ARTICLE - $12,000 FAKE BABY ARE THE NEWEST MOM CRAZE

$12,000 Fake Babies Are the Newest Mom Craze

July 5, 2011

by Lauren At Parenting.com

 Fear not, grown-ups, you are not too old to play with baby dolls. Forget snagging your daughter’s Cabbage Patch Kid from its tea party; you can have a lifelike “reborn doll” instead, reports FoxNews.com, available for anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Yep, you read that right—they can sell for more than $12,000. “Reborns” are realistic-looking baby dolls—weighted and stuffed to feel cuddly and baby-like, available with rooted head and eyelash hair (the rooting—or application of hair—can take days), manicured and varnished baby nails, open nostrils, and even a simulated heartbeat, magnetic paci and magnetic hair ribbon. You can even order a preemie doll that comes delivered with an incubator and IVs.

 

 Younger women are apparently buying the dolls to satisfy untapped maternal instincts, whether they’ve lost a pregnancy or they’re not ready for real-life mamahood, while older women may invest in them when their children leave for college. (For the latter, custom-made dolls can be made to look like a woman’s own baby, born 20 years earlier.) Regardless of the purchaser’s age, these dolls aren’t collector items; most of these women treat reborn dolls like real babies, taking them on walks and strapping them into high chairs and car seats.

 

 This might seem a bit kooky (especially the $12,000 price tag part) but I'm hesitant to judge reborn doll owners. If it helps someone who is distraught after a miscarriage or is unable to conceive, then I'd say it serves a very unique purpose for women who want a very expensive hobby. I'd just hope the fake diaper changes and feedings wouldn't get in the way of the real world.

 

 Do you think these dolls are out-of-control ridiculous? Or do you see why some women might want one?

ARTICLE - FAKE BABIES, FAKE LIVES

Fake Babies, Fake Lives

By Dr. Keith Ablow

Published June 28, 2011

FoxNews.com

According to recent news reports, elaborate fake babies—called “reborn dolls”—are becoming popular with adult women.
The dolls, which can cost more than $12,000 (but often sell for several hundred or a few thousand dollars)—have extremely realistic hair and incredibly lifelike facial features and skin tone, thanks to many hours spent by artists who paint them, complete with one-of-a-kind birthmarks—and painstakingly apply their locks and lashes. Some of the dolls are made to look exactly like premature babies and delivered with an incubator and even with IVs.
Some younger women claim the dolls satisfy their maternal needs. Some middle-aged women claim the dolls comfort them as their children leave for college. Indeed, companies will supply custom-made dolls that closely resemble a woman’s own baby—born twenty years before.
It would be one thing if women were buying “reborn dolls” out of morbid curiosity or a passion to collect them (like Hummel figurines). But women are taking their dolls out in strollers (no kidding) and strapping them into car seats for trips to the mall. Fortunately, they don’t actually believe their “babies” are real. That would be a true psychotic delusion. But they are able to suspend disbelief and play with them as though they are real—kind of like believing in a movie while you are watching it..
While this may seem like a harmless fad, when taken with other evidence that we prefer fantasy to fact, I see this as the latest symptom that our species is losing its grip on reality, in a wholesale fashion. Increasingly, we are loath to accept our own life stories, and work through the inevitable painful chapters, in order to achieve real personal growth. People who are dissatisfied with who they are can now pretend they are entirely different people on secondlife.com. Children who might otherwise have to establish real relationships with pets, can adopt animated ones on clubpenguin.com.
Teenagers who haven’t seen the world at all can wear tee-shirts from trendy retailers emblazoned with logos of hotels and restaurants in exotic, far-off locales (hotels and restaurants which, by the way, may not even exist). Many millions of people can sterilize their life stories into Facebook profiles and each effortlessly gather hundreds or thousands of “friends” (not one of whom need necessarily be a genuine friend, at all). Politicians who choose not to address real threats to our economy can print money and prop up failed or fledgling industries. And, now, women who might have integrated the end of their childbearing years (or their inability to ever have children) into their self concepts and found new ways of truly expressing themselves, can dodge that journey by ordering fake babies and “nurturing” them.
“Reborn dolls,” seen this way, are closer to drugs than they are to collectibles. Like street drugs, they reduce anxiety by substituting an illusion. But, like every anesthetic, they only delay the inevitable reckoning with anxieties everyone must face. A woman who uses a fake baby to treat questions she has about her value as a human being after her childbearing years is actually dodging those questions. And, like every artificial way of avoiding discomfort, nurturing a fake baby will only increase that discomfort, in the longer run.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/06/28/fake-babies-fake-lives/#ixzz1tboBwIzW

ARTICLE - GRIEVING MOTHER ADOPTS LIFELIKE DOLLS

Grieving mothers adopt life-like dolls 2011 05 30
By Beatrice Debut | YahooNews.ca

Weighing five kilos (11 pounds), with perfectly combed hair and eyes closed in sleep, Abby looks like a baby girl. But she is a doll, adopted by a grieving mother to help come to terms with the loss of a child.
"She reminds me of my daughter as an infant," said Eve Hasty, a 57-year-old American who bought Abby from a British company for 300 dollars (210 euros).

 The retired driver who lives in Oklahoma lost her daughter to leukaemia when she only seven.

She has a surviving son in his 30s who has provided her with an eight-year-old granddaughter, but she finds the doll -- which she acquired in 2009, three decades after losing her daughter -- comforting.
"I just get a type of serenity about me when I hold her, I change her clothes," she told AFP.

Hasty has bought Abby a wardrobe full of outfits, including a tiny pair of Nike trainers that she could never have afforded to give her children.
"When my daughter was born, money was tight, we had a budget. This time, I could be extravagant. I went shopping like you would have thought I was having triplets. That was therapeutic," she said.
Her case is far from unique.

Nikki Hunn, the 35-year-old British designer who created Abby, said most of her clients are collectors. But she has made half a dozen "reborn babies" for bereaved mothers as the trend, which began in the United States, moved to Britain and Australia, but is creeping elsewhere.

As the niche market grew, a professional association, the International Reborn Doll Artists, was created in 2005 to promote "cutting edge" techniques in the craft of creating these uncannily life-like creatures. The IRDA has drawn up its own code of ethics, which includes "speaking honourably of every doll that has been sculpted, manufactured or reborn", according to its website. It also holds annual conventions, the next one in California in June.


Not all reborns are custom-made. Today, hundreds can be found for sale on websites like eBay -- including different ethnic models and even a reborn baby orangutan -- with starting bids that can run up to 800 and 900, even 3000 dollars.

Creating each doll is painstaking work, but the results are astonishing.
The plastic limbs come as close as is possible to human flesh, filled with beads to ensure the required weight. The ’skin’ is coloured at the cheeks and eyes are made puffy like those of newborn babies.

Nails are drawn onto tiny fingers, thin strands of mohair are sewn into the scalp and a glistening touch of saliva at the mouth completes the effect.
The dolls are disturbingly real, and that’s the intention. One client even gave Hunn a picture of a baby to copy.

"I had a couple of comments: ’Oh my God, they look so realistic’, ’Get that thing away from me, they creep me out’," Hasty admitted.
But she finds this offensive, saying: "I take it personally, it’s like being told your child is creepy."

She rarely takes Abby outside her home, except to show her to friends who have never seen her before.
"The majority of people just have reborns to hold or display in a crib, cot or pram" at home, Hunn told AFP at a trade show for the dolls in Brentwood, outside London.

However, she says some women do take them outside and even on holiday abroad, "maybe because they are somewhere unknown".

Psychologists are divided on the benefits of such substitutes.
Ingrid Collins, a consultant psychologist at the London Medical Centre, says a fake baby "could create more problems then it solves".
"When you have mourned the death of the child, what do you do? Do you bury it again?" she told AFP.

"If people naturally want to care for something and if they have a lot of love to give and no baby to give it to, there are lots of living souls who do need that love and attention."

But Sandra Wheatley, a psychologist specialising in family issues, says a "reborn baby" could be helpful as a "physical tool to help them mourn the one that they have lost".

"It allows them to adjust slowly at their own pace to a situation that they do not want to be in," she said. "The use of the doll as a transitional tool could be a very healthy thing, as long as it does not go on too long."

Hasty says she is well aware of what Abby is. "I am not confused, I don’t think she is real," she said.

But she stressed: "To me she is not a doll, she is so much more. I don’t have to worry about her dying. I know she is not going to get sick and die. It takes such a pressure off."

Article from: ca.news.yahoo.com

NEWS - SNOOKI & JWOWW FAKE BABIES FOR FAKE REALITY SHOW

 Snooki & Jwoww Fake Babies for Fake Reality Show

 

3/22/2012  BY Johnny Lopez

 

 

 i wonder whos doll that is, wouldnt that be awesome to be able to say a celebrity bought your art? lol

 Only one of them is really pregnant at the moment, but Snooki and Jwoww both got practice being moms as they were spotted holding fake babies while filming their new "reality" TV show in Jersey City on Thursday.

For once, these two really did get all dolled up.

 

 

is this becoming a trend among celebrities? they purcahse reborns to either "get practice" with 'mothering' or to throw off the paparazi???

id LOVE to have someone famous ask me to make them a doll...

 

ANY TAKERS???? IM AVAILABLE! just email me! 

MICHELLE

ARTICLE - THE HUMANISTIC VALUE OF REBORN DOLLS

The Humanistic Value Of Reborn Dolls

 

Posted by Edward Spacey on Sep 5th, 2010

The process of creating reborn baby dolls like the Middleton dolls is not easy at all.  It needs the attention from a very creative artist who really knows how to sculpt real baby faces and mix the right color to get the skin tone of a real baby.  The skin of the doll, for example, is not evenly colored and is actually the result of repeated process of painting.  That is why you can see that a realistic doll doesn’t have an even skin tone because as normal human being, babies never had a perfect skin tone in the first place.
Due to the magnificence of a realistic doll, the demand for it becomes huge over time.  Many people would never notice the difference when looking at a reborn doll even from a close distance.  However, if someone told you that it is actually a doll, you may be surprised and may want to know whether the doll is breathing.  The marvellous thing about the doll is that you can actually fool people by making the doll breathe like normal babies.  It does not mean that you are giving real life to it, but you can actually make it look as if it is really breathing with the help of certain gadgets.
Ooak baby dolls can be very expensive and the price may go up to five thousand dollars per piece if it is very good in quality.  However, you can find cheaper versions of the realistic dolls and these are perfect to be given away as Christmas gifts.  If you are buying the doll for yourself, why not get the expensive version?  You’ll be glad that you order one because they can really make you feel like a real mother.  If you haven’t experienced changing diapers, feeding, bathing and humming lullabies for a baby, this is the right moment for you to do so even though it is just a realistic baby doll.

ARTICLE - THE 7 MOST UNINTENTIONALLY CREEPY PLACES ON THE INTERNET (yes, Reborns is in the list)

The 7 Most Unintentionally Creepy Places on the Internet

By: Nick Coffin,  Derek James October 26, 2010

#7  Edarem

#6 -REBORNDOLLS.com

#6.

Reborn Dolls

Reborn-Baby.com is the website of an artist who displays and sells her handcrafted baby dolls, called "Reborn Babies," and don't worry, folks, it's not just a creepy name.

That does no justice to the true horror of the thing.

The glossy, dead eyes, the disturbing attention to detail -- even mapping out individual veins below the skin -- an unquestionably talented artist has used her gift to conquer the uncanny valley and rule it with an iron fist from atop Mount Soul-Rape in Involuntarily Urination Castle. To fully impress upon you the scale of their horror, there's not much we can say that the images don't scream inside of your mind with a thousand ghostly voices:

Here's one, right before it turns its gaze to look upon you, and begins singing.

The eyes -- it's always the eyes. They do not see, and yet they know all!

Oh, God, we were wrong: The hands. How are the hands worse than the eyes?!

#5-BUFFY BOARDS

#4- The Sim City 3000 Utopia

#3-  Louisville Free Face

#2-  Humanbeing151/insomniac

and

#1- "Kerry's TV, Mask & Lycra Page"

moral of this post...at least reborn dolls wernt number one on creepiness value...lol.
as a small side note this article was written over a year ago and the "creepiness" value hasnt changed much...allot of education is needed i guess...lol

MICHELLE

ARTICLE - (Written As A Joke)- REBORN DOLL MAKER ARRESTED ON COCAINE CHARGES

Reborn doll maker arrested on cocaine charges
Posted by Pheme 

on January 12th, 2009 

and filed under Reborn News -  

Written as a Joke about Reborn dolls

MILTON, FL – A Santa Rosa woman is being held on suspicion of international drug trafficking at the Milton Police Department. Wanda Achers was arrested Sunday night after a search warrant led to the recovery of $25,574, 1.5 kilos of cocaine, and 12 collector’s “reborn” dolls filled with cocaine, ready for sale.
This is the third in a recent series of arrests that focus on the use of children’s toys in the trafficking of cocaine. “We have been suspicious of these types of dolls for some time now,” said DEA Special Agent Bartholomew Halston. “Any internet doll sale that yields more than $900 goes onto our watch list. We’ve compiled quite a lengthy list over the last five years, but very few leads actually result in an arrest.” Halston says he is always surprised that someone is willing to pay up to $1000, sometimes more, for a plastic doll, but is relieved that most dolls are not filled with cocaine.
Reborn dolls are created from vinyl kits that have been painted to look exceptionally realistic and are popular among collectors. Ultra-fine glass granules are often used to fill the hollow limbs of the dolls to add a genuine weight and feel to the finished product. The limbs make an excellent receptacle for storing and shipping drugs.
Halston says he became suspicious of Achers after she sold a doll, which he described as “thoroughly average” for an astonishing $26,000. “I believe an artist should be well-compensated for their craft, but when a doll that looks like it has been painted by a child sells for that amount, an investigation is more than
Halston wants to send a clear message to other housewives and homemakers who might be considering using Ebay and other internet auction spots as a way to peddle illicit material. “Look, we’ve seen it all, hashish oil in perfume bottles, MDMA in bubble gum dispensers, and doll babies filled with coke and heroin. There’s nothing you can think of [to sell drugs] that won’t get you caught.”
Also found during the raid was a large stack of cease and desist letters written on phony legal letterhead, but officials are not ready to relate the findings to drug activity. “It seems Ms. Achers was angry at a lot of different internet people, and was trying to name some of them in defamation lawsuits,” commented Halston. “It’s possible that the people named in the bogus lawsuits are those who notified the DEA about her drug dealings in the first place. We’re looking into it.”