Skip to main content

Doll Mom

 Fascinating read about doll-moms and how social media responds to them. The logic here makes sense to a certain extent:

“My husband can play with cars, he can play video games, he can play Lego and everybody’s like, ‘That’s so cool,’” says Kiersten. “But the moment I’m like, ‘I play with dolls!’ I’m a weirdo who needs to have a real baby.” 

Maybe its about how far a person takes their play and what kinds of triggers it sets off among those who do not play and cannot understand what drives those that do. And if crossing that line, how much are they willing to share about what they do. Not everyone with a video gaming, or Lego obsession will share details about in casual conversation - a certain degree of trust must be earned and confidence that they will not be judged. It seems the issue at hand here is not so much the fact that a woman finds therapeutic value and satisfaction in being the mother of one or more dolls. It is about what happens when she chooses to share these facts widely - to friends and strangers alike. 

..Part of the visceral discomfort of watching these videos is the fact that they’re made for public consumption in the first place. It points to a bigger conversation happening right now around the ethics of “sharenting”—aka posting sensitive information about kids before they’re old enough to consent, says Jenna Abetz, PhD, an associate professor of communication at the College of Charleston who has studied combative mothering in mommy blogs. Sure, a doll isn’t going to grow up and sue you for violating their medical privacy, but there’s an increasing cultural unease with social posts that feel exploitative

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...
25 comments
Read more