It’s true, what several commenters said in response to the nightmare Deeni-doll – the Amish do have nightmare faceless dolls.
They’re rag dolls, soft and squashy for small children who like to squash things. They’re like Raggedy Anne and Andy, except…Anne and Andy have faces.
Having a taboo on human faces seems to me a wretched idea. Aversion to eye contact is a disability, not something to instill in people on purpose.
still doing it. your cultural bias is showing. ugly.
Well of course it is. I’m saying what I think of fear and loathing of the human face, and one way of labeling what people think is to call it cultural bias.
Just to be contrarian — I actually find the faceless dolls less creepy than most dolls with faces. But then, I never liked dolls much as a child, which my mother never understood. I occasionally played with them to make her happy.
Troublemaker!
Eye contact is a primary means of establishing joint attention, the recognition of which is a key element of developmental psychology. Children are flexing their joint attention muscles when they begin to point things out to others, first imperatively (“I want that”) and then declaratively (“Look at this with me”).
This is important in acquiring language because in order to teach little Molly that a dog is called a “dog,” you need to focus on the dog with her, establish that you are both thinking about the same thing, and get her to associate “dog” with the thing you’re both thinking about. Then the next time you see one, Molly shouts “DOG!” and points declaratively. You affirm this association with your attention to the dog.
I’m not sure that you could discourage joint intentional ability with dolls that have no eyes, but you’re almost certainly not encouraging it as actively as you could be. Kids, after all, point things out to their dolls. They behave toward dolls as they imagine a parent would treat a baby, or a friend would treat a friend. How do you communicate with someone without a face?
Sandi is right and additionally, why do you have to bring symptoms of autism into it, further pathologizing and judging behaviors that you clearly don’t understand? These arguments are surprisingly shallow and garbled coming from you, in my opinion. It’s a knee jerk reaction on your part and the ableist twist you just added in is not helping.
I suppose it would be too much to ask Sandi and xyz to actually explain what is good about a taboo on depicting faces?
Look up the Legend of the No Face Doll.
Ok, I edited that sentence. Gretchen’s comment helpfully expands and explains my meaning.
I’ve seen a lot of non-commerical historical dolls, made from a variety of materials, like leather and corn husks, that didn’t worry about depicted faces on the dolls. It seemed to be more important to have the human shape and head (sometimes hair).
Having made ‘bendy’ figurines out of bag closure wire for myself when young and for young relations when i was older, their facelessness was never a concern to at least our small sample. I was treated many times to being told what mood the ‘blank slate’ toy was in as we played as well as how they looked. Is it possible kids just mentally fill in the features to suit them? Can a blank figure more easily be universal for kids of different appearances? Aside from being ‘white’ material etc.
Other than that, on the religious taboo front, I thought it was the entire human figure that wasn’t supposed to be depicted in certain sects of Islamic ideology, not just the face. In the sects where where people were allowed in art, I know Muhammed’s face wasn’t to be depicted, so he was often shown heavily veiled, but no other man was treated so in the pictures…and often the women’s faces were revealed or transparently veiled. It all seems very Taboo Pro Tem.
@Gretchen im not exspressing good or bad re the “taboo”. the ugly is the clear western centric judgement displayed by this and the previous related post. but given OBs prior works in pseudophilosophy, i give a pass to her here.
We had a few cornhusk dolls at home. Some had faces, some didn’t Doesn’t seem strange to me.
…the ugly is the clear western centric judgement displayed by this and the previous related post.
The judgment is based on personal reaction and collective experience with child-development issues. Calling it “Western-centric” does nothing to invalidate it, any more than it invalidates any other criticism of an ignorant and possibly harmful cultural norm.
Sandi said:
So you don’t think the taboo is good. You just know that Ophelia is Western, and she doesn’t like it, so that makes her judgement “western-centric”? Do I have that right? Are you a cultural relativist, in other words– you don’t think people have grounds to criticize anything outside of their own culture?
That’s what it sounds like to me. However, cultural relativism being a load of bollocks, adherents are often reluctant to acknowledge that that’s what they actually espouse. They just prefer to make vague accusations of imperialism and bias without ever getting around to substantiating them.
I simply know a knee jerk argument when I see one. Would it be fair for Ophelia to say she dislikes the idea of a taboo on depicting the human face? Sure. But this high level of shock at the existence of “creepy” faceless dolls is just too much for me, and I find it disproportionate and judgy in a pointless way. Arguing that kids will grow up unwilling to look at faces or able to maintain eye contact due to a faceless doll? Also baseless. I’d love to see one child development expert who agrees that could be a thing. And again why bring disability issues into it (and edit autism to disability in the post without informing readers of the edit) like that? In a way that stigmatizes the behavior and plays up its abnormality (in my opinion)?
I think this issue would have benefited from more open ended discussion. Also I am far more interested to hear from the ex-Muslims on this network regarding these things, honestly.
Who made this argument? I don’t see it.
“Without informing readers?” Huh? OB informed us of the edit at comment #9.
I missed the comment from Ophelia @9. What I admittedly don’t get is how “instilling” an aversion to faces fits with what Gretchen says at all or how saying “disability” represents a fix to the issues I mentioned. Mr FancyPants, I didn’t mean to put words in anyone’s mouth. Honestly my phrasing was an attempt to reword Ophelia’s point.
With that I’m bowing out. I found both these posts uncomfortably hyperbolic and reaching, and I stand by that.
Thanks for the apology for misrepresenting me.
Oh wait, you didn’t apologize.
xyz said:
Couldn’t you have helped to create one?
Ex-Muslims would certainly be better equipped to shed light on the particular reasoning behind Islam’s taboo. But that’s hardly all there is to talk about– this post isn’t even about Islam. And I don’t see what good it does to come to Ophelia’s blog and complain that she’s talking about things without being an apostate Muslim– that’s hardly her fault, is it?
It’s unfortunate how often standing by something one has said seems to take the place of actually substantiating/justifying it.
And the nonsense about “Western-centric” – apparently xyz forgot what I said at the beginning of the first post on the subject: I learned of this doll via Tehmina Kazi, who is a Muslim. Guess what, liberal Muslims are repulsed by the doll.
It’s not very reflective to treat non-“Western” cultures as homogeneous blobs that see everything the same way. Liberal Muslims do not admire Islamists and reactionaries. It’s terribly clueless and ethnocentric to assume that all Muslims would approve of this ridiculous doll.
What’s interesting to me is the size of that not-face on the Deeni doll. Cornhusk dolls don’t strike me as creepy—I just image-searched them to check—but their heads are relatively small. I find the Amish dolls creepier, but still less creepy than the Deeni doll, which has some sort of huge manga-head. It really smacks you with the ZOMG THRS NO FACE.
In the experiment somebody besides me should run, I predict a direct correlation between the proportional size of the no-faced head and the reported creepy factor.
The problem isn’t the faceless dolls. There are styles of dolls that don’t have faces. As a kid I remember there was a kind of doll where you were supposed to put the face on yourself and it came with these sticker things.
The problem is that some people apparently think that all dolls should be faceless because ‘reasons’, and those ‘reasons’ are absurd. And not only are those ‘reasons’ absurd, but they are being codified into law for further absurd ‘reasons’.
It’s not that there are people that want to have faceless dolls. It’s that there are people that want to prevent others from having dolls that do have faces.
Indeed, there were the potato head dolls (which could also be apple head, pear head, carrot head). And corn husk dolls were a matter of making do with what you had. But this “Deeni”…
different story.
Ramen pointed out the size of the Deeni head.
Babby heads are huge compared to body-size.
I can’t guess what the faceless Amish doll is about other than something to do with idolatry, but the muslim thing reeks of oppression. Faceless “deeni dolls” seem like a way of telling young girls, “Cover your face in public with a veil.” Deny dolls (i.e. deny that girls are people) is more like it.
Either that, or maybe the makers are obsessed with video games. Just wait until a kid takes one of those dolls to school or daycare and people freak out about the “slenderman” doll.
On a distantly related topic, my hardcore religious and racist parents thought a golliwog was still an acceptable present to give another family’s child during the 1980s. Some people have no clue, and probably never will.