Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Quiz: Doll or Baby?
















Can you tell which of the photos is of a child and which is of a doll?

The one on the left is Izzie, the February winner of a child pageant photo contest in the 0-18 months category! The one on the right is Charli, a doll sold on Ebay for $606.06. Charli is a product of reborning where great efforts are made to create a doll that looks exactly like a newborn while Izzie is a child whose photo has been retouched to match some bizarre glamour-shots-for-tots aesthetic.

Both are adult idealizations of childhood that create something unreal and monsterous. When I look at Boyo I am torn between trying to absorb as much 'baby' as I can because I know it goes so fast and being insanely curious about what he will grow into. It would be great if years from now I could come back and hold him as a baby for a few minutes. My sister once mentioned how cool it would be if you could look at a baby and imagine what they would be like as an adult the same way you can look at an adult and imagine what they were like as a baby. I guess this is what these age maps are trying to get at but they also end up looking creepy.











Thanks to BoingBoing for the pageant photography and age map info.

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