My Fake Baby

I meant to write about this yesterday, but life got in the way. On Monday evening I picked up the TV remote and flashed through the channels. When I reached Ch4, it was in time to see a young woman with a baby carrier on her supermarket trolley asking an older woman if she would like to buy a baby...

I watched the rest of the programme; the young woman makes a living painting vinyl dolls to look like human babies. The programme focused mainly on three women. One, Mary I think she was called, came across as a doll collector, pure and simple. She had a wide range of dolls from many different re-borners, and proudly displayed the different types and sizes to Christine, who was thinking about commissioning a doll. The third woman, her name escaped me, had half a dozen or so "babies", and bought expensive prams and designer outfits for them. She and her husband seemed to treat them as accessories to their lifestyle rather than substitute children. She said that she couldn't cope with a child that made a mess or got dirty, and she could only contemplate having a real child if she could be guaranteed one that behaved. The programme followed her on a trip to Washington USA to collect her latest baby. Having flown all that way, I had expected to at least see her turn up at the home of the artist that produced the doll, but no; She and her mother sat in an hotel bedroom nervously awaiting the delivery. It came in a cardboard box on a luggage trolley pushed by a porter. It was quite a relief when she found a flaw a couple of days later, and the doll got sent back to its maker....just try doing that with a real baby.

The saddest part of the programme had to be the story of Christine. She had brought up her grandson Harry from birth while her daughter battled and won a fight with cancer. Her daughter had now taken Harry to live in New Zealand, and she was struggling to cope with his loss. Having thought about it for some time, she commissions a baby from Jaime, who uses photographs of the baby Harry to produce as near to a replica as she can. Christine takes it home to her husband, who says "I don't like it Christine....it looks like something on a mortuary slab."

I think I agree with him.

Edit: Richard and Judy talking about the programme.