Every doll maker has a magical moment when she knows that
her doll has come to life. I always feel like my cloth dolls are born once I
attach their earrings to their ears. I think the reason my dolls feel like they
have come to life for me is that unlike the doll’s ears--earrings are not a
necessity—to the doll’s physical structure. Earrings are accessories that speak
to the doll’s style and personality. She doesn’t need them she wants them.
As a doll maker, I love big ears that are prominent on my
dolls faces because if I am going to go through the trouble to make them, I
want to see them. I want them to be dominant and prominent so that people know that
the doll’s ear size is not a mistake. She is not a mistake and that we all don't need to look alike or think alike to validate and respect each other's truth.
Toy companies that manufacture dolls, go out of their way to
make small features on the doll’s head, with the exception of the doll’s eyes.
In fact, they exaggerate the size of the doll’s eyes in proportion to the rest
of her face. The plastic fashion doll’s eyes are the biggest feature on her
face because they hypnotize the little girl into believing all of the sweet
little lies the world wants her to believe about womanhood, femininity, and
beauty.
This standard of unobtainable beauty that is perpetuated by
plastic doll makers contributes to the beauty industries 445 billion dollar industry.
When a little girl is given a doll, she has not yet developed a self-identity imbued
with her own dreams, values, and sense of beauty. The doll plays with the
little girl inside of her imagination where she is most vulnerable, susceptible,
and impressionable of who she is supposed be; how she is supposed to act; and
how she is supposed to see the world through the doll’s eyes.
One day the little girl looks at herself in the mirror and
asks her doll, “ Do you think I am beautiful like you?” The fashion doll gives the little a girl a
blank stare that reaches to the core of her being and says, “Of course not.
Your lips are not like mine. Your nose is too big. Your eyes are too small. You
are too fat. Your hair is not shiny. You are too short. And one day you are
going to want to get plastic surgery to increase the size of your breasts.”
The little girl spends the majority of her youth trying to
live up to her doll’s ideal of beauty—never feeling quite good enough…beautiful
enough…or even alive enough…just like her doll.
To be alive to me means to be beautifully imperfect, like
nature. Freckles, wrinkles, cellulite, potbellies, and gaps in our teeth are
the characteristics that make us uniquely human. I think the reason, I love
making cloth dolls, in the second half-a-century of my life, is because I spent
the first have of my live, trying to fit into society’s expectations and
standards of beauty—and now I want to experience what it is like to feel
perfectly flawed and, imperfectly beautiful with big ears and all.
By, Cassandra George Sturges
