Our friend Jason S. is in Tokyo this week. He reports that designing and assembling dolls is a popular hobby there. The photograph he sent us shows that doll bodies come in three sizes: small, medium, and large. Unfortunately that doesn’t suggest acceptance of a diversity of body types, nor does it allow for a just-my-size version, unless you’re talking only about boobs:
By the way, Jason will be back from Tokyo in time to come to OUR PARTY ON SUNDAY (August 9th at 6pm at Johnny Foley’s Irish Housein San Francisco, CA)! We hope you can come!
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Comments 8
Dmitriy — August 3, 2009
it also kinda looks like the waist of the "larger women" is a bit smaller. however, that could be an eye trick due to her "largeness".
Shaunna — August 3, 2009
Whoa. I was sorely disappointed when I saw the image. I had expected a true representation of varying body sizes.
withoutscene — August 3, 2009
Ahhhhhhhhh! SocImages has a blog party at ASA the year I can't go. This hurts me as much as missing Raewyn Connell. *curls up in the fetal position and cries* Stupid dissertation.
fem pen — August 3, 2009
obviously, the bust size on a woman is the only thing that REALLY varies. brilliant.
Elena — August 3, 2009
Oh, I've actually got a couple of Obitsus. These doll bodies are made for making custom dolls of anime/manga characters or your own original dolls. They're sold overseas by Parabox here, and they do have a slightly larger array of body types... mostly to customize dolls of the child and young characters which tend to star in anime and manga. You can also choose between a number of heads, from more realistic ones to the cartoony, and customize them further with eyes and wigs, and painting the heads.
And those are only the 1/6 scale dolls (Barbie-sized), they also sell dolls in 1/4 and 1/3 scale. There is also a gallery with user pictures of their customized dolls here, if you're curious.
By the way, you can buy doll parts in "fleshtone," "white skin" and "marrone" tones, which is a bit different from the usual take on "flesh tone" discussion.
Meep — August 3, 2009
Elena, I believe Obitsu also (used to?) make/s clear (literally, clear plastic) dolls.
The Volks company, which makes Super Dollfie (1/3 scale) actually makes a very cute and not freakishly thin or well endowed body, the SD10 (and kinda SD13) girl body. These are marketed more towards women, while the Dollfie Dreams, who's literally top heavy in default (they're very hard to stand up) and actually has optional breast parts that are even larger, is marketed towards men.
Elena — August 4, 2009
Yeah, although the Volks analogues to the Obitsus would be the vinyl dollfies and dollfie plus for the 1/6 scale and DDs for larger ones, rather than resin super dollfies. The vinyl dolls do have some extremely endowed bodies in the range, too...
But yeah, it's pretty transparent which dolls are aimed at the female market and which dolls are aimed at male fans :D