When I was a little girl, my baby doll had a penis. Are you shocked?
Or are you completely NOT shocked. Like I was, when I opened up the internet this morning over breakfast, to see that an anatomically-correct boy doll is being sold in the US.
The doll has been very busy causing controversy – he has upset the people of the internet. He is said to be ‘inappropriate’ and there are calls for him to come with a warning label. What would that label say I wonder?
Perhaps the problem is that shoppers couldn’t see the boy bits before buying the doll and, even though the box describes the doll as a ‘boy doll’ who ‘cries when he wees’, were surprised to find that the aforementioned ‘wee’ would be coming from a penis. Why did they think he was crying when he did a wee? Because it was coming from a genderless Ken-like lump?
Or perhaps there was no problem at all, just a bit of clever publicity for the doll’s manufacturer.
Whatever the reason, there’s nothing wrong with a ‘boy’ doll. My boy doll – Jeremy – is still around. He was the last doll I bought before declaring myself too old for such things. I wasn’t really into Barbies, I liked baby dolls. And the more real, the better. Jeremy is pretty real. And I knew this before I bought him because, like all newborns, he came without clothes. And he isn’t the only anatomically correct doll around either – my daughter has a newborn baby girl and her bits look pretty right. Although no pee comes out of her (thankfully – there’s enough mess in my house, thanks very much).
Anyway, I turned out alright.
This is me and my friends checking out Jeremy on my birthday. His clothes are on because it was no big deal that he was a ‘boy’. It is however quite a big deal that I’m wearing a bubble skirt.
And here is my little girl giving him what looks like a sponge bath