A post on dolls? Hey, there’s a pandemic out there, and dolls can’t catch it! No, I’m not playing with dolls—yet–but I became utterly fascinated when gathering these images. I discovered that dolls are sculptures-with-attitude, made by humans-with-attitude! Oh, sure, some are boringly pretty. And cute? Oh, yeah, but sometimes in the most unexpected ways (werewolf babies anyone?). There are funny, provocative and creepy dolls, and dolls you can’t believe someone actually made! In short, they are as varied as people. Maybe even more-so. Why? Because dolls are only limited to what we can imagine. And what we can imagine is limitless!
Click on any image to enlarge it, or to begin slideshow.
“I never shoot for perfection or symmetry in doll making. It is our lovely flaws that make us each special.” ~Gayle Wray (doll creator)
“Nothing real is pretty. Only a doll is pretty. And a pretty doll drinks out of a tiny cup forever. A woman wants a big cup.” ~Catherynne M. Valente
“It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose. They can only be chosen; they cannot ‘do’; they can only be done by.” ~Rumer Godden
“Mary was bigger than Laura, and she had a rag doll named Nettie. Laura had only a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief, but it was a good doll. It was named Susan. It wasn’t Susan’s fault that she was only a corncob. Sometimes Mary let Laura hold Nettie, but she did it only when Susan couldn’t see.” ~Laura Ingalls Wilder
“Growing up, my dolls were doctors and on secret missions. I had Barbie Goes Rambo.” ~Zoe Saldana
“Put…the troll…down…and slowly back away.” ~Neal Stephenson
“Since too few Americans go to the polls, I say what this country needs is a bobblehead election, where voters will get free bobblehead dolls of their choice when they show up and vote for president.” ~Frank Deford
“There are two kinds of people, those who love dolls and those who don’t yet know that they love dolls.” ~Gayle Wray
The Frank Deford quote: what a thought! And it would work too as long as the bobble heads didn’t resemble the candidates 😅
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;>)
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Interesting and creepy photos! Thanks Mitch!
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So beautiful photographs.🌹👍🙏
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Except for the little dog, these would all give me nightmares. Good thing I read your post in daylight, LOL!!
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I ‘Liked’ this post. Only because there isn’t a ‘NO!!!’ option.
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Looks like there are a lot of troubled people out there.😳
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Fun post, but some of those really creep me out!!! 😱😂
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Oh… and I am one that does love dolls… the non-creepy kind!
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Who knew there were so many quotes about dolls??
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Yep, between doll-lovers and writers using the word “doll” as a metaphor, quite a few!
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Your comment just triggered the memory of a story I read in Best American Short Stories a number of years ago about a man who acquired a mechanical doll that gradually came to life each time he took her out of her case until they ended up having a sexual relationship. It was very strange.
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It certainly does sound strange.
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I’ve been surprised at the “too creepy” responses by several people. I suppose I should have said at the start that most of these are not children’s dolls, but art pieces with a definite attitude or perspective. Granted, a few like the Dead Doll by Dustin Poche are somewhat disturbing (he’s making a statement about abandonment here, I think), but then I find his Mack and Mildred mummy dolls quite whimsical. And I think the Werewolf boy, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Jr. and Sprouthead dolls are downright ugly-cute! Ah, well, may enjoy in their own way! ~Mitch
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Such details in the dolls and in their capturing as photographs. The more human the dolls look, the creepier they become. What does that say (about me)?
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I would have left this leaving creeped out as hell 😂 but for when I got to the “Little House” quote. I knew what it was from right away. I remember reading that! I loved those books, read them a million times. That poor corncob doll. They had paper dolls too.
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Very interesting! Some of those quotes cracked me up. The bobblehead election will draw out an interesting crowd for sure.
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There used to be a home along a main road in a small town I regularly drove, with a doll in their attic window. The the owner put it there so everyone could enjoy it. I’d never really noticed it until I moved to a new community, about 45 miles from that town. My daughter came home from school with creepy stories about the doll being evil. I was always mystified by how an ordinary doll, set in an attic window for enjoyment, became demon possessed 45 miles away.
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It seems the more humanoid a doll is the more people fantasize about it coming to life.
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