History
The dame de voyage (French) or dama de viaje (Spanish) was a direct predecessor to today's sex dolls that originated in the seventeenth century. Dames de voyage were makeshift masturbatory dolls made of sewn cloth or old clothes, used by French and Spanish sailors while isolated at sea during long voyages.
One of the earliest recorded appearances of manufactured sex dolls dates to 1908, in Iwan Bloch's The Sexual Life of Our Time. Bloch wrote:
| “ | In this connection we may refer to fornicatory acts effected with artificial imitations of the human body, or of individual parts of that body. There exist true Vaucansons in this province of pornographic technology, clever mechanics who, from rubber and other plastic materials, prepare entire male or female bodies, which, as hommes or dames de voyage, subserve fornicatory purposes. More especially are the genital organs represented in a manner true to nature. Even the secretion of Bartholin's glans is imitated, by means of a "pneumatic tube" filled with oil. Similarly, by means of fluid and suitable apparatus, the ejaculation of the semen is imitated. Such artificial human beings are actually offered for sale in the catalogue of certain manufacturers of "Parisian rubber articles." | ” |
In August 1955, Max Weissbrodt of the Hausser/Elastolin company created one of the first sex dolls to be marketed as such: an 11.5-inch plastic figurine named Bild Lilli, modeled after the hypersexualized appearance of a cartoon character named Lilli that had gained popularity in the German newspaper Bild Zeitung. Bild Lilli was marketed as a joke doll for "men who perhaps could not afford the real thing", advertised via pamphlets distributed to men who frequented German red-light districts such as Hamburg's Reeperbahn. Lilli dolls bore a striking resemblance to today's Barbie dolls.
The production of human simulacra to substitute for human sexual partners took several technological leaps forward in the late twentieth century. By the 1970s, vinyl, latex and silicone had become the materials most frequently used in the manufacture of sex dolls; silicone in particular allowed a greater degree of realism.
A 1982 attempt to import a consignment of sex dolls into Britain had the unintended consequence of ending the law against importing "obscene or indecent" items that were not illegal to sell within the UK. Having had the dolls seized by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise officers, David Sullivan's Conegate Ltd. took the case all the way to the European Court of Justice, and won in 1987. Britain was forced to lift its stringent import prohibitions dating from 1876, because for imports from within the European Community they constituted a barrier to free trade under the terms of the Treaty of Rome.
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