The Pull String Companion Series

JCPenney Portraits, Photographs, 2019.

The idea of Queer kinship, or unique intergenerational systems of caring and belonging not based on traditional family structures, along with the belief that objects hold parts of our herstories, causes me to envision Dolls as trans-animate objects of Queer legacy.  A trans-animate object is one that is energized with the soul conveyed from another body.  Who loved you before, Babydoll?  What did they share with you and how did you care for them?  The stories of our lives wait within our bodies and in the bodies of our objects, activated with the pull of a string, or the turn of a knob.  Our kin must only imagine how we once were loved and ask how we want to be cared for now in order that we may belong.

I am interested in the mechanics, aesthetics, and purposes of mid-century American dolls.  The Mattel Say ‘n’ See (1965) and the IDEAL Little Lost Baby (1968) each have interior devices that move their faces when the user pulls a cord or turns a knob.  They cry, sleep, smile, blink, and their soft plastic lips move when talking.  Through unthinking mechanics, these dolls emote.  

The Capitalist aim for dolls of the Baby Boom, post-WWII era was to train young [girls] to be mothers and further habitualize the nuclear family towards national productivity and power.  My own mother grew up with these dolls during that time, and I unexpectedly found Sandra and Pamela at a treasure shop in Tucson.  As a 30-something non-binary, polyamorous, Queer dyke, I practice reimagining these two dolls, not as my children, but as Queer kin.  I feel my role is simply to ensure that they are respected for where they have been and that I help them to feel alive.