There was a family restaurant in my home town that had one of these “people” sitting at a table by the window, dressed up like an old man. I was terrified of that thing when I was a little kid.
Notice both “Granny” and “Shady Lady” are in quotation marks.
How do I get to maker mayhem?
Not getting the snark, frankly. It seems more creative than the usual Star Wars/steampunk/Lego axis that BB usually trucks in.
Loneliness is a mental condition now? It seems more sad than creepy to me, like someone just wants someone else to be in the house with them. The author of the article seems a lot more creeped out about this than I am. It’s not like they’re covered in human skin or something.
I find most dolls somewhat creepy, but I don’t see why these are more worthy of contempt than ones made out of porcelain or rags. I know several people who make dolls as a hobby and they are no less makers/artists than I am simply because I’m not into it. Also, what is so darn wrong about pantyhose? I thought re-using common materials creatively was a big win for makers.
Maybe snark is the general tone of Maker Mayhem, like Regretsy used to be, but it’s hard to get the context when you can’t read the rest (I tried Google with no results).
exactly, give Shady Lady an oversize pair of steampunk goggles made of Lego and all the snark would vanish, replaced by fawning awe
I understand some people pay good money for this kind of thing. Let’s see…
Pretty sure Cabbage Patch Kids started as pantyhose dolls.
Couple months ago I inherited my Mom’s Singer. Made a couple throw pillows for my wife with our kids’ pictures on them. Need a new project for the summer.
I rather like these. Probably I wouldn’t glam them up so much, more likely I’d make Halloween dummies. But I do like 'em.
Similar artificial figures were, and are, used to teach new artists how to draw fabric draped over a human figure. The living model could go home, while the artist could return day after day to the exact same lighting conditions.
It makes me sad when I realize that an article like this deserves no comment despite the overwhelming desire to straighten out the author on a fucked up attitude.
What if everybody in your small town is dying or moving away and you miss them? Then is it OK?
Some soft sculpture pieces are admittedly more artful than others, but I always thought that Lisa Lichtenfels was a pretty skilled fabric artists. I guess though that some Boingers might accuse her work of straying too far into the uncanny valley at times.
I’m torn. On the one hand, these are creepy and bizarre and I completely don’t get the appeal.
On the other hand, most of the internet’s worst moments have come from somebody deciding that someone else’s weird-but-harmless hobby/interest/fetish needs to be publicly mocked. It’s a pretty short step from hyperbolically vilifying pantyhose dolls to, say, dogpiling some poor kid’s cosplay pictures until they’re afraid to even get online.
So, yeah, I’ve got to stand against this on principle, even if I have no connection with the target whatsoever.
I was struck by the prurience of the article which invites the reader to join the author and recoil in horror at the works of a “disturbed freak”. Pure Daily Mail. Get a grip and watch the brilliant documentary Marwencol for a more nuanced view of outsider art/craft.
Honestly, how is this project so different from any other creative task that it invites ridicule from the author?
There have been a lot of creative items on BoingBoing over the years where I’ve gone “Wow! Someone wasted a whole lot of their life on that!” However, I’ve never once thought that those projects merited public ridicule. In fact, often I was quietly astonished and amazed at the industriousness and devotion of the creator.
So with this article, who is the author to decide what constitutes “crossing the line”? Isn’t that the province of the reader?
If I want to be told how I should feel about the articles I read, I might as well just, as krinkle1917 pointed out, read the Daily Mail.
Please BoingBoing, no more loaded headlines and definitely no more judgmental articles. We the readers are the judges of such content.
If you start forcing such articles on us then we will be judgmental, but it won’t be the article contents that we will be judging.
No! Photographs only!
