How Culture Deformed Dolls
Why toys look so damn weird, and why it will only get worse
“Hold my baby!” my four-year-old niece implored, stuffing into my arms her precious plastic off-spring, a doll she named Saliva. But something had gone terribly wrong. Where a baby should have been was a severely deformed changeling. Over half of the doll’s face was taken up with eyes, and lips of a sultry pout sparkled beneath the place where a nose should have been. Under this giant head was an impossibly small body. Admittedly, it had been a little while since I had been around a baby, but I was pretty sure they didn’t look like this. What was going on?
I’m a marketing strategist by trade, and I make my living by turning insights about culture and consumers into ads, and sometimes products or offerings. When I look at the freaky dolls on our increasingly digital store-shelves, I’m looking for clues about what we think, what we value, and how we see the world. How our plastic got so bent out of shape appears to be the result of many factors: The role of dolls in our children’s development has changed, as has the nature of childhood, and our relationship to our bodies. In effect, we have let our grown-up dysmorphia deform generations of our children’s toys.
And odds are, it’s only going to get weirder.
