Why Are Dolls So Creepy? Author Maria Teresa Hart Explains

Scary dolls have long been a Hollywood staple—Chucky from Child’s Play, Annabelle from The Conjuring, Talking Tina from The Twilight Zone TV series, M3GAN from the upcoming eponymous movie, and so many others. The question is why?

Author Maria Teresa Hart has an answer. “Dolls are possessed—by our aspirations,” she writes in her new book, Doll (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), which arrives in bookstores on November 3^rd. In this Q & A, Hart tells us why we should read about dolls (even if they give us nightmares), why she chose to include sex dolls and androids in her book, and why we find dolls so creepy.

With Halloween upon us, it’s “spooky season” right now, and lots of people have that dolls-equal-horror connection. What’s behind that?

They are so delightfully spooky, aren’t they? Most people focus on the creep factor of the uncanny valley—something that’s close to being human but still “off” in fundamental ways sets off our alarm and revulsion. But I think it’s more than that. Old dolls show evidence of a life gone by—the handstitched garment, the painted expression, the human hair (in some cases)—these are all things that show fingerprints of another human being, and we’re reacting to that. And maybe on some level we know, given the labor conditions of past eras, these doll factories could have been their own horror show.

Do you agree with master of horror Stephen King, who has said, “Dolls with no little girls around to mind them were sort of creepy under any conditions.”

I love that quote. And I’d say even little girls can be creeped out by their own playthings. I certainly felt both love and the occasional chill toward dolls, especially in that 3 AM window when you think to yourself, “Did that dolly just move?”

Your new book Doll comes out next week. Why should we read a book about these inanimate objects?

I love looking at everyday objects and unpacking the deeper meaning there. And what could be more fascinating—and weird—than dolls? Dolls are these objects of fantasy and play, so by design they’re super entertaining. Yet they’re also containers for all kinds of messages we’re pushing on kids about womanhood and femininity. They’re this amazing lens to look at the world because they reflect class and racial categorizations, beauty standards, sexual fantasy, celebrity, selfhood, and so much more. Some of my early readers never played with dolls or gave them much thought, and they were completely hooked because the topic is so rich.

What called you to write this book?

Like so many little kids, I grew up with dolls and had a real love for them. But when I was 8 years old, my family moved to the DC area where we visited the Smithsonian museums, and that’s when I saw dolls as part of their collection. It was this “ah-ha” moment where I realized my toys were also objects of value and history. And that’s when I became a sort of junior researcher. I wanted to get the backstory behind these playthings. I started to study the Blue Book for antique dolls, going to conventions, trying to absorb all this knowledge. It was the first step in thinking about dolls in this deeper way. But it took me until adulthood to put together this body of knowledge with a feminist analysis.

You look at dolls through a feminist lens, but you also avoid offering simple moral takeaways. What do you think was missing from previous critiques of dolls?

Something I cover in the book is the second-wave feminist protest of the New York City toy fair and Barbie specifically. It’s easy to villainize dolls that uphold, say, really narrow beauty standards. But the truth is, Barbie isn’t a good/bad binary. Because she represents a feminine ideal, she’s a mish-mash of things, like a Hollywood starlet or a supermodel or any other real woman that operates inside a patriarchal system.

When parents ask me, “Is Barbie good? Is she bad?” I just say, “Yes.” Yes to all of the above. But part of what makes her irresistible to children are those gray zones. There’s a Saturday Night Live sketch where someone keeps trying to get little girls to play with an “empowering” pantsuit-clad president Barbie doll and they end up playing with an old broom instead. Kids know when a toy is moral homework.

Dolls are marketed to girls, but children of all genders play with them. Boys and non-binary kids are drawn to them too. Do you think toy companies are finally recognizing this?

[Sighs] In a word, no. Back in the ‘70s there was this song on the “Free to Be You and Me” album called “William Wants a Doll,” and it made the case about how little boys like playing with dolls, too. And here we are some 50 years later, and there’s still is incredible gender divide in the toy aisles and little to no acknowledgment that boys and non-binary kids play with dolls, too. Doll marketing and messages are still aimed at girls.

The truth is toy companies are still companies, and they’re in the business of turning a profit, so they’re usually conservative and late to adopt any social change. Just look at how long it took MattelMAT
to create Black Barbie. They made other “sidekick” Black dolls, but they waited until 1980 to make a Black Barbie. That’s quite a long time after the Civil Rights movement.

You write about sex dolls, androids, bitmoji, mannequins, even Madame Tussaud’s wax figures—things most people wouldn’t necessarily put under the category of “doll.” Why did you choose to include these in the book?

I gotta say, those were some of my favorite sections to work on! The category of “doll” is actually pretty open-ended, and it’s those raw edges where some really interesting stuff comes to light about what we value in women.

Wax figures, for example, are basically giant dolls and a life-size example of the types of celebrity we glorify. We have little doll versions of, say, Queen Victoria or the Spice Girls, and we have their corresponding wax figures at Madame Tussauds. Celebrity is often upheld as being the brass ring of womanhood, typically merging a lot of powerful things together like beauty, youth, talent. But Tussaud (a real person by the way) understood that fame was a rollercoaster ride, and the public loved celebrities at their peak, but they loved them even more when they crashed down low. That rollercoaster ride is a very classic narrative for famous women—the rising star that meets with a bad end. We’re pretty hooked on that narrative, even replaying it with our toys.

Final question: if someone came to your house, would they find some giant “doll room” with floor-to-ceiling dolls?

[Laughs] I wish! I don’t actually have a giant doll collection. I have a handful I still own from my junior-collector days that are all boxed up. My partner doesn’t care for dolls, so they aren’t even on display. And I get it!

But I will say sometimes when I was researching this book, I’d think to myself, “Am I about to spend my entire book advance on dolls?” I still find them so sweet and charming and alluring! I still have that urge to spend my “allowance” on them! And maybe when I get older, I’ll regress back to those days. I could easily become the old lady with a curio cabinet full of vintage Barbies.

Maria Teresa Hart will appear at Word Bookstore in Brooklyn to celebrate the release of her new book. The event is on Thursday, November 3rd, 2022 at 7:00 PM.