“The doll(s)” in the transfeminine sense, is a term that is often used to describe the constructed self, a synthetic opulence that embodies hyper-femininity. Originating in ball culture, the “doll” was an aesthetic category that played with the artifice of trans identity, in that she is created through the spectacular performance of femininity by granting herself a simulacrum of power she was not born with. Drawing from the concept of dolls as a toy, “the doll” is an effigy of desire, on becoming and embodying a sort of child-like make-believe that represents limitless potential. Like the toy, one is able to project any type of fantasy, where realness is able to evolve into real. “The doll” is self-made, an aesthetic creation (cosmetic, surgical, and/or performative) made in her own image of perfection. To be a Doll, then, is to assert oneself bathed in opulence and glamour in a predominantly white, transphobic, misogynistic, cis-heteronormative world that denies her. One might argue that this sensibility of transness is uniquely regressive, or obsessed with femininity ascribed by patriarchal values. However, anti-trans rhetoric is explicitly misogynist/gender essentialist, arguing that trans women are “not woman enough”, and as such relies on defining how to look/perform as a woman. The Doll is not a subversion of the performative aspects of gender, nor is it the paradigm that emancipates oneself from the constraints of the cisgender/heteronormative hegemony. Rather, it reveals the underlying fantasy that the preexisting structures of gender and sex present. That is to say, the performance that one is enacting outside the rigid normativities of gender, sex, and sexuality is a form of self-empowerment, where the utilization of skillful artifice/hyper-stylization reveals that the original itself is a false construction. The nature of The Doll affirms the notion that gender attributes are performative, which embody and comprise the identity they express based on the signs and signifiers used on the body.

Inspired by the contemporary phrase, Doll Behaviours: Ascension from the Box into the Dollhouse is based on the notion of emulation and artifice in gender and transness, embodying a transcendent fantasy. With this work, I wanted to depict a way of being in the process of transformation. I position myself as “the doll”, in hopes of endeavoring to be one of “the dolls”. Like a reveal from a drag show, the person underneath is not visible, except for the baby doll’s face that protrudes from the front of the fabric box and the legs underneath. This, as well as the shape of the rectangular blanket, is used to evoke the toy box. The doll is used as a stand-in; it is the body in quotation marks. I also incorporated sound into the work to recall dolls with set phrases. The voice used is a synthetic, feminine voice, which plays into ideas of “the doll” as being a constructed self. Almost like a ritual, the repetition of the phrase “doll behaviour” is a prayer that wills a magical change into being.