She's a real doll

Over the weekend I saw Lars and the Real Girl, a strange but funny movie about a mentally-ill introvert who, much to his concerned family's delight, finds a "girlfriend" on the internet . The girlfriend, Bianca, it turns out, is actually a Real Doll, a life-sized anatomically correct silicone woman, created by Abyss Creations in California and sold for upwards of $10,000. The entire community sweetly honors the "relationship" while Lars works through deep psychological issues resulting from his mother's death at his birth.

The brilliance of the movie is that it causes us to gain an uneasy acceptance of something that would otherwise seem perverse and completely laughable. Yet Lars is not, by any stretch, a normal guy, so our acceptance is tenuous. What type of real man is satisfied substituting a silicone representation of a woman for an actual relationship? Abyss Creations has sold thousands of Real Dolls and has an order backlog even as we speak. So who is purchasing these things? Maybe the same man who leaves his wife sleeping upstairs while spending hours looking at internet pornography? The guy who can't handle the complexities of a real relationship with a flesh and blood female?

At the core, Real Dolls and pornography appeal to the same man. Both give the illusion of love--a travesty of love--created for poorly mothered or often-rejected men. For once these men have control over the omnipotent feminine. The unattainable girl. The instrument of rejection. That intense and infantile vulnerability to the female is turned on its head. The female is now submissive, expendable, interchangeable. Performing for you! Wanting only you! Loving only you!

Ryan Gosling, Lars from the movie, is quite charitable in his assessment of the men who own Real Dolls. "There's a whole culture of guys out there who have these dolls, and they have very intimate relationships with them. Part of it is sexual, but a lot of it is emotional. One guy goes hang gliding, and he takes his doll to watch, so that he has someone to support him in the things that he likes to do. Some guys cook with them and have dinners; they're part of the fabric of their life. So, all of this is possible. … I think it's a romantic idea, that love's not a transaction. It's something you have to give, and you give it freely to whoever and whatever you want."

Okay, I can't disagree. It's plenty romantic. Objectification of women is the epitome of romance. In fact, it's the definition of romance...an artistic work that deals with sexual love, especially in an idealized form...an idealized form like a silicone doll or a stylized airbrushed photograph.