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Reborns in the Media Recently, reborn dolls have been spotted in the media more often. Unfortunately, the media often focuses on the less common and less understood aspects of collecting reborn dolls, and as a result we see many shows that discuss the use of reborns to replace real children. However, not all of these shows/articles have portrayed the art in this light. Dr. Phil refers to it as a hobby and Inside Edition and 20/20 touch on the artistic aspects involved. Whatever the story, publicity seems to be positive for reborn artists since new buyers surface after each media appearance. My Fake Baby – This documentary coined the term “fake baby” and brought reborning to the public eye in the UK.
Dr. Phil – In an episode that debated obsessions vs. hobbies, a reborn collector shared her extensive collection of dolls and shared her passion for creating reborn dolls. In the end, Dr. Phil declared her passion a hobby rather than an obsession. When does a hobby become an obsession? Dr. Phil’s guests say they are definitely obsessed: a doll craze, a hair style, Elvis! And, actress Vivica A. Fox spills the beans about an obsession that she shares with Robin! Stefanie Wilder-Taylor is a comedienne, mom and author of Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay and Other Things I Had to Learn as a New Mom. She meets with Kathryn, who says she can’t live without her reborn dolls.
“So what is it about reborning that people get obsessed with?” Stefanie asks Kathryn as she looks around a room filled with dolls.
“They look like real children,” Kathryn says.
“This has taken doll collecting in a completely different direction and has become this craze that people can’t get enough of, these babies that look like babies,” Stefanie says.
“Right, and some people make them to look like their children,” she says.
“Do you think that’s a little weird?” Stefanie asks.
“I think it could be if you don’t have control,” Kathryn says. She shows Stefanie her favorite reborn dolls. “That one’s name is Ryan, and the reason I was attracted to him is because he reminds me of my grandson.”
Kathryn takes Stefanie to her newly refurbished basement, where her doll-making shop is located. As she opens up a cabinet of unfinished doll parts, Stefanie cringes. “Oh, God. Do you see anything wrong with this picture? That looks like a horror movie!” "That’s just creepy to me,” Dr. Phil tells Stefanie.
“It was creepy to me. I mean, when I first went there, I was concerned, just from the name alone — reborners? That sounds like a cult,” Stefanie says.
Stefanie says Kathryn is a nice woman who’s really into her dolls. “She has two rooms entirely devoted for the dolls — one is the feminine room and one is the masculine room. And there are, like, 20 real life-looking dolls in each room just kind of staring at you,” she says.
Once a month Kathryn hosts a "Doll Day" party for friends who also collect the dolls. She invites Stefanie to join the party to see what their hobby is all about.
Kathryn’s friends bring over their favorite dolls to show off. Then, the women get busy in a workshop to create more. The term “reborning” refers to the process of creating the dolls. “It’s in the process of being reborn,” a woman explains. The women attach body parts, add hair and paint to make them look as lifelike as possible. One party-goer explains that she misses the days when she had young children, and reborn dolls take her back to that time. She admits she sometimes finds herself rocking the doll, as if it were a real baby. Back onstage, Kathryn shows Dr. Phil a doll named Trevor. She prefers her dolls to have their eyes closed, so they look like they’re peacefully sleeping. Kathryn sees her hobby as more of an art form because of the amount of work that goes into creating each doll.
“Do you think you’re too old to play with dolls?” Dr. Phil asks her.
“Yeah, probably,” she admits.
“What some people would say — and it’s true of people who become really engaged with pets, or dolls or whatever — is that it’s just really low demand,” Dr. Phil says. “You don’t really have to do anything. You don’t have to engage, you don’t have to interact, and so it’s a regressive sort of thing to a really low-demand relationship, so you don’t have to engage in a healthy relationship.” Dr. Phil adds that he doesn’t think that of Kathryn. “You don’t strike me that way at all.” He says the doll collecting seems to be a healthy hobby for her.
Kathryn shares that she learned the hard way not to leave her dolls unattended in public -- someone almost called the police on her because they thought she left a real baby in her car!
Dr. Phil holds Kathryn’s doll. “Wow, that is real-looking.” Dr. Phil asks Kathryn, “How much have you put into this hobby?”
Kathryn considers her answer and responds, “Am I going to be on your segment for divorcees if I say this?”
“Maybe, but there won’t be a custody fight!” Dr. Phil jokes.
Kathryn admits she may have spent as much as $40,000 to $50,000 over the last 14 years, but notes that estimate includes antique cribs, cradles and other accessories. Dr. Phil doesn’t think Kathryn’s pastime is an obsession. “I vote hobby on this,” he says.
The View – A brief introduction of reborns was on the July 25, 2008 episode of the View. They showed three reborns that were provided by Bountiful Baby and reported that they were used by grieving parents. While they did not discuss the art of reborning, the audience did seem interested in the dolls and how realistic they were.
MacLeans Magazine – Canada’s MacLeans Magazine wrote an article about reborns in the March 26, 2008 issue of the magazine. It's not a doll. It's a baby. You don't 'buy' a reborn. You adopt one. Three-month-old Victoria has grey-blue eyes and auburn hair, just like her mother. She weighs five pounds and zero ounces, and is 18.5 inches long, the same as when she was first adopted. This morning, 26-year-old Mary Shallcross is dressing her. "Do you want to get changed?" Mary asks in a quiet, soothing voice as she pulls out a pair of baby-pink dungarees with fuchsia-pink flowers. The question is rhetorical. Victoria will be dressed regardless of what she wants, and in any event her wishes would be extremely difficult to determine, since the lifelike creature lying in a wicker basket and being dressed is not a baby at all, but a special type of doll. To understand why Shallcross, a Winnipegger and a history buff, is addressing a vinyl doll as if it were her child requires entering the growing world of reborning. Reborn dolls look, feel and smell just like real babies. They look so realistic, in fact, that they are often mistaken for the real thing. Every aspect of their anatomy has been carefully constructed to imitate the experience of looking at and holding a baby. The dolls are painted with the same slightly blotchy colouring noticeable on a very young infant. Their bodies are stuffed with sand or silicone so that their legs, fingers, head and hands have the same floppy weight as that of a small newborn baby. They even have the same neck-support issues, so that anyone picking one up will instinctively support the head. "My daughter, who is a neonatal nurse, finds them eerie, scary because they are too lifelike," says Martha Englishman, who is retired and has five reborns, partly because she has always collected dolls, but also to compensate for not having any grandchildren. "It sounds crazy, but I love them. They are the next best thing to having a baby." These dolls are not meant for children, but for adult collectors, says Englishman. The collectors are almost always women. And since people respond to them like real children, they aren't "bought" or "sold." A reborn is "adopted" from a nursery, although money still exchanges hands. "It would feel bad saying you are selling babies, so we say they are adopted," says Michele Barrow-Belisle, a London, Ont., doll- maker who specializes in reborns and issues fake adoption certificates with each of her creations. Barrow-Belisle started two "nurseries" for her creations, "Baby Steps," and "When a Child is Born," named after a Christmas carol about the birth of Jesus. It takes up to 60 hours to make a reborn: the bulk of time is spent threading the hair and painting the creases, discolourations and imperfections that make the skin look realistic. Pale-skinned dolls require 15 to 30 layers, says Kim Becker, who made Shallcross's doll. Darker-skinned dolls can take longer since they require more coats of paint. Because of the time and skill involved, the dolls cost between $250 and $500; deluxe models can go for up to $10,000 on eBay. With all the work that goes into making the dolls, some doll-makers find they become emotionally attached to their creations. When Becker drove to Shallcross's house to hand over Victoria, wrapped in a baby blanket, for adoption, she cried. To recreate a child's hair-growth pattern, Becker threads each hair onto the doll's head individually. Some people send in their own hair for the doll-maker to use, or the hair of a child. Others will send in photos of themselves as a baby so the doll will look like them, or even photos of children who have died. The popularity of the dolls has exploded in the past year, says Pat Secrist, owner of Secrist Dolls, which sells videos on the craft of creating reborns, books, paints, limbs, faces, needles, eyeballs, and the other hundreds of tools and supplies doll-makers can use to make these baby replicas. The company also has a new line of eyeballs, fake tears and nose drill bits, used to create the doll's nostrils, as well as dozens of other products. In the past year, industry sales at Secrist are up by 50 per cent. Other companies report similar growth. JC Toys began selling kits in December 2007 and hopes to double its product line this year. "This is a trend that is growing not just in Canada and the United States, but in Europe, Africa, and Latin America," Secrist says. As the dolls grow more popular, doll-makers keep adding new details to simulate the experience of holding a real baby. There are reborns that seem to breathe, ones that have a faint heartbeat, others that feel warm to the touch, since they come with heating packs. There are dolls modelled after premature babies that are sold with incubators, a breathing apparatus taped to their nostrils. Some makers add a milky, baby-powder scent. Doll-maker Becker washes her reborns repeatedly in baby shampoo so they no longer smell of vinyl but like a freshly bathed infant. "There is a competition to see just how realistic these things can be," Barrow-Belisle explains. "When I started out making these dolls everyone wanted to make them look real. Now they are trying to make them feel and act real." For some, the realism is too much. Philip Englishman, whose wife Martha has the five reborns, finds the whole thing a little odd. "They look like dead babies," he explains from his Walkerton, Ont., home. Barrow-Belisle is familiar with that reaction. Some people, she says, find them creepy and disgusting and "are absolutely mortified by them." They don't want to touch them, or even be in the same room with a reborn. But others are drawn to them. Women often approach Barrow-Belisle and relate stories about losing a child, or wanting a baby and not being able to conceive, she says. One middle-aged London, Ont., woman would regularly attend the arts and crafts trade shows where Barrow-Belisle would display her creations, not to buy the dolls but merely to hold them and cry. "The fact that they are babies means they touch something inside of most women," she explains. This slip-of-the-tongue is common — many of the women interviewed for this story called the dolls babies in conversation. Homemaker Tracie Norris, 40, lives in Maugansville, Md., with her eight-year-old son Richard and her husband. She found out about reborns on the Internet, where there are websites, chat rooms, photos and poems devoted to the baby substitutes. Norris bought her reborn, Liam, in January 2008 from Kay Dunne, a doll-maker who lives in Crossfield, Alta. Norris says she fell in love with Liam as soon as she saw him; he looks exactly like Richard did when he was a baby. With Liam, Norris gets to engage in some of the mothering rituals she has come to miss as Richard has grown. Holding the reborn is relaxing, she says, and makes her feel needed, even though she knows that Liam, being a doll, does not actually need anybody. "I know it's just pretend but you have the same feelings because he looks so lifelike," she explains. "It's like having a real baby, but it doesn't have the same hassle. You don't have to get up in the middle of the night, you don't have to fix their bottles, you don't have to change their diapers." These are experiences Shallcross can relate to. The Winnipegger has always wanted to have children, ever since she can remember. Then, when she was 17, she found out that the heart problems that prevent her from working — she has several heart and valve conditions, including only one functioning ventricle — meant she cannot conceive. The news was a blow at the time; the fact she'll never have her own children is even more painful through her twenties. Many of her friends have settled down and begun to start their own families, and they often talk about their children's routines, setbacks and progress, she says, making it hard not to feel left out. Victoria, whom Shallcross sometimes calls "her little girl," has helped ease some of these feelings of longing. The reborn doll was her mother's idea, but it still "fills a bit of the void inside of me," she explains quietly. She's sitting in a cab holding Victoria, whom the driver has mistaken for a newborn, heading back from her best friend's house. "Society expects you to have done certain things to be considered a successful adult. I'm 26 and I still live with my parents, and I don't have children, so it's hard not to feel that society is judging you." Since Victoria looks so much like a real baby, sometimes Shallcross will ask her little sister, Aaliyah, 8, to "babysit." Other times, Shallcross will bundle Victoria up in a baby-pink terry towel blanket and take her to see friends. When people see her holding the doll, the response is usually the same: someone will ask about "the baby." For a split second, Shallcross gets to be the mother she has always wanted to be. Then the moment ends and life returns to normal as Shallcross explains that no, it's not really a baby, it's only a doll.
20/20 – This January 2009 episode focused on using reborns to replace real babies. They did briefly show clips from the Tiny Treasures show in St. Louis Missouri in June 2008. Not Child's Play: 'I Feel Like I Have a Real Baby' Women Open Up About Unique Relationships With Their 'Reborns' By DEBORAH ROBERTS, GWEN GOWEN and RENA FURUYA
Jan. 2, 2009 There is almost nothing as miraculous as a newborn baby. And for some women, the desire for a tiny infant never goes away. To satisfy their yearning, they're turning to so-called "reborns," dolls that are designed to look and feel just like a real newborn baby. Linda, 49, who asked that her last name be kept private, is one of the few women willing to speak about her relationship with reborns. She says she enjoys taking them out and about with her and comforts them like actual infants. "It feels like I have a real baby," she said. Married with no children of her own, Linda says she feels like a mom now that she has reborns. "I take them out to the park, if I'm walking the dog, and maybe put it in its stroller, or put it in its sling, or hold it in a blanket, and people do think it's real." Linda even buys them real baby clothes because she says, "They don't fit in doll clothes. You have to buy real baby sizes." Linda admits that her dolls are kind of a substitute for babies and that she especially savors moments when other people think that her reborns are real. "I guess it would be considered, like, a maternal instinct," she said. "You're, like, all happy and proud, 'cause they're, you know, googling over your baby." When asked whether she had considered adopting a real baby, Linda said it wasn't the right choice for her. "It's very difficult to get, you know," she said. "And it's a lot more expensive than buying the little dolls." On average, Linda spends about $500 for each reborn, which are delivered by mail to her home. Her first, named Jodi, is from Florida-based doll artist Eve Newsom. "I call my reborns babies," Newsom said. "Because to me, by the time I'm finished, the purpose is to make it a baby." Reborns: 'Just the Good Part of Motherhood' Creating the dolls is an elaborate process that begins with vinyl doll parts and glass eyeballs imported from Germany. The blush of newborn skin is created by adding several layers of flesh-colored paint. To seal it, the dolls have to be baked. Their limbs and head are then cooled. Then Newsom painstakingly microroots more than 20,000 strands of mohair onto the dolls head. The result: an astonishingly lifelike doll that a woman somewhere is yearning for. "I want to do this and it pleases me and fortunately it pleases thousands of others," said Newsom. "Not just hundreds, but thousands." For some, the fake babies fill a void. In Newsom's case, it is a void left by having seven miscarriages. "Not being able to have children. And not having the resources, actually, to adopt," she said. "This was my calling. And now it's my passion. ... My reborns bring me a medium of joy and happiness." She added that while the reborns "don't reciprocate, exactly," she finds her experience with them to be "very nurturing, it's very cathartic for me." The reborn phenomenon is a growing trend in the United States and overseas. ABC News went to a reborn convention this summer in Illinois to learn more about the fascination with these dolls. Lachelle Moore and her husband, Alan, drove nearly four hours to the convention in hopes of bringing home an addition to their already large family that includes grown children and grandchildren. Lachelle Moore said that she still feels the need for babies who'll never grow up. "What's so wonderful about reborns is that they're forever babies," she said. "They don't give you any trouble. There's no college tuition, no dirty diapers. … Just the good part of motherhood." That day, she purchased a reborn called Rachel for $1,400 to add to her collection of 36 dolls. More Than a Hobby? Psychiatrist Sue Varma, who teaches at the NYU School of Medicine, believes that for some, collecting reborns is "more than just a hobby." "Where it may become a problem, [is] if this is used as the only means of social interaction," said Varma. "If it's being used as a prop." Studies show that when cuddling a real baby, brain chemicals are released that cause a kind of emotional rush. No one knows if that happens with reborns, but Varma said, "I would not be surprised to learn that if a woman is holding a fake baby, that she would have the same chemical, hormonal reactions as if she was holding a real baby." Several woman we spoke to called holding the reborns "cuddle therapy." And when Linda received a new, dark-haired baby from Newsom, she seemed like a mom seeing her child for the first time. "She's beautiful, oh my God, she's gorgeous!" Linda said. Some people may think taking a fake baby out in a stroller and buying them real baby clothes is just bizarre, but Linda says it's better than having a "crazy habit" such as "drinking, or something that's going to hurt you." "It's like a hobby," she said, "and it doesn't really hurt anybody."
Inside Edition - Aired on Jan. 31, 2008, the segment showed artist Eve Newsom and her reborn dolls.
Other News Articles: · Feb. 22/07 – Sky News: Reborn Dolls For Grieving Parents · Jan. 12/08 – Free Press Release: Reborn Baby Dolls – Creepy or the next scrapbooking? · July 15/08 - FOXNews.com: Mistaken Police Conduct Frantic Rescue to Save Lifelike Doll... · July 16/08 - National Ledger: Scary Photos: Reborn Baby Dolls Bring Rescue Effort, Fool Police · July 16/08 - Herald Sun: Baby Dolls Are so Real, They're Scary · July 18/08 - Consumist: Reborn Babies · July 18/08 – DailyRecord.co.uk: Meet the Scots mum behind eerie baby dolls business · July 21/08 – AOL News: Should Reborn Dolls Be Banned? · Aug. 11/08 - NY Daily News: 'Reborn Babies' Cause Real Controversy · Sept. 12/08 - Chicago Sun-Times: 'Reborn' dolls look just like the real thing · Oct. 1/08 – MSNBC: Bogus baby boom: Women who collect lifelike dolls · Dec. 2008 - The Whig Standard: Oh Baby! Lifelike Dolls are Born · Jan. 2/09 - Jezebel: Women Living With Fake Baby Dolls Treat Them Like Real Children · Jan. 2/09 - The Bolingbrook Sun: Babies reborn in artistic form · Jan. 6/09 – The Arizona Republic: Tonopah artist's lifelike 'reborn' dolls ease suffering · Jan. 11/09 - The Sault Star: Hello Dolly - Doll Makers Use New Technology Please feel free to notify us of any additional news articles or programs about reborn dolls so that we can add them to the list. Send them to lifelikedolls@gmail.com.
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