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I didn’t anticipate this explosion in 2013, when I visited a sex doll factory in Dongguan, southern China. I was researching my book on the consequences of the one-child policy and was curious about where a nationwide absence of women might lead.
But I was operating more on hunch than certainty that demand for sex dolls would escalate.
Even the company I profiled, Hitdoll, was hinging their business model on a mix of domestic and global sales. Proprietor Vincent He wasn’t sure China’s burgeoning market of bachelors would be their best customer base, saying, “Thirty-year-old single men tend not to spend the money on dolls. They can go for real women.”
That said, sex toy usage — though not dolls — was already being normalized in China to a degree that was not the case in the West, in part propelled by a vast, and mostly male, migrant population separated from their families.
I knew from my reporting that the shopping areas they frequented sold products such as artificial vaginas. There seemed to be less social stigma around the idea than in the West, judged both by the prominence with which they were displayed in the ubiquitous corner sex stores and the open discussion of the virtues and flaws of different devices in male-dominated forums online.
Heads for sex dolls at the Real Doll booth are displayed during the AVN (Adult Video News) Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada January 10, 2008.
His description of his experiences sounded like a perverse telling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Early on, the Kawaii Club members complained the prototypes were too stiff, too cold, too unreal. (The manager, He, remembered receiving feedback such as, “Your doll is so cold, like a dead body.”)
Hitdoll’s makers experimented with materials (silicone and TPE, or thermoplastic elastomers, found in bottle-cap liners and dental guards) breast size (C to EE) hair (synthetic, animal, human) and ethnicity (African, Asian, Caucasian).
Feng, then 24, viewed all this as playful experimentation. He never saw himself as part of Hitdoll’s audience demographic.
Weren’t they worried about hygiene issues? Vincent He showed me the disposable rubber vaginas they used. Each Kawaii member got to keep them after the trials, he said.
