"Ball-jointed doll" is a descriptor that can be applied to any doll, past or present, made with balls inserted into the joint sockets for human-like movement. However, today the acronym BJD (sometimes ABJD) tends to refer to ball-jointed dolls produced in Asia, or those made in a similar style to such dolls. These dolls often function as heavily customizable art objects for rather than toys. BJDs come in a variety of styles - realistic, anime, anthropomorphic - and sizes, from a tiny 4 inches (12 cm) to 27.5 inches (70 cm) and up. Since they are handcrafted, BJDs can be expensive, ranging from $200 to $500 and more, even before including clothing, hair, and costs like custom face design ("face-ups"), which are occasionally available as add-ons from the company or can be purchased separately. Big-name BJD companies include Volks, SOOM, LUTS, DollZone, and Iple House.
My introduction to BJDs was through following a Tumblr user called puppet who has been sharing photos of a variety of dolls since 2008. Being a fan of the big-eyed Blythe is what originally had brought me to puppet's site, but soon I was also intrigued by these other types of realistic-looking dolls that I had never seen anywhere before. It didn't fully occur to me that there were male BJDs available as well as the female dolls I was used to seeing until browsing around last year and finding ~Deleted Dollshe*'s site, where the dolls look like male fashion models and are photographed well in very human poses and natural environments.
The idea of waify, ethereally pretty boy-dolls that I could customize to my liking really appealed to my own aesthetic viewpoint, the more that I thought about it. I thought back to how I had wished as a kid to have a guy doll that actually looked cute to me, that didn't look like Barbie's Ken. Before long, I was conducting research on the Den of Angels forums and saving up for a Dollshe BJD, making my purchase in June and, over the past few months, slowly assembling a wardrobe for "Raphael", my Dollshe Hound. Now that I have my own, I appreciate ever-more the painstaking process that certain other BJD owners go through for their photo sessions and crafting just the doll they are seeking.
Here I have gathered 25 of my favorite male BJD pictures. There are some people, even within the hobby, that find certain dolls a little uncanny; I have chosen to deliberately emphasize this unsettling aspect with many of the photos I selected. There is quite a diverse range of looks for these dolls and a number of eerie looks and settings, along with the more conventionally attractive, represented. All photos are Creative Commons, linked and attributed to the source.
Image may be NSFW.
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1 '8' by Jimena del Rio Torres
2 'took him outside' by Helter Skelter
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3 'Being Dramatic' by Roxy the Killer
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4 'hey)))' by Ekaterina
5 'mopey boytoys' by Joanídea Sodret
6 'skull' by Ekaterina
7 'Blaine' by Amanda Hatfield
8 'Untitled' by Ms. Stein
9 'new boy at home' (?) by Bloody Mordred
10 'A S F I X I A' by RÅPSΦĐIÅ
11 '.' by ♕ A l v i s 0 0 2 ♕
12 'A sweet skin' by Alléagorie
13 'IMG_6834' by Sleep Owl
14 'Life in a Box' by Creative Torpor
15 'Jared' by Agathe'
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16 '❤ by T.Joe'
17 'Wahoko&Kohoko_2013_001' by Neocrinus
18 '.' by Fernanda
19 'My boy.' by Ran
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20 '☥' by T.Joe
21 'Pair of Dollshe lads' by Tenuki Handcrafts
22 'J' by HolyGenius
23 'Hiroshii' by Charlieishness
24 'how long am I going to stay on my knee?' by Shari Chankhamma
25 'Damien, the first of three demon BJDs' by Erin
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p.s. Hey. This weekend, the very cool, smart, generous Marilyn Roxie returns to the guest-hosting workplace to give us a fantastic look at those amazing dolls up there. Enjoy both them and Marilyn's filtering of them, and please express your enjoyment and/or curiosity, questions, resistance, or whatever in wordage if you will and if you don't mind, and thanks. And, wow, thank you so much for this, Marilyn! So, tomorrow I'm heading somewhat south of Paris to this city called Poitiers to perform in 'Them', the dance/theater piece I made with Ishmael Houston-Jones and Chris Cochrane, and I'll be back in Paris on Wednesday night. As far as I can tell, I should be able to do the p.s. as usual while I'm there, but if some form of internet impairment awaits me unexpectedly, I'll let you know by some means or other. ** Zach, Hi, Zach. Really lustrous Mr. Toad's Wild Ride memory. I'm so into its formal genius that I forget it can be believable. I'd love to write a novel set entirely inside the ride. I feel like it could kick Hyrule's and Oz's asses. Don't think I'll ever do it though. What is the ... nature (?), subject of your thesis? Something related to those books you're reading? They are a curious trio. But there is something connective there somehow, maybe, hm, but I can't find it quickly. Great weekend to you, sir! ** MyNeighbourJohnTurtorro, Hi. The Gisele film is exciting, yeah, to me anyway. A lot of really cool possibilities. And it's the first time I'll be collaborating on a text for her, and my collaborator is kind of a visionary, so it's thrilling and challenging in bunch of new, great ways. Thanks about 'Kindertotenlieder'. That's my favorite work I've ever made with Gisele. The 'Sinking Belle' part is great, yeah. The Glasgow move sounds really, really good then. It's interesting that the art/music scene is better there than in Edinburgh. I didn't know that. At what venue does your boyfriend work? I think 'Ktl' went well in Glasgow, or it felt like it did, but, then again, the venue never asked us back, so who knows, ha ha. Bon weekend! ** David Ehrenstein, Cool that you interviewed Caven. She seems really regal in the clips. Yes, email, I'll write back to you today. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. 'IC' is really good. Yeah, I recommend it. I hope more of his stuff gets translated. There's a terrific piece by Schuhl in the new issue of Hedi's magazine 'Animal Shelter'. In fact, that whole new issue is really great and a must-acquire/read. I guess I don't know enough about Arcade Fire to have picked up on their attitude. Overly serious, yeah, okay, that comes across. That quality is one of the things that bug me about the so much beloved Radiohead, and in fact I've probably brought down a lot of Radiohead defending on my head just by saying that, oops. ** Torn porter, Hi, man. Thanks a lot for the links to Ratty's stuff. I'll have my way with it this weekend, cool. Freaking out? In the good or bad way? 'Videodrome, sure. I haven't watched it in ages, but, yeah, I loved it. It's probably my favorite Cronenberg, push come to shove. Do/did you love it? ** Steevee, I can see all of that about Rush and why that would make them intriguing. I was into glam and art rock and punk, etc. when they were in their young prime, and their post-prog or prog-continuance stuff was really, really not cool, and I suppose I still have that attitude's hangover, I don't know. ** Bill Porter, Hi, Bill. Oh, thanks a lot, very cool about my blog's impact on your reading. That's a huge compliment. That's so interesting that you grew up listening to Etheridge, kd Lang, and all of that. My memory says that Joe Jackson was actually pretty good and consequently underrated, but I'm trusting my memory there. Yeah, during that time I was way into the more experimental or underground stuff, so I wasn't so into sincerity's representation. Sting is a lifelong ugh for me. I even hated the Police. Life's so weird and interesting. Oh, great about sharing your piece on here! We haven't had a writers workshop weekend here in ages. Fantastic! I'll set it up for next Saturday, a week from today. Really, thank you! And I've got the story scheduled for a reading by moi on my train trip to Poitiers tomorrow. Great, Bill. You have the best weekend there could possibly be, okay? ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Glad you liked it. 'University' is a nice word, isn't it? Hunh. 'Like a mystic mountain': that's really nice. I was in your dream? Wow. Yeah, 'Relax' does sound like something I would say under those circumstances. Well, hopefully in a more nuanced way or something. Cool. You have a fine weekend too. ** Misanthrope, You think? Shame on me? That makes sense. I'm cowering. Can you tell? Am I telling the truth? Am I lying? You will never know. Words are weird. Oh, it's an Imagine Dragons song? Maybe that was the stalker's secret message, i.e, that ... well, that ... no, I can get any secret meaning out of that song. Maybe he knew that I'm into deconstructing things for secret clues and meaning and he picked Imagine Dragons because they are so subtext-free and he was just trying to drive me crazy. Watching porn late at night is like drinking a double expresso after 10 pm or something? ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Oh, that's interesting because I especially liked that Icarus track on that recent Wire Tapper. I should know Basil Twist given that I'm working on two Gisele pieces in which ventriloquism heavily figure, so I feel shame, and I will acquire expertise on Mr. Twist to best of my and the internet's asap. Thanks! You may just have saved my neck. Be a consummate weekender until Monday, okay? ** That seems to be it aka that seems to be all of you. Marilyn Roxie has you incredibly covered, blog-wise, for the next 48 hours. Please make the best of a very awesome situation. See you almost for sure on Monday.