When I was 5 years old, my favorite toy was a Ginnette doll. She didn’t look exactly like this picture, and I didn’t know till I searched for the illustration whether her name had one “n” or two, but I remember her well.

She didn’t have “real” hair or moving eyes. She was a pink vinyl baby doll, only about eight inches long. Her infant hair was a curlicue on her forehead, as much a part of her pinkness as her button nose and toes.

She smelled wonderful. I liked to sniff her head almost as much as I enjoy a real baby head now. In fact, I loved the look and smell so much that I couldn’t resist taking her pate in my mouth and biting. Hard. I’d eat her up I loved her so.

A year or two later I was presented with fancier dolls. I remember Madam Alexander’s jointed knees and lifelike tresses. I remember Betsy Wetsy’s working eyes. But I also recall how repulsed I was when they broke. Madam A’s leg guts were horrifying. When Betsy’s eyes had lost all lashes and rolled back partway into her head – well, suffice it to say that my brother Steve had fun terrorizing me with my broken dolls, even to the extent of once tossing crazy-eyed Betsy into my room with me and then trying to hold my door closed so I couldn’t get out.

The fact was, I always knew they were toys. I didn’t appreciate lifelike. I had an imagination for that. Ginnette brought sensory pleasures to me in a way that those robots never could.

Last of all was Barbie. I think I was 9. Barbie was all about clothes and sex. Really. We designed garments for her out of scarves and scraps. We posed her in erotic fantasies. This was before Ken (our Barbies had “patent pending” on their butts). We never needed Ken. Again, imagination was better.