Making Dolls is Serious

A Birthing Doll

Absolutely. The birthing dolls in particular explore serious things like life and death, birth, motherhood, femininity, gender, and sexuality. Of course they do it in the playful way you mentioned. I make dolls that have vaginas that you can interact with. I hope people see both the fun and the seriousness of that. One of my favourite birthing dolls has a clitoris that says ‘Lucky.’

Also, my work is supposed to look handmade. That is intentional and the desired outcome. They are not mass produced. They were not made in a factory. I am not trying to replicate a factory made doll, I am representing the human form which, for all its imperfections, is beautiful and charming. One client summed up my work really well when he bought an androgynous doll for his niece that upon closer inspection, has a vagina but no baby. He said, “This is perfect for my niece because my sister always gets her those hideous barbies and other warped senses of beauty. I feel that this doll fights that, that unattainable, anorexic, model that little girls are so overexposed to.”