Extremely lifelike dolls are causing a frenzy in Brazil

Straits Times

15 hours ago

Most hyper-realistic or reborn dolls cost around $258 to S$322 in Brazil, while limited edition ones have sold for more. PHOTO EPA-EFE
SAO PAULO - A young woman posts a video that appears to show her holding her baby, Bento, and packing his bag for a trip to the hospital. She calls it 'one of the busiest and scariest days for me.'
She grabs onesies, a bottle and medical documents and tucks him in the back of a car. At the hospital, he is weighed and lies in a bed, where she removes his pacifier, bottle-feeds him and wipes a few drops of formula from his cheek.
But this was not an actual medical emergency – it was role-playing by a content creator – and the baby was not a real baby. It was a shockingly lifelike doll, called a reborn doll, which is handcrafted to look and feel like a baby.
The video, which received more than 16 million views on TikTok, is part of a social media craze that has turned into a cultural and political flashpoint in Brazil. Widely circulated videos show women taking the hyper-realistic dolls to the park in strollers, celebrating their birthdays with cake and songs, and simulating childbirth. (A select few even simulate the dolls' having a nosebleed or potty training.)
'The ones I like the most are the newborns,' said Ms Juliana Drusz Magri, 36, who lives in Curitiba, the capital of the Brazilian state of Paraná, and works in human resources. She said she began collecting the dolls in 2018 and now has 22.
'The world of make-believe is an escape valve for me,' she said. 'And, no, I don't treat it like a real baby.'
The dolls have flooded into pop culture. They were featured in June in an episode of Vale Tudo, a prime-time telenovela, and in a rap song trending on social media about a gang that walks down the street 'kicking reborn dolls.'
Newspaper columnists, influencers and lawmakers have all weighed in, with varying degrees of sincerity about what some perceive as a threat to the social order and what others have described as a harmless hobby.
Widely circulated videos showing women taking the hyper-realistic dolls to the park in strollers became a flashpoint in Brazil.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
In the north-western Brazilian state of Amazonas, one lawmaker, Joao Luiz, recently carried one of the dolls into the legislature and argued, without evidence, that some women have been demanding public benefits for the dolls. His colleague Joana Darc also voiced concern.
'You just can't force a doctor in a hospital, for example, to treat a reborn doll as if it were a child, which is a living being,' she said on the floor. 'You can't force a teacher to accept a child in a day care centre because the person wants the reborn doll to study.'
She asked where it would end: with people taking 'reborn pets' to the veterinarian to be neutered?
In what looked like a bit of trolling, the official social media account of Curitiba warned the 'mothers' of reborn dolls not to sit in the yellow seats on city buses reserved for pregnant women. 'Reborns are cute, but they don't guarantee a place in the yellow seat, OK?' the post read.
In defence of the dolls, the Rio de Janeiro City Council approved a proposal to make Sept 4 Reborn Stork Day, a holiday honouring the artisans who make the dolls.
A Brazilian artisan working on a super realistic baby doll at her studio in Contagem, Brazil.
PHOTO: AFP
But the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, vetoed the proposal. 'With all due respect to those interested, this isn't happening,' he wrote on social media.
At least 30 Bills have been filed in legislative houses across the country to bar the dolls from receiving services in public health facilities, according to public records. But there appears to have been just one documented case of a woman with a psychiatric disorder showing up at a hospital to seek treatment for her doll, only to be turned away at the entrance, the news outlet UOL reported. Most of the Bills have been introduced by members of right-wing parties.
Ms Vivi Louhrinci, 30, an actor from Curitiba, has been making reborn dolls since 2020, including some for the Brazilian productions of Wicked and Matilda.
'My life has turned into chaos with this boom,' she said, referring to the frenzy around the dolls. 'It has been a good exposure in this sense, but it is an exposure that is causing so much stress.'
Vivi Louhrinci, an actress and artist who has been creating reborn dolls since 2020, holds a doll head in Curitiba, Brazil.
PHOTO: PRISCILA RIBEIRO/NYTIMES
Ms Camila Infanger, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Sao Paulo, said there had been a noticeable difference in the response to hobbies associated with women and those associated with men.
'Because women are doing it and women are the principal actors in this, it's been stigmatised differently,' she said, adding that the backlash was 'just another way to regulate women's lives.'
The dolls have been around since the 1990s, when people started stripping the paint and hair off store-bought vinyl dolls and painstakingly reworking them to be more lifelike. And the interest in them is not limited to Brazil.
Mr Dave Stack of Cleveland, the owner of Reborns, an online marketplace for reborn dolls, said he had seen a 'slow and steady increase' in sales since he started the site in 2012. He now sells 40 to 60 dolls per day, up from about 10 per day five years ago, according to his website.
Most cost around US$200 to US$250 (S$258-S$322) and are made of vinyl, while a few limited-edition dolls made of softer silicone have sold for more than US$4,000, he said.
A small percentage of the dolls are purchased by mothers who are grieving the loss of a child, Mr Stack said. Others have been bought by memory-care facilities, lawyers who use them for courtroom reenactments and people making movies and television shows. But most buyers are 'just people who love babies,' he said.
Some popular videos made by content creators show the dolls getting a bloody nose, going on their first outing to Target or throwing up in the car.
Collectors of reborn dolls gather in Parque Villa-Lobos, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Some mothers bought the dolls to grieve the loss of a child.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
Ms Jennifer Granado, 43, who makes the dolls with her husband and daughter in Indiana, said about half of her customers are collectors and about half are coping with some type of trauma or loss.
One customer, Ms Granado said, takes her dolls shopping and to the doctor's office, 'feeds' them baby food and takes pictures of them with Santa Claus on Christmas.
'She is unable to have kids so this is as close as she can get for her and her husband,' Ms Granado said. 'There's definitely a large group of people who don't understand why a grown adult would be playing with a baby doll. But they don't see it as a baby doll. They see it as a baby.'
Ms Drusz called the dolls 'a calming, fun, I would even say innocent hobby,' and said she was frustrated with being judged for her interest in them.
'I hope that after all this is over, we can continue our collections in peace and do what we like without being labelled,' she said. 'I think that reborn dolls are an art, and art deserves to be appreciated.' NYTIMES
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