This is a great example of a Bad Craft that isn't necessarily. There are a lot of people who use doll heads in their crafts on purpose, to make something creepy on purpose. That is not only fine, it is also awesome and I applaud you. (Just look at this gumball dispenser filled with Barbie doll heads! I love everything about this. Someone hand me a quarter.)
But there are also a lot of crafts that involve doll heads which are clearly not meant to be creepy. And yet they are. Apparently these crafters are somehow unaware of the fact that most of us find any example of a disembodied doll's head to be creepy. (How could you not know that? It boggles the imagination. And yet.)
Granted, I have a very wide Uncanny Valley, which is a term that describes the point of realistic-but-not-quite-realistic human faces that people find eerie and unsettling. I find human-like things creepy to a much greater extent than most people seem to. Even so, it's a disembodied doll's head. There is nothing that's not creepy about that.
Obviously if what you are making is meant to be a doll, that's fine. I'm talking about the other crafts that stare at you. Like this doll head Christmas tree ornament. The doll's face even looks uncertain, as if it too is wondering, "is this right? This can't be right." Or this trio of doll's heads in ice cream cones, like you're supposed to eat them? Shudder.
When you get right down to it, dolls are creepy. That's what this is about. A doll's head on a doll's body is only marginally less creepy than a disembodied doll's head. It is still a small simulated human with dead staring eyes. Or maybe it's just me. (It's probably just me.)
Image courtesy Flickr/su-lin
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