Harmless hobby devolved into disturbing therapeutic practice

Hyper-realistic baby dolls, commonly called reborn dolls, originated in the 1990s as a benign artistic hobby for doll collectors and artists who sought to push back against mass-produced dolls by creating lifelike versions using techniques including repainting, rooting hair, and adding realistic details.

For decades, this avocation remained niche, but in recent years, reborn dolls have become mainstream. Social media is saturated with content capturing adult women toting their reborn dolls around, treating them as actual children. Even the Wall Street Journal published an article about the waxing lucrativity of the reborn doll world, with prices ranging from a few hundred to several thousand dollars for a single doll.

Today, there are entire conventions and expos dedicated to reborn dolls, the most notable being Dolls of the World Expo, which just held its third annual event in June.

So why are dolls, specifically hyper-realistic ones, suddenly so popular among adults?

On a recent episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey dove into this strange new trend that’s grown into an entire industry.

In “Why People Are Buying $8,000 Lifelike Baby Dolls,” WSJ writer Rory Satran revealed one of the main reasons the reborn doll industry has boomed: Reborn dolls have become therapy tools. “Collectors argue that the dolls can be therapeutic for women who have lost babies or suffered miscarriages,” she wrote.

Allie, however, begs to differ. “I don’t think that this is a form of redemption and therapy for people who have lost or who have struggled with infertility. In fact, I know it’s not because it is a fake replacement for something that is real, and it is a fake balm for a real deep wound,” she says.

But attempting to use dolls as a palliation isn’t just futile, it’s injurious to the human spirit.

“You are creating an infection that is going to infest your heart and your soul by trying to attach to and put hope and belonging into an inanimate object. … At some point, the humanity inside you, the conscience you have, the real grief you’re feeling will collide with the reality that this is not a real person,” Allie says.

She disputes the claim that using reborn dolls for therapeutic purposes “hurts no one.”

Elevating dolls above human children is a “problem that creates disorder” in society, she says.

“Successful and healthy societies are ordered around caring for the most vulnerable, [and] I’m not talking about a welfare state. … I’m talking about how we order our communities, how we order our own lives, our own churches, how we create these systems of care,” she clarifies.

“It is disordered when we say, ‘Well, we are actually going to sacrifice the needs of children on behalf of adult desires,’ which we see in so many different ways.”

When adults use reborn dolls to quell their suffering, they are selfishly “ignoring their responsibility to care for real children — whether they’re their own children or they’re orphans or they’re poor children or they’re foster children,” Allie says.

She then plays a disturbing social media video of a grown woman changing, feeding, and rocking her newborn doll to illustrate that this isn’t just some hobby for oddballs. It’s “a form of worship.”

To see it, watch the episode above.

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