Cathy Resmer created an audio slideshow about sculptor Jennifer Stocks-Dearborn's "memorial dolls."
It features Jennifer Stocks-Dearborn, a Jefforsonville sculptor who makes realistic clay babies for people whose infants have died. Her own daughter died of SIDS in 2000.
Leon Thompson wrote a story about her for this week's paper, but I thought we could do more with the images of the dolls. Stocks-Dearborn refers to them as "creepy, naked babies," and they are indeed creepy. And also beautiful. And sad.
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As a former practitioner in the medical field who has seen more than my share of preemies (real ones), I am unavoidably creeped out by these things, not to mention the people who buy them. I've read the other discussions about people having their cars busted into by cops who thought that their little surrogates were real babies and wondered how the hell they could not know that somebody would try and break in and 'save' the little human larva in peril. But I suppose if these women were crazy enough to think these rubber ringers were cute, they would be ditzy enough to leave them on the seat. Just as well they DON'T have any real ones ( I hope ).
On the other hand, think about how useful an ultra-realistic 'reborn' could be as a social engineering tool. How many interesting 'experiments' could we invent where a stiff preemie, perhaps with a little blue rouge, could trigger a reaction in the already borderline hysterical? I may be sick, but I didn't spend hours and hours in my den perfecting the art of dead baby 'reborning' as a home-based business. I'm just encouraging others to use their imaginations in developing creative alternative uses for little horrors that already exist. They're just dolls, even though a step or two away from taxidermy.
If you watched the slideshow, you would see that the dolls she makes are small enough to fit in the palm of one's hand. They are not life-sized "reborn" dolls like the ones you seem to be referring to.
Some of them certainly look life-sized at the end of slideshow. Either way, it's still creepy and sad...
Okay. While I can see how this could be slightly "creepy", if you've ever had the misfortune of losing your baby, say he was stillborn, you don't get a birth certificate, let alone a ceremony commemorating the life that was lost. You don't get anything to help with closure. I say, if this helps someone who has been through a trauma, then who the hell are you to call that "creepy"?
I make these life size reborns and for me it's just a hobby!