https://pineisland.neocities.org/dolls/

🚧  UNDER CONSTRUCTION 🚧

early childhood (0-8)

Of course I had dolls before Molly but I don’t remember most of them. I had some baby dolls but I never “bonded” with or liked playing with them. I had a bunch of Barbies in a beautiful wooden toybox.

The only dolls that stand out in my memory are a Pink Ranger mini-doll and Kenya, who was a present from my dad’s friend. She was so pretty and so unlike all of the other (white) dolls I had at home.

1990s: Kenya doll box

American Girl doll era (8-10)

Christmas 1998(?): me (age 9?) showing off my American Girl doll collection. I’m in the process of putting them in their Christmas dresses.

I don’t remember where I first learned about American Girl dolls. I was a little girl in the early/mid-’90s… Pleasant Company was inescapable girl culture.

What I remember that I liked about American Girl dolls is that they could be my friends. They weren’t little babies that I was supposed to care for and they weren’t ~sexy adult women I was supposed to aspire to be someday.

I chose Molly as my favorite because she had glasses like me and she wasn’t too fancy like that snob, Samantha. (Sorry, Samantha girlies.)

American Girl dolls cost $82 + shipping back then. I saved up for Molly with my $2/week allowance, plus birthday and Christmas money. I remember sitting on my parents’ bed while my Dad read his credit card number to the person on the phone at Pleasant Company taking my order for my Molly doll. (Dad paid for shipping because I forgot to include that in my calculations…)

I was not careful with her. Molly went everywhere with me, especially into the back woods behind my house. That was my favorite place to play.

I saved up for a Girl of Today #4 with the same $2/week allowance. I didn’t want a doll who looked like me - I already had Molly - but I wanted a doll who looked like my cousins.

Josefina was a birthday present the year I turned 9. I loved her beautiful shiny black hair. By then my friends were starting to lose interest in dolls and I had no one to play with but my American Girl dolls kept pride of place on my bookshelf.

2005ish: my bedroom (age 16), with my American Girl dolls on the top shelf of my fantasy bookshelf (the colorful boxes in the middle are my BJD clothes and accessories)

“those anime dolls” (14-22)

2003: Chii was released a little before I discovered these “Super Dollfies”

Otakon, 2004. I happened to wander past a Lolita tea party and I saw my first ever Super Dollfie. I googled obsessively as soon as I got home because I was too shy to ask about these incredible “anime dolls.”

I fell in love immediately. Here was a way to combine my childhood interest in dolls and my current interest in anime and there’s a community of collectors my age and mostly older - a way to grow up without giving up my interests and hobbies. (This was a theme of my teenage fandom years.)

Unfortunately for me, these dolls were very expensive. Like, “10x my $82 Molly” expensive.

I begged my mom to buy the most expensive thing I’d ever owned. Honestly, I’m not sure why she agreed but I’m grateful that she did. I got my first ball jointed doll, Shim Ichīro, for Christmas 2004.

2004: Dream of Doll Zen was my first BJD

It was love at first sight. I bonded with him immediately. I took photos of Ichī everywhere: at the apple orchard, at my therapist’s office, in my backyard. I would spend hours outside in the back woods, just like I used to do with my Molly. Dolls have always been a link between me and my inner child.

In the BJD hobby, I met other collectors, online and in person - the “Boston BJD Cult” was my social circle outside of school when I was an undergrad. I was especially desperate to meet “nerdy” adults, someone to model what a grown-up geeky life could look like, and I found them in the BJD fandom. Unlike anime or fanfiction, BJDs have a pretty high barrier of entry (higher in the early/mid- ‘00s than today) and the community skewed older.

me with Ichiiro, c. 2006

the lost years (22-32)

Even though I spent so much time looking for fannish adult role models, I kind of fell out of fandom - especially BJD fandom - in my 20s and early 30s. Mostly, it was money: when I was 22, I was making ~$2100 a month before taxes, sending $700 home to pay for student loans and spending another $700 on rent. It didn’t leave much (any) money left over for an expensive hobby like BJDs so I kind of… not exactly forgot about it but I drifted away from it for a long time.

It was sometime during the “lost years” that I bought Haruō, my Parabox x Picco Neemo hybrid.

Haruo (Parabox x Picco Neemo hybrid), c. 2016

pandemic hobby (32- present)