Member-only story
This Is Us
Welcome to the Uncanny Valley of ‘Reborn’ Baby Dolls
Thousands of people collect hyperrealistic vinyl babies — but how do they sleep at night?
I want to stroke Alma’s silky wisp of hair, put ointment on her peeling ankles, kiss the place where a drop of blood has dried on her teeny heel. I keep scrolling. Eloisa stares at me with vacant green eyes, her fists delightfully wrinkled but eerily glossy. I keep scrolling. Red-eyed and deathly pale, Isadora makes my heart stop. Beneath her button nose, the minuscule mouth dribbles blood, sports fangs.
“Adopted,” the caption reads. Painted and designed by an 11-year-old — under her mother’s supervision — Vampire Isadora was sold at a discount.
At reborns.com, anyone can become a happy parent. With the help of a drop-down menu, you can narrow the 657 lifelike doll options by price ($100–$5,000), ethnicity, gender, eye material (glass, acrylic, polyglass). Select “boo boo,” and the faces scrunch into pouts. Choose “realborn,” and the vampires, chimpanzees, and waxy misproportioned monstrosities all blessedly disappear — replaced by something which, in its own way, is even eerier: dolls made from 3D-printed babies. (Where do the models for the dolls come from? Bountiful Babies, the top supplier of 3D-printed doll…
