A couple of weeks ago, Justin and I watched an interesting---and very strange---documentary about life-sized silicone dolls and the men who purchased them. Broadcasted on BBC America, the documentary titled "Love Me, Love My Doll" followed the lives of four men in the UK and the US who bought and lived with their so-called Real Dolls.
Before this documentary, I had only heard of blow-up sex dolls that I occasionally saw in baudy movies like "Old School." I thought life-sized dolls were pretty much a joke---gag gifts given out at bachelor parties or a funny addition to an immature fraternity. But nobody took these dolls seriously, did they?
Indeed some people do. One of the men in the documentary, a computer engineer in England, had two life-sized dolls who seemed to be his only friends. He dressed them up every morning and would sometimes take one for a drive with him. After his mother died a few years before (whom he had lived with), the man decided to purchase the dolls for companionship and, ahem, sexual purposes. In fact, these dolls are made for sex. Their figures, a la Pamela Anderson, could grace the cover of any Playboy. They have slim waists, toned bottoms, and gimundo ta-tas. (I mean HUGE. I mean my eyes popped out of my head when I saw one of the doll's breasts. We're talking H-cup boobs.)
Another man, a Virginia hillbilly who lived in the backwoods, proudly stated that he preferred his dolls to real women any day of the week. After years of rejection in the dating world, this man decided to hell with real women and purchased two dolls to satiate any desires he may have.
After watching the documentary, I noted three categories of men who buy these dolls:
1.) The lonely guy who never had many friends and who had even fewer girlfriends. This is the guy you always felt sorry for in school because he didn't have any social skills. I suppose after decades of loneliness, these men turn to dolls for companionship because they can't seem to connect with any other human being.
2.) The horny guy who gets a kick out of banging a hot-looking (albeit non-living) doll. Yep, there was one of these guys on the show too. In fact, he had so many dolls that he didn't have any more room to store them. Gross.
3.) The plain old weird guy who actually preferred a synthetic doll over a real human companion. One of the men featured on the documentary named Davecat (yes, this was his name) fell into this category. In Davecat's mind, he was having a relationship with an inorganic human versus an organic one. He also spent hours applying make-up to his beloved doll as well as buying her clothes. At one point he fondly recalls the first few weeks after she had arrived, remarking that they had had sex frequently.
Anyway, it was a fascinating documentary even though it was a little spooky. Some of the men I felt a little sorry for while others just plainly disturbed me.
Attack of the Silicone Dolls!
