LOVE DOLLS

Love dolls?
Love dolls.

The first may be an innocent question someone asks a child. The second might be a statement of sexual preference.

Some people may frown upon the notion of substituting lifelike adult female dolls for the genuine flesh and blood models when seeking intimacy. But, according to Toshi Maeda's news report, "Japan's lonely hearts turn to dolls for sex, company" the popularity of life-sized, anatomically correct female sex dolls has now extended beyond the 1970's target market, handicapped men.

"Orient Industry Co. now makes 80 dolls a month in eastern Tokyo factory to nine designs that sell for between $850 and $5,500 each. The more expensive models are made of silicon and have 35 movable joints.

"Nearly all of the people who buy these dolls are single men and about 60 percent of them are over the age of 40, a company official said.

"'Nowadays, women are sometimes more dominant than men in the real world, and they don't always pay attention to men,' said Hideo Tsuchiya, the company's president.

"'More and more men are finding themselves miserable so we're making these dolls in support of men.'

One 45-year-old man who uses the pseudonym Ta-Bo explains, "'A human girl can cheat on you or betray you sometimes, but these dolls never do those thing. They belong to me 100%,' says the engineer who has spent more than 2 million yen ($16,000) over the past decade on the dolls."

Love dolls today no longer have the appearance of crude, plastic blow-ups. They are a far cry from dolls of childhood, the Raggedy Anne's and Cabbage Patch's or even those G.I. Joes we may recall. Will women increasingly worry that their own droopy, lumpy, aging bodies can't compete with these perfect silicone specimens? Or, like men, will women see the advantages of the plastic mistresses?

Where will it all lead?

Is it fantasy we fear? Or is it the fear that we can't control others who choose to live in fantasy? Does the attachment for love dolls and for dolls we loved as children spring from the same emotional needs? Or are love dolls symptomatic of sexual deviance ?

Perhaps, both children and adults simply have the same basic needs for companionship and love.