The Surprisingly Erotic World of People Who Play with Dolls

Every once in a while, you’ll be online and something truly magical will happen: you’ll be reminded that no matter how deeply into the weirdest places your work or life takes you, you’ll never run out of things to wonder at.

Most of us have met a doll-collector, those meticulous types who turn dolls into something between art and science. It’s possible some of us have even met those who customize their dolls, spending hours to create them to the specifications that possess their imaginations, painstakingly painting their makeup, applying eyelashes, perfecting the styles of their wigs, and creating the elaborate outfits that make each unique. The collectors I know keep their dolls in immaculate condition, in cases like prized art.

But there is a subset — growing since ball-jointed dolls became a sensation in the late 90s — who have taken it a step further with photography, turning their creations into a sort of visual art impossible to describe. And, as with anything that opens up the world of the imagination, there are forays into desire. This is how I stumbled into the subculture, by performing a search on Flickr for a graphic element to decorate another story. The deeper I went, the more astonishing the scenarios I found.

Tell me how far you get before these trigger the uncanny valley.