Marylin Mansfield, a plus-size model from Staten Island, has turned her home into a creepy nursery filled with over 300 dolls, including reborn babies, Barbies and Goth-like Krypt Kiddies.
We’ve posted our share of wacky doll collectors here on Oddity Central, like this lady with a thing for antique dolls, this other one who loves clowns, or the couple who share their home with love dolls, but Marylin actually treats her plastic collectibles like real babies. “I take them anywhere you would bring a real baby. I don’t do it for the shock value. I do it for myself because it makes me happy. I just loved when my kids were babies — and these babies stay babies forever. I buy them clothes. They never grow out of them and they never get dirty”, the tattooed platinum blonde says about her peculiar hobby.
Photo: Helayne Seidman/NY Post
“I know they’re not alive, but their facial expressions give them all their own personalities.When women hold babies, they release hormones. I think that’s what it is for me — it makes me feel good”, Mansfield is quoted by the New York Post. The mother of three real children has around 300 dolls in apartment, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Her collection includes reborn babies that look, feel and weigh just like real toddlers, Barbie dolls, creepy “Living Dead” dolls and Goth-themed “Kreepy Kiddies”. She treats them all like real-life babies, washes them, changes them and never leaves the house without one.
Photo: Marilyn Mansfield/Facebook
Believe it or not, her real kids aren’t at all jealous of their mother’s attention towards her dolls. On the contrary, her young boy was inspired to start his own collection, and her 12-year-old daughter helps the platinum blonde wash and change her precious dolls. The husband doesn’t feel the same way about dolls as Marilyn does, but he’s gotten used to their enlarged family.
Photo: Marilyn Mansfield/Facebook
Mansfield, who was featured on the TLC hit show My Collection Obsession, says the lifelike appearance of her dolls attracts strangers’ attention every time she goes out with them. She gets all kinds of reactions out of them, from the usual ‘How old is he?’ to Your baby looks a little pale. Is he OK?”. Most of the time she just ignores them but if they persist, she lets them know it’s not a real baby.
Photo: Marilyn Mansfield/Facebook
We’ve posted a similar story about a woman who bought a reborn baby and started raising it as a real one, and I thought that was creepy, but looking at some of the dolls in Marilyn Mansfield apartment nursery, she almost seems normal, now.
