Slade worked on developing the first male RealDoll, and has posted on his site some rather horrific images of a dismembered MaleDoll suspended on his framework. Slade is now an accomplished Doll surgeon. He collects Dolls that have gone through the mill and returns them to the best condition he can. If you want to see shots of Dolls with their joints laid bare or faces torn off, this is the place for it. He writes casually of his work, such as "Fixed jaw hinges and neck bolts" or "She did have some sagging of her breasts and one knee that came unscrewed." Then he goes to work, and like a 19th century physician, records all of his operations for the edification of his followers. "Her skull broke at the bottom tab where the bolt attaches to the neck. Tawny's repair will be of great help for those people who have the same neck problem." Occasionally, even Slade will let his pride show, as when he says of one Doll, "She had major neck damage and I had to do extensive head work. A lot of patching and fixing seams but all in all she came out looking Great!" Even though you know these are just Dolls, seeing their flesh pulled away from their skulls or their leg joints cut clean through is a bit unnerving.
Slade has an extensive selection of Dolls in tableaux vivant throughout his site. The Dolls are clustered in such sections as The Den, The Library and The Living Room, making the site part fetish, part Clue. He has devoted an entire page to the adventures of his MaleDoll, Adam, "and his penis in action with some of the other female dolls I have had in the house." And yes, he has plenty of female dolls in the house. He gets right to the point when he writes, "you have no idea how hard it is to move two hundred and fifty pounds of sticky silicone around to get these kind of pictures." But whereas he says the photos "are intended for just that, fun," there are enough folks involved in this sort of RealDoll pornography that one must wonder if one is seeing a nascent fetish a-borning.
[Update: Slade's new site is www.realdolldoctor.com. The site is organized according to doll type and surgery type. Gone are The Den, The Library and The Living Room. Although Slade makes promises on the "Misc. Dolls" page, there are no shots of the MaleDoll in creation, nor of Adam. Still, there are plenty of shots of his other dolls, and the surgery pix are larger and better organized, and that's what we're all here for anyway.]
******************************
After spending all this time at the RealDoll site, I had occasion to do some shopping at the American Girl store. It scared me.
Like the RealDolls, the American Girl dolls come in a variety of skin tones, eye colors and hair shades. The basic brand features dolls from a series of times and places, such as Addy, the little black girl (and Oprah favorite) who escapes from slavery with her mother in 1864, or Molly, the pigtailed World War II era lesbian. New additions to the line include non-American Girls, such as French Cécile, Indian Neela and Cantonese Spring Pearl. The American Girls are big and lifelike and come with a plethora of clothes and accessories; the non-American Girls are 9 inches tall and come on a stand with your choice of display case or shelf.
Then there's the American Girl Today. These GirlDolls are 18 inches tall and are meant to mimic their owner's appearance. Thus, you have your choice of light skin, medium skin, dark skin; blue eyes, green eyes, light brown eyes, dark brown eyes; blond hair, light brown hair, dark brown hair, black hair or textured black hair. At this point there are 21 dolls to choose from, and looking at them spread out across the page like a palette, I was forcibly reminded of the collection of heads and bodies at RealDoll. Do I want sassy Stephanie or sultry Amanda? Exotic Mai or sophisticated Celine? Passionate Neela or inscrutable Spring Pearl? Light skin, curly honey-blond hair, hazel eyes or dark skin, textured black hair, light brown eyes? After a while, it all blends together. Now, both the American Girls and RealDolls have display stands available.
The difference is, RealDolls don't come with a book telling their story. That's for their Master to decide.
posted by John Bliss at
11:15 AM
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