subject: Reborns: Life Like Baby Dolls by:Kelli Johnson [print this page] As long as people have been on this planet, dolls have been probably been played with. I'm sure right alongside arrowheads and mammoth bones archeologists have found small stick figures that little girls and boys played with tens of thousands of years ago. Boys and girls have always used dolls and figurines to play, use their imagination and help them understand the world around them.
In the last couple hundred of years the art of doll making has craved out for itself a fanatic following and robust market. Master doll makers have been elevated to the standing of artisans and their craft is considered one of the most difficult and labor intensive in the world.
While factories all around the world pump out hundreds of thousands of dolls meant for the worlds billions of children, collectible dolls are a breed apart. They are seldom played with and usually only taken out of their cases for exhibitions. Yet, the early 1990's saw the creation of a new breed of doll; reborns.
Reborns are life like dolls resembling newborns or infants and have exploded in popularity in the last couple of years. These dolls are hand crafted by artists all over the world and are so well done that many people cannot tell the difference between a real baby and a reborn doll even up close!
The dolls get their name from the process by which they are created. The creators take high quality dolls and strip them down to their bare essentials and slowly create a new, high quality doll layer by layer. Thus, the baby doll has been "reborn".
While reborns have become collector favorites due to their uniqueness, rare quantities and high level of design they also are being used by many owners to fill an emotional void. Women who have lost a baby during pregnancy, older women who have seen their children move on and those who never devoted the time to raising a family all are find solace in these dolls.
These women dress, groom and speak to their dolls as if they were infants. They take them for stroller rides or out on errands in car seats. One lady in Australia left her reborn in a car during a shopping trip and police were called to the scene to "rescue" the baby from the car. They broke the window and removed the baby before they discovered it wasn't a real baby!
Some people find the lifelike nature of the dolls and the way their owners treat them as odd, but many doctors and mental health professionals have defended the use of reborns as therapeutic and helpful to those dealing with emotional issues. Even for those not suffering from any issues, owning and "playing" with these dolls is perfectly healthy. As long as the owner's actions don't turn to obsession or compulsion then there is nothing wrong with enjoying these works of art.
