“Reborning” | Hobby doll, care doll

Caroline Lemieux lost Jakob in utero at six months of pregnancy. However, in her heart, it is he whom she has been pampering and cuddling again since September 2020. Only, his skin is made of vinyl, his hair, of mohair (fiber from the angora goat), and his eyes, of glass. .

Charles-Eric Blais-Poulin
The Press

“For me, Jakob reborn is exactly the replica of baby Jakob. He comforts me completely, even though I often think of my son. I managed to mourn thanks to him. »

“Jakob reborn” is a hyper-realistic doll, as hundreds of them are “adopted” each year in Quebec. A little-known and sometimes disdained phenomenon, “reborning” has experienced unprecedented enthusiasm since the start of the pandemic.

Back at work in the tourism sector, Caroline admits to being bored of her cherubs. “It’s so comforting. I have a hard day, I happen to work, I take one and I change it. When she is gripped by anxiety, she sometimes lays Mika, one of her favorites, on her stomach. “I call him my little therapist. »

When we called, Caroline’s family, who has a spouse and two “real” children, had just welcomed an eleventh plastic baby doll. She makes a point of specifying it: “I am sane and I carry out a beautiful career. »

Many women, like her, consider themselves above all as “reborn mothers” – they have a strong attachment to their children – and not as “collectors”, who accumulate dolls for decorative or aesthetic purposes.

“I don’t want to put them in a showcase on display,” says Caroline. They are in car seats, in bassinets; the two largest are in the park. »

Long and expensive

Last September, the opening event of the Nurserie des petits matelots, in Shawinigan, brought together some fifty collectors and reborn moms, a few dads and more than 200 dummy babies.

A “nursery” here refers to an online store where a craftswoman exhibits her hyper-realistic works, often accompanied by a birth certificate and a starter set: diapers, clothes, pacifiers, etc.

Head of a family of 4,500 Barbies in her early childhood, Nathalie Thibodeau accumulated 35 “reborn” little ones before reselling them and launching her own workshop.

“I’m a very healthy entrepreneur mentally,” says Nathalie Thibodeau, contacted in Florida. I don’t have an anxiety problem, but I find the dolls adorable. We develop not only a passion, but also bonds of friendship with other collectors. »

The founder of the Nurserie des petits matelots estimates that today she shares her hobbies with around forty “reborners” colleagues, compared to perhaps fifteen before the arrival of COVID-19.

How to “revive” a doll? You must first order a “kit” online which includes two legs, two arms and a head, pieces modeled on the proportions of real babies. Then the reborners get to work; they assemble them, weight them, paint them and bake them. And paint them again. And cook them again. And even. Objective: to bring the fake to the real as close as possible.

Vinyl dolls – watch out for industrial knockoffs – start at around $500, while silicone ones, which are more realistic but more fragile, retail for up to $5,000. “It takes a budget,” agrees Caroline Lemieux. I have to reason with myself because there are always good ones coming out. We also have to dress them, buy pacifiers, etc. Me, I’m a bit of a maniac: I want the pacifiers to match. »

What to enrich the “reborners”? That no. The cost of the materials – the glass eyes alone cost up to $50 – and the dozens of hours to perfect a doll – the hair is grafted one by one – stand in the way of any profit motive.

“We don’t even work for $2 an hour,” says Nathalie Thibodeau. We do it out of passion and for the humanitarian side. »

The COVID-19 effect

If she relies on Facebook communities, Nathalie Thibodeau estimates that there are approximately 5,000 aficionados of hyperrealistic dolls in Quebec.

The Sherbrooke resident discovered the existence of dolls larger than life in a television report. She quickly wanted to satisfy her curiosity on the internet: in the early 1990s, collector doll enthusiasts integrated “Hollywood props techniques”, she learned. Then, little by little, this “new art” spread to Europe.

“There are more and more groups, associations of people who adopt dolls, adds Lucie Corriveau, among the first reborners in Quebec. They gather in parks, in restaurants. It elicits reactions. »

Unable to be trained in Quebec, Lucie flew to Normandy in 2009 to take a six-week private course. Thirteen years later, his virtual nursery displays hundreds of creations of all kinds: boys, girls, whites, blacks, mixed race, premature, “old” 4 years old, who measure up to 43 inches . Almost all are adopted on the spot. Other dolls are custom designed.

“Often, I am given photos of a child or a grandchild and I build the baby from that,” explains Lucie Corriveau. Some of his creations have appeared on screen, whether in a film by Jean-Claude Lord or in an episode of The breakawayon TVA.

A hobby like any other

Many people, notes Lucie Corriveau, gossip about this lady who walks her doll almost every day around the Lac des Nations, or at the Carrefour de l’Estrie in bad weather. The lady takes the lead in denouncing the inquisitive looks and comments.

On several occasions, Lucie said she was stopped by the police with a doll in her vehicle. Officers believed a flesh-and-blood baby was unsafely housed there. On YouTube, videos explain how to date a doll “neither seen nor known”, another proof that judgments are often feared.

Reborners, moms and collectors all quote a recurring comment: “the dolls look like dead babies”. Just take one in your arms, they say, to dissipate the discomfort.

Exhausted by ignorance around the phenomenon, Nathalie Thibodeau recently published a plea for tolerance on Facebook. “I saw families torn apart because of the reborns,” she told us. It pains me a lot. Parents say, “No, it’s unhealthy. Worse your whores, I don’t go to your house anymore.” I’ve seen sisters, brothers, friends, stop talking to women because they had reborn babies. They found them crazy. I find that really unfortunate. There is a big lack of understanding. »

A doctorate on “reborn” dolls

“It’s going to be creepy for a lot of people. You have to ask yourself why? What’s wrong with that? Do we think it’s because women should have real babies? Emilie St-Hilaire, doctoral student in social sciences at Concordia University, offers a feminist approach to the phenomenon. “It’s not that different from when adults buy model trains or video games. There are a lot of somewhat juvenile hobbies. According to the multidisciplinary artist, whose thesis focuses on the relationships between humans and humanoid objects, “certainly not everyone is interested in reborn dolls who have fertility trauma. As part of her work, funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec, Ms.^me St-Hilaire notably attended the ROSE International Doll Expo, in Utah, where some 500 doll enthusiasts converge each year. Another prejudice to deconstruct: “People don’t believe that they are real babies, as we sometimes show on TV or in movies. It would be more dramatic, but in reality, this is not the case. They know it’s a doll, and that’s what they want. There is a presumption that it is often linked to mental illness. My research aims to undo these kinds of preconceived ideas. »