Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Real Dolls and Race

It's really interesting to see how Real Dolls deal with race. First of all, there are the "Asian" and "Light African" skin tones. I wasn't aware that people of the entire continent of Asian had one skin tone?

It's also says something that there's only a "Light" African option. It's like in class when we were talking about Black representations in media. Black women were either junglefied or else mainstreamed - made to look more white. It seems here that they are saying that only more "whitened-up" Black women are sexy.

I saw the newsletter on the Real Doll site that introduced one of the "ethnic" faces for the Real Doll 1. It said that "Any doll can be made in any of the five skin tones available, but some of us look better in the African tone than others (Melissa and Lisa also look very nice with this skin tone.)

I was scanning The Doll Forum for what users were saying about the Amara face. While some really liked the face, they mourned the fact that there was no Real Doll 2 body built for a Black woman. 
Here are a few excerpts from these posts:
"I would LOVE to see a doll DESIGNED FROM THE START as a black woman. Thick lips, wide nose, large breasts and butt." 
"A butt like the dancers from Sir Mixalot's "Baby got back" or Bria Myles" 
"I wonder if Matt could get away with making an RD-2 body like that (especialy the boobies)? Add an Amara face, paint her a deep Hershey's Chocolate brown...Yummie!" 
"I would have loved to have put their new "Amara" face onto it, seeing as they do not have a petite sized/figured RD-2 body to put her face on."
These iDollators believe that Black women's bodies, to be Black, must have large breasts and butts. Many more posts cited Amara's big Black lips.

There was also a lot of desire for a "Latina" body, ie. big butt and breasts. The face for Elena was much less type-cast than Amara. Apparently, Amara's face was more distinctly racialized than Elena's.

The other thing is, they don't have a distinctly Asian face even though they have the "Asian" skin tone. It seems as though they think many faces could appear Asian with the right skin tone and hair color, but Latina and especially Black women need to have their own face to show their race.

1 comment:

  1. Real Dolls are basically the ideal woman, right? I mean, that's what they're made to be. At least the ideal woman you want to have sex with Life Size doll.

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