https://pineisland.neocities.org/dolls/
Of course I had dolls before Molly but I donāt remember most of them. I had some baby dolls but I never ābondedā 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 dadās (Nigerian immigrant) friend. She was so pretty and so unlike all of the other (white) dolls I had at home.
1990s: Kenya doll box
Christmas 1998(?): me (age 9?) showing off my American Girl doll collection. Iām in the process of putting them in their Christmas dresses.
I donāt remember where I first learned about American Girl dolls. I was a little girl in the early/mid-ā90sā¦ Pleasant Company was inescapable girl culture.
What I remember that I liked about American Girl dolls is that they could be my friends. They werenāt little babies that I was supposed to care for and they werenāt ~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 wasnāt 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 parentsā 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.
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 didnāt 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)
2003: Chii was released a little before I discovered these āSuper Dollfiesā
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 āanime dolls.ā
I fell in love immediately. Here was a way to combine my childhood interest in dolls and my current interest in anime and thereās 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, ā10x my $82 Mollyā expensive.
I begged my mom to buy the most expensive thing Iād ever owned. Honestly, Iām not sure why she agreed but Iām grateful that she did. I got my first ball jointed doll, Shim IchÄ«ro, 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 IchÄ« everywhere: at the apple orchard, at my therapistās 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 āBoston BJD Cultā was my social circle outside of school when I was an undergrad. I was especially desperate to meet ānerdyā 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- ā00s than today) and the community skewed older.
To be continuedā¦
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 didnāt leave much (any) money left over for an expensive hobby like BJDs so I kind ofā¦ not exactly forgot about it but I drifted away from it for a long time.
In March 2021, I bought my first āadultā American Girl doll: Paloma Catalina Torres Moreno, a Just Like You #44 I found secondhand online. I decided, If my life is going to be smaller because of disability and an ongoing pandemic, I want it to be really small, like miniature scale and I made a conscious decision to get back into dolls.
I had recently discovered #dollstagram and I started dabbling here and there. I got a $20 Mercari coupon and found a $50 secondhand doll. I ripped off her ratty old wig and customized her with a new one, something I didnāt even know was possible when I was a little kid collector. (I always assumed they had rooted hair like Barbie but I honestly never looked that closely before.)