Duclerck free erotic photography magazine: article on Samantha Wolov, part2.

Samantha Wolov about her project 'Plastic'.

I was an Art History major in college, and the program was structured
in such a way that I was allowed to complete an Independent Study
project in any department I wanted, as long as it pertained to art. I
knew I wanted to create a series of photographs for this project, but I couldn't decide on what. My erotic photos had come from a project in a class taught by my project advisor, so I knew I wanted to play on the same sexual theme. Coincedentally, around that same time, I had to babysit, and the little girl I was watching showed me a few of her dolls. They were Bratz dolls, a competitor doll of Barbie. They're
supposed to be 12 or 13 years old, but they wear such revealing
clothing and so much make-up that they look like Las Vegas showgirls.
Almost like little prostitutes. I thought they were disturbing, but
also really funny and fascinating. There was something about the
dynamics of the doll and the little girl that just seemed so
interesting. The doll in and of itself was a child attempting to be an
adult, and the scenario of the child playing with the doll was like the
child pretending to be an adult, controlling or manipulating the doll.
So there was this interesting role-playing, with the doll, with the
child, and with the child with the doll. Barbie, ironically, is an
adult doll who has been completely denied her sexuality, which is
appropriate given that she's a child's toy. It's odd: she had a
long-term love interest (Ken), lingerie was designed and manufactured
for her, Mattel had sometimes produced pregnant versions of Barbie, or even Barbie as a mother, and yet, she was still so asexual. All of
that, compounded by the fact that the design of Barbie was originally
based on a German sex doll, plus how sexual these new Bratz dolls
looked, inspired me to really play around with the fusion of sex and
dolls. I never really played with dolls much when I was younger (I was
an avid reader), but I remember having friends who would pretend their dolls were having sex or flirting, simply as a joke, but the idea of it was so funny or scandalous precisely because of how asexual Barbie was. And now we have Bratz dolls, who wear their faux-sexuality on their sleeve, yet their supposed to be children, and thus such overt sexuality is taboo. Everything has been reversed: the adult dolls are thoroughly asexual, and the child dolls ooze sexuality. How did that happen?!

I had seen people attempt to take pictures of Barbie dolls having sex,
but they were never really taken artfully; they always seemed to be a
joke. Which mine still are, to a certain extent, but I had hoped that
by really taking the time to take a good picture, by really considering
the different scenarios and treating the photos as art, not just humor, I had hoped that people would see the humor in the whole situation. As in, the humor in Barbie giving a blowjob to Ken, but the humor in two iconic, asexual child's toys engaging in the penultimate adult act, despite the fact that they were designed to look like adults, yet not actually be adult; they were still subject to the child's will and thus playing the subordinate role.

 

// Visit the website of Samantha Wolov // Read more articles // Home // Next article //