Chapter 1: What is the significance of dolls during Christmas?
This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google doc and send me the link. Thanks.
Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link.
But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age.
Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Dani Shapiro.
We were in the car, like a rolling stone came on, and he said, there's a line in there about your mother. And I said, what?
What I would do if I didn't feel like I was being accepted is choose an identity that other people can't have.
I knew something had happened to me in the middle of the night, but I couldn't hold on to what had happened.
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Chapter 2: Where did dolls originate from and how have they evolved?
She's been to space for God's sake. And I think American Girl dolls, there's one girl at least who has a backstory where she has lesbian aunts who live in Australia, randomly enough. And then, of course, Chuck, we couldn't possibly talk about how Earring Magic Ken wasn't a groundbreaking doll. Yeah, I mean, Earring Magic Ken came out in 1993.
You take one look at Earring Magic Ken, and it's pretty clear that it's a queer-coated doll. He has his diamond stud earring in one ear. He's wearing a purple mesh crop top. There was some controversy surrounding the necklace he wore that I won't even get into because this is a Christmas episode, but you can look it up if you want. I saw that too.
And, of course, Mattel was like, that's preposterous. This is a kid's toy. But it was very hot in the gay community, selling out all over the place. Maybe the hottest selling, well, definitely the hottest selling Ken doll of all time. Maybe the best selling of all time, Mattel won't say. But it sold for six months like any ordinary sort of special release Barbie and evidently sold like hotcakes.
Yeah. And one other feature that was often overlooked, he had a pull cord that made him talk. And the only thing he said is, the boys are out tonight. Right. So Chuck, I say we move on to the history of dolls. You want to talk about that or even where the word doll came from? Yeah, this is something I didn't know. It's a doll was a nickname for Dorothy.
I always thought dot was the only nickname for Dorothy. But apparently dating back to like at least the 16th century, there was a weird thing happening where people would substitute L's for R's. So Harold could be Hal, Mary could be Mal or Molly and Dorothy could be doll. Yeah, it was a bigger trend than slap bracelets is today. Oh, wow.
So the earliest use of the word doll goes back to the 1500s. And it was a pet name for a girlfriend or spouse, right? You didn't just have to be named Dorothy and that be your nickname. It was extended. Give me a doll. Yeah. Doll face. Exactly. Right. So you're like you're it's a term of endearment for a girlfriend or a spouse. A century later, it became an insult for a loose woman.
So everybody got dumped, apparently. And then by around 1700, it was finally used to describe a child's toy to say this is a doll. And people are like, well, wait a minute. What about stuffed animals? What about marionettes? And someone said, you think a puppet is a doll? Yeah. What kind of psycho are you? So many people think that they're going to have to explain that on a podcast one day.
Right. They're like, you think a hot dog is a sandwich? Why is that doll got strings coming out of it? Well, speaking of strings, yeah, there's some strings in these dolls, ancient dolls, Egyptian paddle dolls that date back to the Middle Kingdom, like 2000 to 1800 BCE. They were a flat piece of wood, so they weren't, you know, human shaped as far as three dimensionality goes. But.
They were cut like a woman's torso and they had tattoo like designs and hair made up out of bead strings. But archaeologists are like, this isn't really a doll doll. I think it was more like a percussion instrument for like religious rituals. You could shake that thing. They do think in the ancient world that dolls played dual roles.
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Chapter 3: What developmental benefits do dolls provide for children?
All right. I'll take it. All right. We promised talk of Aerosmith and their great, great, great song, Ragdoll. I thought the same thing, too. Come on up and see me. That song's so good. New version of an old song. Oh, I guess that song's okay. That was late Aerosmith. They put out a bunch of songs like that for a while. Oh, I can't imagine how bad the subtext is though. Oh, sure.
I never really thought about that, but you're right. I think, I don't know if there is an Aerosmith song where there wasn't a sexual subtext. I don't think so either. They were really into sex. Oh, no, that Love in an Elevator song. That was just about elevators going up and down. That's right. Sponsored by the Otis Corporation. That's right. Oh, man, I'm glad you could call that up.
Rag dolls, not Aerosmith, but, you know, the little floppy dolls made out of fabric and not, you know, hard dolls that you can bang against the wall. Um, they have been around for a long, long time since the ancient world, but because they were made out of things like, um, you know, cloth and linen and cotton and things like that, they would disappear before our very eyes over thousands of years.
So there's not a ton of examples of those, but there are some, right? Yeah, but it also raises the question, like, how long have humans been playing with dolls? We have no idea for that very reason, because almost certainly dolls would have been made out of perishable materials very early on. But yeah, the oldest we found is 2,000 years old, Chuck. It was found in a trash pile. in Egypt.
And it was linen, stuffed with some papyrus, had some paint on it at one point, but now all that's left, there's a single bead that was once attached to its hair. But it's 2,000 years old, so give it a break, you know? Yeah, sure, of course. But what about in North America? There's a doll that says, I'm the oldest, and everyone says, yes, you are. Yes, that's right.
There is a ragdoll, the oldest ragdoll in North America. It belonged to a little girl who was blind named Clarissa Field from Massachusetts. And the girl, the actual girl was born in 1765. And I think this is a great deep cut band name. She named her doll Bangwell Putt. Yeah, that is a great band name for sure. Because no one will know what it is except for the rare stuff you should know, Lister.
And they'd be like, bruh, you named your band Bangwell Putt after the oldest ragdoll? Or visitors to the Pakumarak Valley Memorial Association in Deerfield, Mass., which is where it's kept now. Yeah, I guess they would know that. But I guess you could call it creepy looking. I didn't find it that creepy. But this dog, this doll has no facial features. There's just a blank face.
But there are 10 individually sewn fingers and thumbs, which might be a reason that young Clarissa, like I mentioned, she was blind. And it might have sort of indicated the importance of touch for her.
Yeah, I saw that the no-face rag doll may have actually evolved out of the tradition from corn husk dolls, which didn't have faces because some of the Northeastern North America tribes had legends about why the corn goddess removed the face of the corn husk doll because she was getting too vain. That's why corn husk dolls don't have a face.
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Chapter 4: How have gender roles influenced the marketing of dolls?
So dollhouses also really kind of came around at this time, too, like the dollhouse as we think about it. Yeah. And that was thanks to the Victorians. And that's why dollhouses are always very nice and big, because they were basically what the Victorian aristocracy thought that houses should look like at the time.
And again, remember, you said that Victorian girls were being trained to how to behave in society through their dolls. Same thing with the dollhouse, too. It's like, here's the scullery. Here's the bathroom with indoor plumbing. Like these are all the things you need to demand and expect when you grow up and get married. Yeah. Ring this bell if you're hungry. All right.
So, you know, we talked a little bit about the complicated history of race and facial features when it comes to race and skin tone and stuff like that with dolls. And so we have a whole kind of robust section here on the history of black dolls because it's a pretty complex story. Yeah. As far as race and self-image goes. Yeah.
The first one we're going to talk about is called the Topsy Turvy doll. It's a really good example because it was a doll that had two heads. It had a long skirt to conceal sort of one side. One head was white. One head was black. And, you know, depending on which way you held the doll, you were playing with a white doll or a black doll. And people, you know, there isn't...
Text that says exactly why this thing was invented. But everyone pretty much agrees that like scholars that have studied this thing is that it originated in the antebellum South. They were made by enslaved black women as dolls for their daughters. And the idea is. hey, we have to take care of the white kids during the day and then we have to take care of our own children at night.
And if dolls are to represent what you are to be doing when you grow up or maybe later on in your life, then you need a two-headed doll to care for the white doll in the day and the black doll at night. Yeah. That's not the worst of how the whole thing started. The Jim Crow South, the Jim Crow era saw the rise of a lot of very racist dolls that were available.
You could buy from catalogs like Montgomery Ward. Which is not surprising, but the thing to understand about that is that this helped lay the groundwork for reinforcing social norms about the inferiority of black people in America and the superiority of white people in America. And it wasn't like, hey, kid, don't forget, black people are inferior, white people superior.
It was much more subtle and much more pervasive than that through dolls. Like the black dolls were not particularly cute. They were sometimes ugly. They certainly weren't accurate representations of black people or black kids. White dolls were. They were very pretty. They were collector's items. They were gorgeous in a lot of cases. They were the doll that you wanted.
And that sent the signal thatā two black kids being raised in America at the time. Like if you're black, you should feel pretty, pretty much about yourself, how you feel about this doll. And you should feel about white people, how you feel about this doll. Very pretty, huh? Yeah, exactly. I mean, it makes it all the more nefarious, I think, because these are children. Right.
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Chapter 5: What are some notable historical dolls and their impact?
It was great. It's not going to replace Duke's for me, but very good mayo. It shouldn't. You can love both. Yeah, I do. I think Kewpie was huge, so huge that it took Mickey Mouse to topple them. Him, her, it, I think. Mickey Mouse is an it. No, no, no, Kewpie. They're both its. Oh, okay. So, yeah. Well, Mickey Mouse is an ow, a mouse. Yeah, but he's in it. He's living in that gutter with a clown.
Okay. In the sewer gutter. So along after that, I think the Kewpie doll was, I mean, I know Steamboat Willie came out in the 20s. I'm not sure when it was actually Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse, right? So Kewpie doll was on top for a while.
But even if Mickey Mouse hadn't come along, Raggedy Ann would have eventually come and pulled little Kewpie doll by her little couple of hairs on the top of her head down from the top spot and took it over. That's right. Raggedy Ann and her little brother Raggedy Andy were big hits. I had Raggedy Ann and Andy when I was little. It was a children's book from cartoonist Johnny Gruelle.
He made it for his daughter. It's very sweet. Dolls came out a couple years later in 1920, but they had movie appearances. They had a TV show. They had a Broadway musical in the 80s. What was it about? I don't really know. Raggedy Ann, I guess. Okay. It was called... It might have been called Raggedy Ann Ragdoll or something Ragdoll. I didn't look too much into it. I don't think it ran too long.
Aerosmith did the score. I'm pretty sure. They did the book, too. So one other thing about Raggedy Ann, you know Annabelle from the Conjuring series? Yeah, I never saw that, but I know what you're talking about. You never saw The Conjuring? Oh! Oh, you're going to like it, dude. It's one of those very few modern, like, good ghost movies. It is good. Like, goose pimple stuff. Good.
I'm going to conjure up some goose pimples for myself then. I think, and The Conjuring 2 is okay, but the first one's very good. I'll be very surprised if you don't like it. I'll check it out. Most of my doll scary movies have been Child's Play and Megan. Okay. Child's Play is coming up. Don't worry about it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Megan was pretty good too. Yeah, Megan was fun. It wasn't so scary.
No, it's no Conjuring for sure. Yeah. So now we come to Betsy Wetsy. Just wait for your chatty Kathy. Let's talk about Betsy Wetsy first. Yeah, Betsy Wetsy was ā well, let's just say this. Betsy Wetsy could drink. Yeah, drink you under the table. Could pee-pee herself. Betsy Wetsy could cry ā I was about to say real human tears, but no. Could cry fake tears. Yeah.
This was from a company called Ideal in 1937. And Ideal got sued a few times because ā And they had other dolls out there that could cry and that could pee themselves and drink. But apparently, the idea was like, but can they do all of that? Right. And yeah, Betsy West, it was a huge smash hit. I think she was most popular in the 50s, but you could find her on the shelves through the 80s.
And you would give her a little bottle. She had a tube running through her. So the bottle of whatever, hopefully water if you were a parent and not actual milk, would go through her little tube and come out the other end. And then you would get to change her diaper or maybe give her a bath or something like that. And you'd start all over again. That's right.
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