And, though she says her two adult daughters aren’t fussed by her collecting – she’s been into the hobby for most of their lives – her husband will occasionally let slip a derisive remark during disagreements. She doesn’t take the dolls out in public, like some collectors do. “I’m not that collector.”ĭeeply entrenched as she is in the online spaces, this is a hobby she keeps mostly to herself offline. “There are collectors that love to role-play,” she says. When I timidly ask about a baby bottle –white with what appears to be formula – perched alongside a tube of diaper ointment and talc, I’m assured that they’re all just props.
Scallop-collared ensembles by the French children’s clothier Jacadi hang on tiny hangers. There’s a rocking chair and a crib, a changing table and a dresser. Monroe is one of two dolls currently on display in the powder pink nursery where Eldred shoots her videos (she now has some misgivings about the color choice “It doesn’t always film too well,” she admits). Like a fat baby’s face.įake babies, real love: the women who care for lifelike baby dolls - video
HYPER WORLD SKIN
I press, gently, to feel the skin yield beneath my fingertips. “See how, if you press down on her arm, it takes a second for the skin to settle?” asks Eldred. The current star of Eldred’s YouTube channel, a reborn named Monroe, was made by a husband and wife team of dollmakers whose unique silicone feels remarkably like skin to the touch. Many of the latest dolls are custom-shaped from proprietary silicone blends and poured into molds that, in some instances, have been sculpted in the likeness of real newborns. The proliferation of these lifelike dolls has led to innovations in the dolls’ creation. Today, more than 30,000 people subscribe to her YouTube channel, where videos of her cuddling, changing and talking about dolls have amassed more than 14,450,000 views. In the more than two decades since Eldred discovered these dolls, the rise of social media has expanded the number of worldwide collectors by an order of magnitude. While she’s bought and sold dozens of other reborns since, she still has her first. Though she agonized over its $100 price tag, she couldn’t get the doll out of her head. “I’d never seen or heard of anything like it,” she recalls. In the shape of its eyes, the doll bore a striking resemblance to Eldred’s daughter Lexi as a baby. Its torso had been weighted with flour Crayola box approximations of flesh tones were painted over in the bruised pulp palate of living human skin. Stripped of its factory-made features, this doll had been remodeled by an artist – or, in the parlance of collectors, reborn – to better resemble an actual infant. It was on eBay, way back in 1999, that Eldred found the doll that would change her life. Eldred bought her first doll on eBay in 1999. Kellie Eldred outside the nursery she built for her reborn doll.
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