Friday, September 2, 2011

Buying Dolls Blind

Well This is annoying! I Tried pasting a post from my clipboard and, of course, could Not get my screen reader (computer speech) to read Anything back to me. So I had to assume that it Might not have worked.

With apoloties, I am going to try this again, in the hope that it will All Post Correctly.

I seem to have so much to say about the subject of doll collecting that it will be done in several posts. This Hopefully, will be the first of them. Posts about doll collecting may be interrupted by blogs about other events important to me. But they will be continued. Thank anyone who reads this for their patience with my technical difficulties, and those of Blogger.

What I Look for When Buying Dolls

As I am totally blind, dolls which feel alike are boring. Dolls which are beyond my budget aren't bought, unfortunately, as I've been told that Tonner dolls, for example, are unique.

I can make beautiful doll clothes and so don't usually take a fashion doll's clothing into account, unless it is very unusual. I bought a Britany Spears doll on sale for the fau red leather body suit, which would have been very difficult for me to make.

So what I Do look for it dolls is a unique face and hair. For the most part, a Kira face by Barbie is a Kira face. They only differ in size. And the same goes for Teresa, Barbie and Christy.

In terms of hair, I like Believable hair and for that matter, Believable faces and sizes. It always surprised me when Kira had the largest bust in a particular set of Barbies. Ok, so some Asian women choose to have breast implants, but All of them?

One thing I didn't know was that African American women were straightening their hair flat again. Contrary to popular belief, blind people Don't all go around feeling the faces and heads of others. For me this is a very personal and intimate thing to do and I have to know someone long enough to Trust them, (long time) before I want to do this. Some blind men use touching women's faces as an excuse to touch more, and both sighted and blind women have the absolute right to say NO! Blindness is NO Excuse for crappy behavior.

At blind school my African American room mates and I did touch one another's hair because we had each heard comments about the hair of the other race and were curious to find out what was meant. I remember the 60's when my room mates had the oil and hot curling iron or straightening iron and spoke of "ironing their hair". I was too young to understand that doing this was an attempt to pass in a white dominated world. I didn't understand why my friends put themselves through it. But then I tried to get my straight hair to hold a Little curl, it didn't want to and eventually I gave up. Sleeping on a porcupine (hard plastic curlers) and stinking like hair spray was no fun!

Then when my friends started letting their hair be I thought it was cool. Their hair had a crispness to it, like a bed of Spring plants, all coming up together from the land.

I liked the feel of Afros, corn rows, braids. But by the time women began straightening their hair again I was far too old to be touching Anyone's face from curiosity.

So when I got the SIS dolls I was Very disappointed. For one thing, their faces were Nearly indistinguishable, Boring! For another, Trachelle was the only one with any amount of curl in her hair.

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for submitting this post. I'd like to share it with my readers.

    I'll be back to comment tomorrow - big grin.

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  2. How very interesting! I really enjoyed reading your post and getting a totally different perspective on doll collecting. I was also very excited to hear that you sew. How inspiring.

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  3. Enjoyed your post. One reason I collect mostly off-brand dolls is like you, I find the homogeneity of the brand name face molds to be boring. I haven't bought any of the SIS dolls because I was disgusted with the straight hair. I received one as a gift and immediately removed the hair and made a braided wig for her. I make Afro, cornrow, dreadlock, and natural texture wigs for all of my African American dolls. In my neighborhood, sisters are still wearing their hair in these natural styles.

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  4. Great job. Like Vanessa, I love getting a perspective that I could not have appreciated without your post! Love having you in the doll family.

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